Pierre-Charles Villeneuve

• 1. Introduction

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  Pierre-Charles Villeneuve commanded the French fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. He lost. Napoleon's verdict on the man was precise and unsparing: "Villeneuve does not possess the strength of character to command a frigate. He lacks determination and has no moral courage." These words were directed at a veteran officer who had served France at sea for decades. What shaped a man of that record into the commander Napoleon dismissed in those terms? And what happened to Villeneuve after Trafalgar remains, to this day, a matter historians have not resolved.

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• 2. A Noble in the Revolution

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  Villeneuve was born on the 31st of December 1763 in Valensole, Provence, into a family of aristocratic standing. He joined the French Navy in 1779 and first saw action in the American Revolutionary War. Serving as a ship-of-the-line ensign aboard the Marseillois, he was part of the fleet commanded by Admiral François Joseph Paul de Grasse.

  He sympathised with the French Revolution's ideals. As a signal of that sympathy, he dropped the nobiliary particle from his name. Other aristocratic naval officers were being purged from the navy. By removing the linguistic marker of his noble birth, Villeneuve kept his commission and his career intact.

  By 1796, Villeneuve had been promoted to counter admiral, having fought in several naval battles of the War of the First Coalition. The navy he had worked to remain part of was about to carry him into one of the most ambitious campaigns of the era.

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• 3. Escape at the Nile

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  In 1798, Villeneuve participated in the French invasion of Egypt and Syria. At the Battle of the Nile, he commanded the French rear division as the British attacked the anchored French fleet. The engagement was a disaster for France. Villeneuve's ship was one of only two French ships of the line to escape.

  Villeneuve was criticized for failing to push his rear division into the fighting. Afterward, the British captured him during the siege of Malta, though they released him without long delay.

  Napoleon's response was unexpected. Rather than penalising Villeneuve over the Nile, Napoleon called him "a lucky man." For Napoleon, luck in a commander was a genuine virtue to prize. Villeneuve's career continued without interruption. When Napoleon next needed a naval commander for his most consequential undertaking, Villeneuve was the man he chose.

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• 4. Napoleon's Grand Design

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  By 1804, Villeneuve held the rank of vice admiral and was stationed at Toulon. That year, Napoleon assigned him a mission of almost implausible scope. The goal was the invasion of the United Kingdom.

  To achieve it, Villeneuve was to slip past the British blockade at Toulon and cross the Atlantic to the West Indies. There he would combine forces with the Spanish Navy and the French fleet based at Brest. Together, the armada was to strike at British possessions in the Caribbean, then race back across the Atlantic. The plan's centrepiece was the destruction of the Royal Navy's Channel Squadron. Villeneuve would then escort Napoleon's Army of the Ocean Coasts from its encampment at Boulogne. His task was to land those troops on English shores.

  The operation demanded multiple fleets to coordinate across thousands of miles of ocean. It required each piece to arrive at precise moments. Villeneuve would have months to study the plan before he sailed. Whether it was achievable was something only the Atlantic would reveal.

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• 5. The Atlantic Gambit

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  Villeneuve left Toulon on the 29th of March 1805 with eleven ships of the line. He passed the Strait of Gibraltar on the 8th of April, evading Nelson's blockade. Nelson pursued, though unfavourable winds left the British fleet roughly a month behind.

  In the West Indies, Villeneuve waited at Martinique for a full month. Admiral Ganteaume's Brest fleet, a critical component of the plan, never appeared. Pressed by French army officers into taking action, Villeneuve achieved one military success: the recapture of the island fort of Diamond Rock off Martinique. On the 7th of June he received word that Nelson had arrived at Antigua.

  The following day, the 8th of June, his fleet intercepted a homeward-bound British convoy of fifteen merchant vessels. The convoy was escorted by a frigate and a sloop; both British warships escaped. All fifteen merchants were captured. The prizes were valued at some five million pounds. Villeneuve sent them to Guadeloupe under escort and on the 11th of June turned his fleet toward Europe.

  By the 22nd of July, his force had grown to twenty ships of the line and seven frigates. Rounding Cape Finisterre on the northwest coast of Spain, he entered the Bay of Biscay. There, Vice Admiral Sir Robert Calder's British fleet of fifteen ships of the line was waiting. In the Battle of Cape Finisterre, fought in poor visibility, the British managed to cut out two Spanish ships despite being outnumbered. Villeneuve shadowed the retreating British for two days without pressing the fight.

  He sailed to A Coruña, arriving on the 1st of August, and found orders directing him to proceed to Brest and Boulogne as planned. Over the explicit objections of his Spanish commanders, he abandoned the route to Brest. Perhaps misled by a false report of a superior British fleet in the Bay of Biscay, he sailed south to Cádiz instead. Napoleon, who was at his military peak in 1805, would not let that decision go unanswered.

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• 6. October 1805

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  Nelson arrived off Cádiz on the 28th of September to tighten the blockade on the combined fleet. In September, Villeneuve received an order to take the fleet to Naples and attack British shipping in the Mediterranean. He did not comply.

  In mid-October, Villeneuve learned that Napoleon had decided to relieve him of command. The officer chosen was François Étienne de Rosily-Mesros, already travelling to Cádiz to take over. Villeneuve was to be recalled to Paris to account for his conduct. Acting before his replacement could arrive, he ordered the fleet to sea on the 18th of October.

  Getting 34 ships out of Cádiz proved harder than ordering them out. Inexperienced crews and the congestion of the port meant the process took two full days. On the 21st of October 1805, with his fleet barely in order, Villeneuve learned the true strength of the British force. He turned back toward Cádiz. Nelson's ships intercepted the fleet off Cape Trafalgar. Nelson was outnumbered but won. Villeneuve's own flagship was captured, along with many of the French and Spanish vessels. Villeneuve was taken prisoner, and the British chose to send him to England.

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• 7. Bishop's Waltham and After

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  The British transferred Villeneuve to England aboard HMS Euryalus and released him on parole. He settled for a time in Bishop's Waltham in Hampshire, staying at the Crown Inn. Approximately 200 of his men were housed in local homes across the town. While there, Villeneuve was permitted to attend the funeral of Lord Nelson. Nelson was the admiral whose tactics had ended his command.

  Freed in late 1805, Villeneuve returned to France. His attempts to resume military service received no response.

  On the 22nd of April 1806, Villeneuve was found dead at the Hôtel de la Patrie in Rennes. He had five stab wounds in the left lung and one in the heart. A farewell letter addressed to his wife was found with him, and a verdict of suicide was recorded.

  The suspicion that Napoleon had secretly ordered Villeneuve's murder spread widely in Britain at the time. Whether Villeneuve took his own life or was killed has remained a genuine point of contention among historians. His name is engraved on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. It was placed there among the names of the Napoleonic Wars' commanders, and it remains.

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