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Did Nelson Win Trafalgar: or did the French Lose?
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Peter



Joined: 10 Apr 2007
Posts: 105
Location: Gosport, Hampshire

Post Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 10:25 am    Post subject: Did Nelson Win Trafalgar: or did the French Lose? Reply with quote

Some Food for Thought!

Monsieur Patrick, Le Proffeseur,

Je poser une question?

Did Nelson win Trafalgar: or did the French lose?

The demise of the French navy, did it start with the French Revolution(1789-1799) when many of the aristocracy lost their heads. Were any, or many in the navy. Was there also a loss of hierarchical command?

Did Napolean take the best guns off the ships and use them for his army?

Were the gunlocks as opposed to flintlocks that should have been on the ships taken for the army?

Did the RN blockade the French navy, or didn't the French have the will, training, or leadership to come out?

It is fact though that the English gunners were exercised with the guns at sunset most days and their rate of fire was much faster than the French.

So what happened to the Spanish navy in all this?
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PMarione
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Joined: 26 Mar 2007
Posts: 883

Post Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 11:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Peter,

That's a tough one and I can only give my opinion.

First the easiest parts:

Quote:
Did Napolean take the best guns off the ships and use them for his army?

I don't think so.
Land artillery was max 12 pounders in bronze (they had to be light to be moved by horse carriages) and can't be compared with naval canons (most of them iron made). I am not sure that there was any penury of naval canons in the French Navy.
There quality is another matter. In "l'art de fabriquer les canons" of Monge (later a Ministre de la Marine), he explains how to convert a church in a canon foundry (no great use for churches during the revolution period). One can imagine that this "everybody cast his canon" approach couldn't have given better results than the idea "everybody has a blast furnace in his garden" during the Chinese "Great Leap Forward" of 1958.

Quote:
Were the gunlocks as opposed to flintlocks that should have been on the ships taken for the army?

Gunlocks was an English invention (about 1745 I think) but was not yet in general use in the French Navy at Trafalgar period. If we can take the Bondartchouk's "Waterloo" as an accurate source, they were not using gunlocks on canons at Waterloo.

Quote:
It is fact though that the English gunners were exercised with the guns at sunset most days and their rate of fire was much faster than the French.

It is a fact that the English gunners had a higher rate of fire than the French, but I have read that "the exercice at sunset" was a naval legend (as in urban legend). Apparently only some artillery freaks like Broke of the Shannon exercised their crew regularly. Powder was an expensive stuff.
An interesting article on the RN gunners in the last issue of the Mariner's Mirror.

Quote:
So what happened to the Spanish navy in all this?

I have no idea. From 1807 Spain was at war against the French, so?

Quote:
Did Nelson win Trafalgar: or did the French lose?

Do you mean the battle or the naval war in general?
The Trafalgar French campaign was pure nonsense (see Desbrière). The naval strategy of Napoleon was born in the mind of an artilleryman with no knowledge of the sea.
I remember giving a speech at some gathering of Napoleomaniacs (we have that) along the same lines. A very red faced member of the assembly then stood and said angrily "You say that Napoleon was no seaman but he came from Corsica to France!". I answered that I had taken the ferry from Ostende to Dover but didn't think to be a seaman for it.
Napoleon's naval vision had two major flaws in my opinion: he thought that the sea was like solid ground and that you can move fleet like armies with no consideration for currents, weather or winds, and secondly he used his men-of-war like transport ships for his troops. The Egypt expedition is the best example, imagine "what if" Nelson had met his fleet at sea.

The best for tomorrow.
@+P


Last edited by PMarione on Sat Sep 05, 2009 12:32 pm; edited 2 times in total
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PMarione
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Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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Post Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 12:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
The demise of the French navy, did it start with the French Revolution(1789-1799) when many of the aristocracy lost their heads. Were any, or many in the navy. Was there also a loss of hierarchical command?

Zhou Enlai who was 1st minister of China for a long time under Mao, was one day asked his opinion on the influence of the French Revolution on France. He answered "it's to early to know".
François Crouzet, a prominent French economic historian has written that "the Revolution was a major catastrophy to the French economy".
The same can be said about the French Navy.
During the American Revolution war, the French navy was on a par with the RN.
The revolution completely destroyed the hierarchy.
Contrary to the RN, the officers (red officers according to their uniform) of the FN were all aristocrats by rule and trained at the school of the "Gardes de la Marine". To complete the cadre they also recruted "blue officers" mostly issued from the merchant navy but kept at the lower ranks. (See Patrick Geistdoerfer: La formation des officiers de marine : de Richelieu au XXIe siècle, des gardes aux "bordaches" at http://tc.revues.org/document1467.html).
During the "Terror", all the "red officers" either were executed or had to flee (mostly to England to later die at the infamous "Quiberon Bay" expedition).
The French army (which also had lost it's officers) was reorganized by Carnot in 1793 who produced a mass patriot army and designed the "batallion column" tactic to become invincible after Valmy.
If it was quite easy to give a gun, a bayonet and revolutionary enthousiasm to a man and send him against the enemy lines, such was not the situation for the navy where you need technical expertise besides enthousiasm.
Another major mistake was to give all the power to "political commissaries" (Lenine didn't invent them). The best example is Jeanbon St Andre, a defrocked pastor, who was in "political" charge of Villaret-Joyeuse's fleet at the Battle of Prairial (1st of June). One can imagine the result if it was the Rev Scott and not Nelson who had to devise the tactics at Trafalgar.

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Peter



Joined: 10 Apr 2007
Posts: 105
Location: Gosport, Hampshire

Post Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 6:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bonjour Patrick,

Very many thanks for your academic and enlightening discourse on Trafalgar, much of what you said I have suspected for sometime. The trouble with Nelson is he is made out to be such a hero, perhaps, that was the country needed at the time.
Most don't realise that the line had been broken at Martinique and Nelson would have know this.
What if there hadn't been a revolution and Napolean had stayed in Corsica? And if Napolean hadn't been an artilleryman! Perhaps an admiral.
The battle may have found its way onto the Arc de Triumph I once had a French student staying with me he had never heard of Trafalgar.
So perhaps the French lost Trafalgar, rather than Nelson winning!
Thanks,
Peter.


Last edited by Peter on Mon Sep 07, 2009 8:39 pm; edited 1 time in total
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PMarione
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Post Posted: Mon Sep 07, 2009 7:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Peter,

In fact Trafalgar had no real impact on the war.
The campaign was marked as a miss by Napoleon who was already at Austerlitz.

Villeneuve left Cadiz mainly because his pride was very bruised by his replacement.

The battle could have completely changed if Le Pelley didn't conduct himself as a coward. If I was Napoleon I would have had him shot.

The great rival of Napoleon was Lazare Hoche, alas he died too soon (1797).

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