HAPPY TRAFALGAR DAY

21 October marks the 207th anniversary of the British victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. On that day in 1805, during the Napoleonic Wars, the British Royal Navy crushed a larger combined fleet of French and Spanish naval vessels off Cape Trafalgar, Spain. Admiral Nelson was commander of the 27 British vessels and Admiral Villeneuve commanded the 33 French and Spanish vessels.

Nelson had a radical plan: to divide his force and sail in two columns directly toward the enemy ships arranged in the usual broadside formation. This exposed British ships to direct fire and effectively eliminated their ability to respond. By use of this surprise tactic, Nelson hoped to slice through the Franco-Spanish line, split the enemy force, and allow his better-trained British soldiers to use their superior weaponry and sailing skills at close range.

The plan succeeded brilliantly: 18 French and Spanish ships were destroyed, while the Royal Navy did not lose a one. Casualties were similarly lop-sided: 7,000 French and Spanish sailors were killed, compared to only 1,700 British.

Without a battle-fleet Napoleon was condemned to an indirect strategy against his enemies, just as the British were. Napoleon`s defeat at Trafalgar made it impossible for him to intervene in the other decisive theatre of war, at sea.

Having thrown away his fleet, Napoleon had no direct means of attacking a maritime and commercial power such as that of Britain, and he was forced to resort to economic warfare. He believed in the orthodox French economics of his youth, according to which real wealth derived from land and people, while trade was essentially parasitic, and government borrowing was a system of fraud. (he at least got that bit right!)

In 1806 he imposed an economic blockade, known as the Continental System, which required his own trading subjects to sacrifice their livelihoods in order to wreck the British export economy.

The system did indeed damage the British economy, but it damaged European economies even more, (does any of this sound familiar?) and in the end it fatally undermined Napoleon`s power. Everywhere in his empire merchants kept up their trade as much as they could, with the aid of bribery and false papers. His soldiers and officials, even at the highest levels, were eminently corruptible, so that behind the official fa