Off Cape Trafalgar, 50 miles west of Cadiz, Villeneuve’s Franco-Spanish fleet of thirty-three ships-of-the-line were destroyed by Admiral Nelson’s twenty-seven ships-of-the-line, with a total of twenty-two French and Spanish ships lost to not one British.* Displaying what later became known as ‘the Nelson touch’ of inspired leadership, the British admiral split his fleet into two squadrons that attacked at a ninety degree angle to the Combined Fleet’s line and thereby cut the enemy into three groups of ships, before destroying two of them piecemeal. With the Grande Armée on the Danube it was
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