Her expeditions to Dunkirk, to Holland, and to Hanover
embarrassed rather than materially assisted the cause of her allies. But
her navy, favourably handicapped by the breakdown, due to the
Revolution, of the French navy, eventually produced in the person of
Nelson a leader who, like Napoleon, had made it the business of his life
to understand the art of war. His victories, like Napoleon's, were
decisive, and when he fell at Trafalgar the navies of continental
Europe, which one after another had been pressed into the service of
France, had all been destroyed.
Then were revealed the prodigious consequences of complete victory at
sea, which were more immediate, more decisive, more far-reaching, more
irrevocable than on land. The sea became during the continuance of the
war the territory of Great Britain, the open highway along which her
ships could pass, while it was closed to the ships of her adversaries.
Across that secure sea a small army was sent to Spain to assist the
national and heroic, though miserably organised, resistance made by the
Spanish people against the French attempt at conquest. The British
Government had at last found the right direction for such military force
as it possessed. Sir John Moore's army brought Napoleon with a great
force into the field, but it was able to retire to its own territory,
the sea.
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