Within quarter of an hour after Nelson was wounded, above fifty of the Victory"s men fell by the enemy"s musketry. They, however, on their part were not idle; and it was not long before there were only two Frenchmen left alive in the mizzen-top of the Redoubtable . One of them was the man who had given thefatal wound. He did not live to boast of what he had done. An old quartermaster had seen him fire, and easily recognized him, because he wore a glazed cocked hat and a white frock. This quartermaster and two midshipmen, Mr. Collingwood and Mr. Pollard, were the only persons left in the Victory"s poop. The two midshipmen kept firing at the top, and he supplied them with cartridges.
One of the Frenchmen, attempting to make his escape down the rigging, was shot by Mr. Pollard, and fell on the poop. But the old quartermaster, as he called out, "That"s he- that"s he," and pointed to the other, who was coming forward to fire again, received a shot in his mouth, and fell dead. Both the midshipmen then fired at the same time, and the fellow dropped in the top. When they took possession of the prize, they went into the mizzen-top and found him dead, with one ball through his head and another through his breast.
The total British loss in the Battle of Trafalgar amounted to one thousand five hundred and eighty-seven men. Twenty of the enemy"s ships struck, but it was not possible to anchor the fleet, as Nelson had enjoined. A gale came on from the southwest: some of the prizes went down, some went on shore;one effected its escape into Cadiz, others were destroyed; fouronly were saved, and those by the greatest exertions.
The death of Nelson was felt in England as something more than a public calamity: men started at the intelligence, and turned pale, as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend. An object of our admiration and affection, of our pride and of our hopes, was suddenly taken from us; and it seemed as if we had never till then known how deeply we loved and reverenced him. What the country had lost in its great naval hero-the greatest of our own and of all former times-was scarcely taken into the account of grief.
So perfectly, indeed, had he performed his part, that the maritime war, after the Battle of Trafalgar, was considered at an end. The fleets of the enemy were not merely defeated- they were destroyed: new navies must be built, and a new race of seamen reared for them, before the possibility of their⑤invading our shorescould again be contemplated.
It was not, therefore, from any selfish reflection upon the magnitude of our loss that we mourned for him: the general sorrow was of a higher character. The people of England grieved that funeral ceremonies, and public monuments, and posthumous rewards, were all that they could now bestow upon him whom the King, the Legislature, and the Nation would have alike delighted to honour; whom every tongue would have blessed-whose presence in every village through which he might have passed would have awakened the church bells, have given schoolboys a holiday, have drawn children from their sports to gaze upon him, and "old men from the chimney corner" to look upon Nelson ere they died.
