The Man who Shot Lord Nelson by Roger Pocock

Name: The Man who Shot Lord Nelson
Author: Roger Pocock

The Man who Shot Lord Nelson retells the memoirs of Robert Guillemard, a French conscript assigned against his will as a marine aboard the battleship Redoubtable, part of the Franco-Spanish fleet of thirty-three battleships lying at Cadiz under Admiral Villeneuve. Villeneuve, shaken after being chased across the Atlantic and back by Lord Nelson, faces fierce orders from Napoleon to join the French channel fleet for the invasion of England. Knowing his crews are largely helpless recruits, badly paid, badly fed, and sick with terror, the admiral is nonetheless forced to give battle when Nelson arrives with twenty-seven battleships demanding a fight. The fleets meet off Cape Trafalgar, and the Redoubtable engages Nelson's Victory directly, losing thirty men to her first discharge. Guillemard, never before in action, watches from the deck amid smoke, screams, and cannon fire until he and five companions are ordered up to occupy the fighting tops, the elevated platforms where marksmen are posted, after all the topmen have been killed. The climb is deadly: grapeshot and cannonballs strike the rigging around them, and one companion falls thirty feet to the deck and breaks his neck. From the tops, Guillemard surveys a vast cloud of smoke stretching more than a league, pierced by the flashes and flags of three nations. A duel between the topmen of the Redoubtable and those of the Victory follows, and when it ends Guillemard is left alone among the dead on the swaying platform. Looking down onto the poop of the Victory, he notices an officer covered with decorations and missing one arm, surrounded by other officers and giving orders. Concluding from what he has heard of Nelson that this must be the English admiral, Guillemard fires into the groups on the poop at hazard rather than taking careful aim at any individual. He then observes sudden confusion aboard the Victory, with men crowding around the officer he has identified as Nelson, who has fallen and is carried below under a cloak. The Victory's fire slackens and her deck is briefly abandoned, and Guillemard hurries down to inform his captain. The captain orders preparations for boarding, and a midshipman named Fontaine reportedly passes through the ports into the Victory's lower deck, finds it abandoned, and returns to report the ship has surrendered. Before any boarding can be executed, however, the English fire resumes with greater fury than before. Within half an hour the Redoubtable herself has effectively surrendered without hauling down her colours, her fire dying away entirely, with no more than a hundred and fifty survivors from a crew of about eight hundred, nearly all of them wounded. When the survivors are taken aboard the Victory, Guillemard learns that the bullet which struck down through Nelson's shoulder and shattered his spine below had come from the fighting tops of the Redoubtable, where he alone had been alive. The storm that follows the battle puts the shattered English fleet in mortal danger, and of the nineteen captured battleships not one survives the elements. The Aigle is wrecked with no survivors; the Santissima Trinidad, the largest ship in the world, founders; the Indomitable sinks with fifteen hundred wounded aboard; the Achille, her officers shooting themselves and her sailors drunk, burns through the storm until her magazine catches. Only one of the eighteen wrecks outlives the night. At daybreak Admiral Villeneuve is brought aboard the Victory, where Nelson lies in state for the voyage to England. Unable to write because of a wound to his hand, Villeneuve asks among the French prisoners for a clerk, and Guillemard volunteers as the only uninjured soldier who can write. He serves as the admiral's secretary through months of residence at Arlesford in Devon, where the prisoners are held on parole and Villeneuve is treated with respect and sympathy. After five months Villeneuve is allowed to return to France on his pledge of honour to surrender again on the English coast within ninety days if not duly exchanged. Accompanied by Guillemard and his servant, he crosses the channel and from Rennes writes despatches to Paris, including a private letter announcing his intention to arraign surviving captains on charges of cowardice at Trafalgar. The captains appear to receive warning of this, and decide Villeneuve must not reach Paris alive. While the admiral lodges at the Hotel de Bresil in Rennes, five strangers in civilian dress appear and question Guillemard at length about Villeneuve. The secretary, proud of his master, answers freely and suspects nothing. That night a cry wakes him, and descending with his sword and candle he passes the five strangers hurrying out and finds Villeneuve dying in his room, struck by five deep wounds to the chest. The man who shot Nelson is left alone with Villeneuve at his death. In Paris, Guillemard is summoned to the Tuileries and compelled to tell Napoleon the full story of the assassination, though the death is officially announced as suicide. Guillemard encounters the leader of the five assassins walking openly on the boulevards and says nothing. He goes on to fight in many of the emperor's campaigns, to endure captivity on the desert island of Cabrera among ten thousand Spanish prisoners, to be held by the Russians in Siberia, to assist in King Murat's flight from France, and after twenty years of adventure to return wounded and little honoured to his native village.

By Roger Pocock · First published 1902 · Genre: Historical Fiction, War Fiction, Adventure Fiction · 1,863 words

First lines

A. D. 1805

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Genres

Historical Fiction — The narrative is set during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and centers on real historical events and figures like Lord Nelson, Admiral Villeneuve, and Napoleon, presented through the fictional perspective of Robert Guillemard.
War Fiction — The work extensively depicts naval combat, military strategy, and the experiences of soldiers and sailors in battle, with detailed descriptions of the Battle of Trafalgar and subsequent military campaigns.
Adventure Fiction — The narrative follows Guillemard through numerous perilous episodes including naval combat, assassination conspiracies, escape from imprisonment, and twenty years of military adventures across multiple continents.
Military Fiction — The story focuses on the life and experiences of a French soldier and marine, exploring military hierarchy, duty, honor, and the psychological impact of warfare.

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The Man who Shot Lord Nelson is listed on Textopian as a short story by Roger Pocock, dated 1902 CE.

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Work type: Short story
Author: Roger Pocock
Date: 1902 CE
Language: English
Genres: Historical Fiction, War Fiction, Adventure Fiction, Military Fiction, Biographical Fiction
Length: 1,863 words
Structure: 1 section, 20 paragraphs
Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)

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