Explore "The Man who Shot Lord Nelson" by Roger Pocock on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A. D. 1805
This story is from the memoirs of Robert Guillemard, a conscript in the Grand Army of France, and to his horror drafted for a marine on board the battle-ship _Redoubtable_. The Franco-Spanish fleet of thirty-three battle-ships lay in Cadiz, and Villeneuve, the nice old gentleman in command, was still breathless after being chased by Lord Nelson across the Atlantic and back again. Now, having given Nelson the slip, he had fierce orders from the Emperor Napoleon to join the French channel fleet, for the invasion of England. The nice old gentleman knew that his fleet was manned largely with helpless recruits, ill-paid, ill-found, most scandalously fed, sick with a righteous terror lest Nelson come and burn them in their harbor.