French Admiral Pierre-Charles-Jean-Baptiste-Silvestre de Villeneuve committed “suicide” on 22 April 1806 by stabbing himself in the right lung six times and once through the heart.
Villeneuve was in command of the French and the Spanish fleets that were defeated by Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, but his early career had been marked by victories. He had escaped Nelson’s blocade of Toulon in March of 1805, sailed to the West Indies (where he recaptured the island fort of Diamond Rock off Martinique), and on 8 June of that same year his fleet intercepted “a homeward-bound convoy of 15 British merchant vessels escorted by the frigate HMS Barbadoes and the sloop or schooner HMS Netley. The two British warships managed to escape, but Villeneuve’s fleet captured the entire convoy”.
Villeneuve’s luck turned later that summer, in part because he disobeyed a direct order from Napoleon. His fleet arrived at A Coruña on 1 August 1805, where Napoleon sent him orders to sail to Brest and Boulogne to back a French invasion of Britain. However, Villeneuve ignored orders, “perhaps believing a false report of a superior British fleet in the Bay of Biscay,” and in the face of his Spanish allies’ arguments to obey Napoleon’s instructions, returned the fleet to Cádiz. This put the kibosh on Napoleon’s planned invasion of Britain, and probably lost the war for Napoleon every bit as much as the decision to invade Russia did.
Worse, once the Franco-Spanish forces were in the harbour at Cádiz, they were kept under blockade by Admiral Horatio Nelson, basically preventing them from being of any use to Napoleon for months. Then, compounding his earlier disobedience, Villeneuve refused to his commander’s directions the orders to sail south and disrupt anti-French supplies by attacking British trade ships in the Mediterranean. Villeneuve couldn’t have been more of a hindrance to Napoleon’s war efforts at sea if he had been actively working for the British.
Unsurprisingly, Napoleon made plans to replace the truculent Villeneuve with François Étienne de Rosily-Mesros and haul the disobedient admiral’s butt to Paris to get ripped a new one. In a letter from Napoleon to his Minister of Marine, Denis Decrès, the Emperor of the French declared that, “Villeneuve does not possess the strength of character to command a frigate. He lacks determination and has no moral courage.” Boney had clearly had enough of Villeneuve and — hero of the Battle of the Nile in 1798 or not — Napoleon was going to come down hard on him.
Villeneuve, getting word of Napoleon’s plans, compounded his earlier errors by making a run for it, hoping to redeem himself with a great victory before he could be replaced. He set sail from Cádiz on 18 October 1805, determined to attack the British. Alas for Villeneuve, this time reports of the British naval strength were not false. By the time he discovered that the massive size of British fleet awaiting battle with him on 21 October and turned back to Cádiz it was too late — his forces (with the British ships in hot pursuit) were intercepted by Nelson off Cape Trafalgar.
Nelson, of course, won the engagement and Villeneuve’s flagship Bucentaure was one of the many ships captured by the British.
Napoleon was … displeased.
The captured Villeneuve was held under gentleman’s arrest at the Crown Inn public house in Bishop’s Waltham, Hampshire for a few months. He was treated with the courtesy of an officer, and was even allowed to attend Lord Admiral Nelson’s funeral. Villeneuve was freed shortly before Christmas and returned to France. He had been safer in British custody, but he didn’t realise it.
Like an idiot, Villeneuve begged to be allowed to rejoin the navy — as a lowly captain if nothing else — but Napoleon refused to give him the time of day. And who could blame the Emperor? Villeneuve had screwed up so colossally that it would beggar fiction if you were reading it in a Regency novel. He, personally, had scuppered Napoleon’s plans for invasion and lost the Emperor an entire navy. Napoleon probably wanted nothing more from the former admiral than Villeneuve’s head on a platter.
Maybe that is exactly what Napoleon was determined to have? On 22 April 1806, Villeneuve died at the Hôtel de la Patrie in Rennes via the aforementioned elaborate suicide. Naturally, the “nature of his death ensured that this verdict was much mocked in the British press of the time and suspicions abounded that Napoleon had secretly ordered Villeneuve’s murder”.
History and military historians have been no kinder to Villeneuve than Napoleon was. Villeneuve’s entry in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica reads: “His decision to leave Cádiz and give battle in October 1805, which led directly to the Battle of Trafalgar, cannot be justified even on his own principles. He foresaw defeat to be inevitable, and yet he went out solely because he learnt from the Minister of Marine that another officer had been sent to supersede him … It was provoked in a spasm of wounded vanity.” Honestly, such harsh condemnation was probably warranted.
Nice work, I enjoyed it very much. Good research and dates.