Battle Of Trafalgar

TODAY, OCTOBER 21, is a day that will live... in glory. It was this day two hundred years ago that the British Royal Navy squadron under the command of Admiral Lord Nelson defeated the combined fleets of France and Spain off Cape Trafalgar.

The victory was a great military triumph in operational terms, for it was a bold attempt to suprise and confuse the French with unexpected and unorthodox tactics. As Brett M. Decker writes:

Nelson aimed his ships strait at the middle of the enemy line to break the force in two. It was a very risky strategy because the massive cannons were positioned on the sides of their great ships. Heading straight ahead into the enemy line meant Nelson�s side-mounted guns were useless and exposed Nelson�s fleet to pounding from the broadsides of his targets, which were stretched in a long line with their gun ports facing Nelson�s advance.

This tactic of suprise is today the basic modus operandi of all armies: to suprise and disorient the enemy and keep moving faster than he is able to react.

But the battle had another consequence. It meant that Napoleon could not deploy the invasion force he had assembled across the English Channel from Britain. Instead of becoming �French-occupied Britain� the British entered upon a century of global dominance in which they exported their politics, their culture, and their industry to the world.

One of the things that Napoleon would have done would have been to sweep away Britain�s common law and replace it with the Code Napol�on, writes Tom Utley.

The trouble with Britain�s common law is that it is an organic growth, based not on first principles, but on human nature and accumulated experience.

Tidy-minded continental rationalists have never liked that sort of thing.

But now, two hundred years after its victory against mindless continental rationalism, Britain is succumbing to the embrace of the universal European superstate, the centralized, one-size-fits-all European Union.

Was all that brilliance and all that glory two hundred years ago for nothing?

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

mysql close 0