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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE COUNCIL OF WAR AND THE ORDER TO WEIGH ANCHOR ADMIRAL VILLENEUVE began his final preparations for sea on the 1st of October. During that day and the next the four thousand French soldiers on shore were taken back on board ship. They had been originally shipped at Toulon to form part of an expedition against the British West Indies, but time had not sufficed for its getting to work, and the troops had returned on board the fleet. They comprised a battalion each of the 2nd of the Line and the 16th of the Line (the 93rd in the modern French Army); two battalions of the 67th (now the 25th); a battalion each of the 70th and the 79th of the Line; with details of the 1st Swiss Regiment, the 6th Depot Coloniale, and the 41st Demi-Brigade, brought from Martinique, two companies of the 4th Artil- lerie a pied, and two troops (without horses) of Chasseurs.1 The soldiers were distributed through-out the fleet and told off to fire from the tops and along the upper decks in their various ships. All were on board by evening of the 2nd of October. 1 Upwards of 5,000 troops were embarked at Toulon, but 800 of these were left in garrison at Martinique. Field guns with limbers and equipment complete were found by us on board the captured shipsafter Trafalgar. Each regiment of French infantry at this time, it may be added, comprised four battalions. Napoleon had four regiments of Swiss infantry, uniformed in red coats. The Foot Artillery comprised nine regiments, each of two battalions, made up of eleven companies to each battalion. Also, as has been mentioned in the case of certain of the Spanish regiments in the fleet, some of these French regiments at Trafalgar had filled a similar role iu previous battles at sea against British fleets in the days of the Monarchy. The ol...

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