An analysis of the memorandum will show how complex it was.  In the first and foremost place there is a clear note of denunciation against the long established fallacy of the old order of battle in single line.  Secondly, there is in its stead the reestablishment of the primitive system of mutually supporting squadrons in line ahead.  Thirdly, there is the principle of throwing one squadron in superior force upon one end of the enemy’s formation, and using the other squadrons to cover the attack or support it if need arose.  Fourthly, there is the principle of concealment—­that is, disposing the squadrons in such a manner that even after the real attack has been delivered the enemy cannot tell what the containing squadrons mean to do, and in consequence are forced to hold their parrying move in suspense.  The memorandum also included the idea of concentration, and this is often spoken of as its conspicuous merit.  But in the idea of concentration there was nothing new, even if we go back no further than Rodney.  It was only the method of concentration, woven out of his four fundamental innovations, that was new.  Moreover, as Nelson delivered the attack, he threw away the simple idea of concentration.  For a suddenly conceived strategical object he deliberately exposed the heads of his columns to what with almost any other enemy would have been an overwhelming superiority.  On the other hand, by making, as he did, a perpendicular instead of a parallel attack, as he had intended, he accentuated—­it is true at enormous risk—­the cardinal points of his design; that is, he departed still further from the old order of battle, and he still further concealed from the enemy what the real attack was to be, and after it was developed what the containing squadron was going to do.  Concentration in fact was only the crude and ordinary raw material of a design of unmatched subtlety and invention.

The keynote of his conception, then, was his revolutionary substitution of the primitive Elizabethan and early seventeenth century method for the fetish of the single line.  For some time it is true the established battle order had been blown upon from various quarters, but no one as yet had been able to devise any system convincing enough to dethrone it.  It will be remembered that at least as early as 1759 an Additional Instruction had provided for a battle order in two lines, but it does not appear ever to have been used.[5] Rodney’s manoeuvre again had foreshadowed the use of parts of the line independently for the purpose of concentration and containing.  In 1782 Clerk of Eldin had privately printed his Essay, which contained suggestions for an attack from to-windward, with the line broken up into echeloned divisions in close resemblance to the disposition laid down in Nelson’s memorandum.  In 1790 this part of his work was published.  Meanwhile an even more elaborate and well-reasoned assault on the whole principle of the single line had appeared in France.  In 1787 the Vicomte de