of your lordship’s kindness to me, and the full confidence you have reposed in me inspires me with the most lively gratitude.  I hope it will not be long before there is an opportunity of showing your lordship that it has not been misplaced.’  On these two letters there can be little doubt that the ‘Plan of Attack’ which Nelson enclosed was that of the memorandum.  The draft from which Nicolas printed appears to have been dated October 9, and originally had in one passage ‘you’ and ‘your’ for the ‘second in command,’ showing that Nelson in his mind was addressing his remarks to Collingwood, though subsequently he altered the sentence into the third person.  Only one other copy was known to Nicolas, and that was issued in the altered form to Captain Hope, of the Defence, a ship which in the order of battle was in Collingwood s squadron, but Codrington tells us it was certainly issued to all the captains.[19]

So far, then, we have the case thus—­that whatever Nelson may have really told Lord Sidmouth, and whatever may have been in his mind when he drew up the dual order of battle and sailing, he had by October 9 reverted to the triple idea which he had explained to Keats.  Meanwhile, however, his conception had ripened.  There are marked changes in organisation, method and intention.  In organisation the reserve squadron is reduced from the original twelve or fourteen to eight, or one fifth of his hypothetical fleet instead of about one third—­reduced, that is, to a strength at which it was much less capable of important independent action.  In method we have, instead of an attack with the two main divisions, an attack with one only, with the other covering it.  In intention we have as the primary function of the reserve squadron, its attachment to one or other of the other two main divisions as circumstances may dictate.

The natural inference from these important changes is that Nelson’s conception was now an attack in two divisions of different strength, the stronger of which, as the memorandum subsequently explains, was to be used as a containing force to cover the attack of the other, and except that the balance of the two divisions was reversed, this is practically just what Clerk of Eldin had recommended and what actually happened in the battle.  It is a clear advance upon the original idea as explained to Keats, in which the third squadron was to be used on the primitive and indefinite plan of De Chaves and Lord Lisle as a general reserve.  It also explains Nelson’s covering letter to Collingwood, in which he seems to convey to his colleague that the pith of his plan was an attack in two divisions, and, within the general lines of the design, complete freedom of action for the second in command.  How largely this idea of independent control entered into the ‘Nelson touch’ we may judge from the fact that it is emphasised in no less than three distinct paragraphs of the memorandum.