Invasion can't be done, they say! I tell the doddered asses Napoleon would have been over if Villeneuve had obeyed him to the letter.

Villeneuve had a fit of paralysis, owing to the prestige of Nelson--that 's as it happened.

And they swear at prestige, won't believe in it, because it's not fat bacon.

I tell them, after Napoleon's first battles, prestige did half his work for him.

It saved him at Essling from a plunge into the Danube; it saved him at Moskowa; it would have marched him half over England at his first jump on our shingle beach.