In the early months of 1805 it was realized.

The army, a substantial, absolute fact, was there, awaiting only the throwing of the bridge.
The naval part of the problem was far more difficult.

In the face of the naval supremacy of Great Britain, the sought-for control could only be casual and transient--a fleeting opportunity to be seized, utilized, and so to disappear.

Its realization must be effected by stratagem, by successful deception and evasion.

The coveted superiority would be not actual, but local,--the French fleet in force there, the British fleet, though the greater in force, elsewhere; the weight of the former concentrated at one point by simultaneous movements of its different detachments, which movements had been so calculated and directed that they had misled the British divisions, and, of themselves, diverted them from the decisive centre.