Battle of Trafalgar
The Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) was a naval engagement fought by the British Royal Navy against the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies, during the War of the Third Coalition (August–December 1805) of the Napoleonic Wars (1796–1815).
The Plumb-pudding in danger
The peace overtures came to naught: before the end of the year, a combined Franco-Spanish fleet would be decisively defeated by the Royal Navy at the Battle of Trafalgar, giving Britain unrivalled control of the seas, but Napoleon would establish a dominant position in Europe by first defeating an Austrian army through manoeuvre in the Ulm Campaign, and then winning a great victory over a combined Russian-Austrian army at the Battle of Austerlitz, ending the Third Coalition with the 1805 Peace of Pressburg.