The light of a great joy was once more to cross the obscure heaven of the last days of Mr. Pitt. The day following the surrender at Ulm, the 21st of October, 1805, the English and French fleets encountered each other before Trafalgar. Nelson and Collingwood commanded the two lines of English vessels. Villeneuve and Admiral Gravine had reunited thirty-three ships of the line and seven frigates. After prodigies of valor on the part of the French, the victory remained with the English. Standing upon the deck of the Victory,--his flagship, Nelson signalled to the entire fleet, those noble words, emblematic of austere Brittanic virtue: "England Expects Every Man To Do His Duty." Nelson wore all his decorations. "In honor I gained them, and in honor I will die with them," said he. He was shot and fatally wounded. He was carried below, where he died some three hours later. A moment before breathing his last, he murmured: "Thank God, I have done my duty." The sublimest eulogy for such heroes is the public consternation caused by their death. The victory of Trafalgar was hailed in England with cries of joy and with tears. "Mr. Pitt observed to me," writes Lord Fitzharris, "that he had been called up at various hours in his eventful life by the arrival of news of various hues; but that, whether good or bad, he could always lay his head on his pillow, and sink into sound sleep. On this occasion, however, the great event announced, brought with it so much to weep over, as well as to rejoice at, that he could not calm his thoughts, but at length got up, though it was three o'clock in the morning." {412} England overwhelmed with honors and gifts the family of her hero. She gave him the most magnificent obsequies, and placed in one of the halls of the palace at Windsor, the mast against which he had leaned and the ball which had struck him. National gratitude did not stop at the illustrious hero fallen in the very summit of his glory; it extended with the same generous ardor to the great minister who alone opposed the irresistible invader of empires and destroyer of European rights. At the annual banquet of the city of London, on the 9th of March, 1805, after the crowd had detached the horses, in order to draw his carriage, the Lord Mayor proposed the health of Mr. Pitt, as already the savior of England, and soon to be the savior of Europe. Sir Arthur Wellesley, already celebrated by his victories in India, was present. Subsequently, under the title of the Duke of Wellington, he was placed at the head of the armed European coalition, and carried on the interrupted but henceforth victorious work of Mr. Pitt. "The minister arose," related the Duke in his old age, and waived the compliment, remarking: "England is saved by her own efforts, and the rest of Europe will be saved by her example."