nging not only England's wealth but her
world-empire; and his failure in Egypt had taught him that the first
condition of success in such an enterprise was to wrest from her her
command of the seas. The only means of doing this lay in a combination
of naval powers; and the earlier efforts of France had left but one
naval combination for Buonaparte to try. The Directory had been able to
assail England at sea by the joint action of the French fleet with those
of Holland and of Spain. But the Spanish navy had been crippled by the
battle of Cape St. Vincent, and the Dutch fleet destroyed in the victory
of Camperdown. The only powers which now possessed naval resources were
the powers of the North. The fleets of Denmark, Sweden, and Russia
numbered forty sail of the line, and they had been untouched by the
strife. Both the Scandinavian states resented the severity with which
Britain enforced that right of search which had brought about their
armed neutrality at the close of the American war; while Denmark was
besides an old ally of France, and her sympathies were still believed to
be French. The First Consul therefore had little trouble in enlisting
them in a league of neutrals, which was in effect a declaration of war
against England, and which Prussia as before showed herself ready to
join.

[Sidenote: Russia's designs.]

Russia indeed seemed harder to gain. Since Paul's accession she had been
the moving spirit in the confederacy which had only been broken up by
the victory of Marengo. But the spirit of revolutionary aggression which
had nominally roused Paul to action, had, as the Czar believed, been
again hushed by the First Consul. Buonaparte had yielded to his
remonstrances in preserving the independence of Naples and Sardinia; and
with Italian subtlety he now turned the faith in French moderation which
these concessions created in the mind of Paul into a dread of the
ambition of England and a jealousy of her sovereignty of the seas. But
his efforts would have been in vain had they not fallen in with the
general current of Russian policy. From the first outbreak of the
Revolutionary struggle Russia, as we have seen, had taken advantage of
the strife among the Western nations to push forward her own projects in
the East. Catharine had aimed at absorbing Poland, and at becoming the
mistress of European Turkey. In the first she had been successful, but
the second still remained unaccomplished when her empire passed to he