tter not to present these demands point
blank, but gradually to reveal their substance. This course, he
judged, would be less damaging to the friends of peace at the
Tuileries, and less likely to affront Napoleon. But it was all one and
the same. The First Consul, in his present state of highly wrought
tension, practically ignored the suggestion of an _equivalent
security,_ and declaimed against the perfidy of England for daring to
infringe the treaty, though he had offered no opposition to the Czar's
proposals respecting Malta, which weakened the stability of the Order
and sensibly modified that same treaty.

Talleyrand was more conciliatory; and there is little doubt that, had
the First Consul allowed his brother Joseph and his Foreign Minister
wider powers, the crisis might have been peaceably passed. Joseph
Bonaparte urgently pressed Whitworth to be satisfied with Corfu or
Crete in place of Malta; but he confessed that the suggestion was
quite unauthorized, and that the First Consul was so enraged on the
Maltese Question that he dared not broach it to him.[252] Indeed, all
through these critical weeks Napoleon's relations to his brothers were
very strained, they desiring peace in Europe so that Louisiana might
even now be saved to France, while the First Consul persisted in his
oriental schemes. He seems now to have concentrated his energies on
the task of postponing the rupture to a convenient date and of casting
on his foes the odium of the approaching war. He made no proposal that
could reassure Britain as to the security of the overland routes; and
he named no other island which could be considered as an equivalent to
Malta.

To many persons his position has seemed logically unassailable; but it
is difficult to see how this view can be held. The Treaty of Amiens
had twice over been rendered, in a technical sense, null and void by the
action of Continental Powers. Russia and Prussia had not guaranteed the
state of things arranged for Malta by that treaty; and the action of
France and Spain in confiscating the property of the Knights in their
respective lands had so far sapped the strength of the Order that it
could never again support the expense of the large garrison which the
lines around Valetta required.

In a military sense, this was the crux of the problem; for no one
affected to believe that Malta was rendered secure by the presence at
Valetta of 2,000 troops of the King of Naples, whose realm could
wi