thin a week be overrun by Murat's division. This obvious difficulty
led Lord Hawkesbury to urge, in his notes of April 13th and later,
that British troops should garrison the chief fortifications of
Valetta and leave the civil power to the Knights: or, if that were
found objectionable, that we should retain complete possession of the
island for ten years, provided that we were left free to negotiate
with the King of Naples for the cession of Lampedusa, an islet to the
west of Malta. To this last proposal the First Consul offered no
objection; but he still inflexibly opposed any retention of Malta,
even for ten years, and sought to make the barren islet of Lampedusa
appear an equivalent to Malta. This absurd contention had, however,
been exploded by Talleyrand's indiscreet confession "that the
re-establishment of the Order of St. John was not so much the point to
be discussed as that of suffering Great Britain to acquire a
_possession in the Mediterranean_."[253]

This, indeed, was the pith and marrow of the whole question, whether
Great Britain was to be excluded from that great sea--save at
Gibraltar and Lampedusa--looking on idly at its transformation into a
French lake by the seizure of Corfu, the Morea, Egypt, and Malta
itself; or whether she should retain some hold on the overland route
to the East. The difficulty was frankly pointed out by Lord Whitworth;
it was as frankly admitted by Joseph Bonaparte; it was recognized by
Talleyrand; and Napoleon's desire for a durable peace must have been
slight when he refused to admit England's claim effectively to
safeguard her interests in the Levant, and ever fell back on the
literal fulfilment of a treaty which had been invalidated by his own
deliberate actions.

Affairs now rapidly came to a climax. On April 23rd the British
Government notified its ambassador that, if the present terms were not
granted within seven days of his receiving them, he was to leave
Paris. Napoleon was no less angered than surprised by the recent turn
of events. In place of timid complaisance which he had expected from
Addington, he was met with open defiance; but he now proposed that the
Czar should offer his intervention between the disputants. The
suggestion was infinitely skilful. It flattered the pride of the young
autocrat and promised to yield gains as substantial as those which
Russian mediation had a year before procured for France from the
intimidated Sultan; it would help to check th