hed the Jacobins, his
personal claims were favourably regarded at Whitehall, Addington even
assuring the French envoy that he would welcome the establishment of
hereditary succession in the First Consul's family.[259] But while
Bonaparte's own conduct served to refute the notion that the war of
1803 was a war of principles, his masterful policy in Europe and the
Levant convinced every well-informed man that peace was impossible;
and the rupture was accompanied by acts and insults to the "nation of
shopkeepers" that could be avenged only by torrents of blood.
Diatribes against perfidious Albion filled the French Press and
overflowed into splenetic pamphlets, one of which bade odious England
tremble under the consciousness of her bad faith and the expectation
of swift and condign chastisement. Such was the spirit in which these
nations rushed to arms; and the conflict was scarcely to cease until
Napoleon was flung out into the solitudes of the southern Atlantic.

The importance of the rupture of the Peace of Amiens will be realized if
we briefly survey Bonaparte's position after that treaty was signed. He
had regained for his adopted country a colonial empire and had given
away not a single French island. France was raised to a position of
assured strength far preferable to the perilous heights attained later
on at Tilsit. In Australia there was a prospect that the tricolour would
wave over areas as great and settlements as prosperous as those of New
South Wales and the infant town of Sydney. From the Ile de France and
the Cape of Good Hope as convenient bases of operations, British India
could easily be assailed; and a Franco-Mahratta alliance promised to
yield a victory over the troops of the East India Company. In Europe the
imminent collapse of the Turkish Empire invited a partition, whence
France might hope to gain Egypt and the Morea. The Ionian Isles were
ready to accept French annexation; and, if England withdrew her troops
from Malta, the fate of the weak Order of St. John could scarcely be a
matter of doubt.

For the fulfilment of these bright hopes one thing alone was needed, a
policy of peace and naval preparation. As yet Napoleon's navy was
comparatively weak. In March, 1803, he had only forty-three
line-of-battle ships, ten of which were on distant stations; but he
had ordered twenty-three more to be built--ten of them in Holland;
and, with the harbours of France, Holland, Flanders, and Northern
Italy at h