ne, who forced the passage of the Mincio and crossed the Adige,
enabled Bonaparte to dictate his own terms to Austria. By the treaty of
Luneville, signed on February 9, 1801, Belgium and the left bank of the
Rhine were ceded to France, and the line of the Adige was made the
Austrian boundary in Italy; the grand-duchy of Tuscany was to be
transferred to the house of Parma, and Modena annexed to the Cisalpine
republic, and the independence of the Batavian, Helvetian, Cisalpine,
and Ligurian republics was acknowledged by Austria; they remained
practically under French domination.

In addition to the loss of her ally, new dangers threatened England in
the later part of the year. They arose from the animosity of the tsar.
He was angered by England's alliance with Austria, and by the certainty
that his hostile attitude would prevent her from handing over Malta to
him; for though the government would have ceded the island to him as
grand-master of the knights, if he had continued to co-operate with
England, it was not bound to do so by treaty, and would not cede it to a
sovereign who was fast becoming an open enemy. Paul was greatly enraged,
and on February 1, 1800, wrote to Vorontsov, his minister in England,
desiring that Whitworth (created Lord Whitworth in March) should be
recalled, as he did not want "liars as ministers at his court".[308] He
refused a passport to Whitworth's messenger in March, and behaved,
Whitworth wrote, in the way which showed that he was "literally not in
his senses".[309] At last, apparently on April 1, he demanded
Whitworth's recall.[310] After long delay Whitworth obtained a passport
and returned to England, leaving the embassy to a _charge d'affaires_,
who was peremptorily dismissed by Paul, and left Russia with the embassy
in June. Bonaparte was quick to take advantage of Paul's anger against
England. After some overtures to him, begun as early as March,[311] he
proposed in July to restore to him 6,000, and, later, a larger number of
Russian prisoners taken in Holland and Switzerland, and suggested ceding
to him Malta, which was then hard pressed by the British fleet. Paul was
delighted, and made arrangements for garrisoning Valetta; but the place
was surrendered to Great Britain, and the British government would not
part with it.

[Sidenote: _THE ARMED NEUTRALITY._]

Paul had already laid his hand on the weapon forged by his mother
Catherine in 1780, an armed neutrality of the Baltic powers.