reat minister resigned his office, and a
new cabinet was formed, with Mr. Addington (afterwards Viscount
Sidmouth) at its head. These changes were a new source of embarrassment;
yet the prosecution of the war was urged with undiminished vigour.

Early in March, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker and Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson
conducted a fleet into the Baltic, with the view of attacking the
northern powers in their own harbours, ere they could effect their
meditated junction with the fleets of France and Holland. The English
passed the Sound on the 13th of March, and reconnoitred the road of
Copenhagen, where the Crown-Prince, Regent of Denmark, had made
formidable preparations to receive them. It was on the 2nd of April that
Nelson, who had volunteered to lead the assault, having at length
obtained a favourable wind, advanced with twelve ships of the line,
besides frigates and fire-ships, upon the Danish armament, which
consisted of six sail of the line, eleven floating batteries, and an
enormous array of small craft, all chained to each other and to the
ground, and protected by the Crown-batteries, mounting eighty-eight
guns, and the fortifications of the isle of Amack. The battle lasted for
four hours, and ended in a signal victory. Some few schooners and
bomb-vessels fled early, and escaped: the whole Danish fleet besides
were sunk, burnt, or taken. The Prince Regent, to save the capital from
destruction, was compelled to enter into a negotiation, which ended in
the abandonment of the French alliance by Denmark. Lord Nelson then
reconnoitred Stockholm; but, being unwilling to inflict unnecessary
suffering, did not injure the city, on discovering that the Swedish
fleet had already put to sea. Meantime, news arrived that Paul had been
assassinated in his palace at St. Petersburg; and that the policy which
he had adopted, to the displeasure of the Russian nobility, was likely
to find no favour with his successor. The moving spirit of the northern
confederacy was, in effect, no more, and a brief negotiation ended in
its total disrupture.[41]

In the same month of March the British arms were crowned with a more
pleasing triumph in a more distant region. From the time when Buonaparte
landed in Egypt, the occupation of that country by a French army, and
its possible consequences to our empire in the East, had formed a
subject of anxious solicitude in the cabinet of St. James's; and the
means for attacking the army which Napoleon had e