anges had been occurring in the political conditions of Europe.
These must be taken briefly into account, because the greatness of the
issues thence arising, as understood by the British Government,
measures the importance in its eyes of the enterprise which it was
about to intrust, by deliberate selection, to one of the youngest
flag-officers upon the list. The fact of the choice shows the
estimation to which Nelson had already attained in the eyes of the
Admiralty.

In July, 1797, Great Britain alone was at war with France, and so
continued for over a year longer. Portugal, though nominally an ally,
contributed to the common cause nothing but the use of the Tagus by
the British Navy. Austria, it is true, had not yet finally made peace
with France, but preliminaries had been signed in April, and the
definitive treaty of Campo Formio was concluded in October. By it
Belgium became incorporated in the territory of France, to which was
conceded also the frontier of the Rhine. The base of her power was
thus advanced to the river, over which the possession of the fortified
city of Mayence gave her an easy passage, constituting a permanent
threat of invasion to Germany. Venice, as a separate power,
disappeared. Part of her former domains upon the mainland, with the
city itself, went to Austria, but part was taken to constitute the
Cisalpine Republic,--a new state in Northern Italy, nominally
independent, but really under the control of France, to whom it owed
its existence. Corfu, and the neighboring islands at the mouth of the
Adriatic, till then belonging to Venice, were transferred to France.
The choice of these distant and isolated maritime positions, coupled
with the retention of a large army in the valley of the Po, showed, if
any evidence were needed, a determination to assure control over the
Italian peninsula and the Mediterranean Sea.

The formal acquisitions by treaty, even, did not measure the full
menace of the conditions. The Revolutionary ferment, which had
partially subsided, received fresh impetus from the victories of
Bonaparte and the cessation of Continental war; and the diplomacy of
France continued as active and as aggressive as the movement of her
armies had previously been. By constant interference, overt and
secret, not always stopping short of violence, French influence and
French ideas were propagated among the weaker adjoining states.
Holland, Switzerland, and the Italian Republics became outpost