oops in a position he once considered so exposed, shows the
fulness of his conviction that upon the Continent he had, for the
moment, nothing to fear from the other Great Powers. Strongly stirred
as they had been by his highhanded aggressions, none as yet ventured
to call him directly to account. Great Britain, the least immediately
affected, had stepped into the lists, and demanded not only that
aggression should cease, but that the state of the Continent should be
restored as it existed when she signed the treaty of Amiens. With this
requirement she maintained the war, single-handed, from May, 1803, to
the autumn of 1805.

It was not without reason that Bonaparte reckoned upon the inaction of
the Continent. Austria, although profoundly discontented by much he
had done since the peace of Luneville, in 1801, was too thoroughly
disheartened and exhausted by the unsuccessful and protracted struggle
which preceded it, to be ready to renew the strife. Limited as she now
was, by the treaty, to the eastern bank of the Adige, there was in
Northern Italy no force to threaten the French communications, between
their divisions in the valley of the Po and the one at the heel of the
peninsula. Prussia, playing a double part for years back, seeking from
day to day the favor of the most powerful, was wholly committed for
the time to the First Consul; while Russia, although her youthful
sovereign had abandoned the anti-British policy of his predecessor,
remained undecided as to the general course she should pursue amid the
ever-shifting perplexities of the day. Less fantastic in imagination
than his insane father, Alexander I. inherited a visionary tendency,
which hindered practical action, and showed itself in plans too vast
and complicated for realization, even when two rulers of the
overwhelming power of himself and Napoleon, at a later date, set their
hands to the task. Swayed, alternately, by sympathy with the ancient
order of things, which Great Britain for the moment represented, and
by prospects of Russian aggrandizement, which Bonaparte dangled before
his eyes, the Czar halted between two opinions, pleasing himself,
meanwhile, in weaving, with associates of his own age, schemes for a
general reorganization of Europe. In these the interests of Russia
naturally, and quite properly, had a leading part, and not least in
those seas and regions that fell within the limits of Nelson's
command.

The power of the great states which