as many French were to fight their way to the mouth of the Danube, set sail on Russian ships for the Sea of Azov, join their allies on the Caspian Sea, sail to its southern extremity, and, rousing the Persians and Afghans by the hope of plunder, sweep the British from India.  The scheme received from Bonaparte a courteous perusal; but he subjected it to several criticisms, which led to less patient rejoinders from the irascible potentate.  Nevertheless, Paul began to march his troops towards the lower Volga, and several polks of Cossacks had crossed that river on the ice, when the news of his assassination cut short the scheme.[147]

The grandiose schemes of Paul vanished with their fantastic contriver; but the rapprochement of Russia to revolutionary France was ultimately to prove an event of far-reaching importance; for the eastern power thereby began to exert on the democracy of western Europe that subtle, semi-Asiatic influence which has so powerfully warped its original character.

The dawn of the nineteenth century witnessed some startling rearrangements on the political chess-board.

While Bonaparte brought Russia and France to sudden amity, the unbending maritime policy of Great Britain leagued the Baltic Powers against the mistress of the seas.  In the autumn of 1800 the Czar Paul, after hearing of our capture of Malta, forthwith revived the Armed Neutrality League of 1780 and opposed the forces of Russia, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark to the might of England’s navy.  But Nelson’s brilliant success at Copenhagen and the murder of the Czar by a palace conspiracy shattered this league only four months after its formation, and the new Czar, Alexander, reverted for a time to friendship with England.[148] This sudden ending to the first Franco-Russia alliance so enraged Bonaparte that he caused a paragraph to be inserted in the official “Moniteur,” charging the British Government with procuring the assassination of Paul, an insinuation that only proclaimed his rage at this sudden rebuff to his hitherto successful diplomacy.  Though foiled for a time, he never lost sight of the hoped-for alliance, which, with a deft commixture of force and persuasion, he gained seven years later after the crushing blow of Friedland.

Dread of a Franco-Russian alliance undoubtedly helped to compel Austria to a peace.  Humbled by Moreau at the great battle of Hohenlinden, the Emperor Francis opened negotiations at Luneville in Lorraine.  The subtle obstinacy of Cobenzl there found its match in the firm yet suave diplomacy of Joseph Bonaparte, who wearied out Cobenzl himself, until the march of Moreau towards Vienna compelled Francis to accept the River Adige as his boundary in Italy.  The other terms of the treaty (February 9th, 1801) were practically the same as those of the treaty of Campo Formio, save that the Hapsburg Grand Duke of Tuscany was compelled to surrender his State to a son of the Bourbon Duke of Parma.  He himself was to receive