the best Russian soldiers, and forty thousand Cossacks.  I was to subscribe ten millions for the purchase of camels and other requisites for crossing the desert.  The King of Prussia was to have been applied to by both of us to grant a passage for my troops through his dominions, which would have been immediately granted.  I had, at the same time, made a demand to the King of Persia for a passage through his country, which would also have been granted, although the negotiations were not entirely concluded, but would have succeeded, as the Persians were desirous of profiting by it themselves."[28]

[Footnote 28:  “Napoleon at St. Helena,” p. 534.]

On another occasion, speaking upon this same subject, Napoleon said to Las Casas, “Paul had been promised Malta the moment it was taken possession of by the English.  Malta reduced, the English ministers denied that they had promised it to him.  It is confidently stated that, on the reading of this shameful falsehood, Paul felt so indignant that, seizing the dispatch in full council, he ran his sword through it, and ordered it to be sent back, in that condition, by way of answer.  If this be a folly, it must be allowed that it is the folly of a noble soul.  It is the indignation of virtue, which was incapable until then of suspecting such baseness.

“At the same time the English ministers, treating with us for the exchange of prisoners, refused to include the Russian prisoners taken in Holland, who were in the actual service and fought for the sole cause of the English.  I had hit upon the bent of Paul’s character.  I seized time by the forelock.  I collected these Russians.  I clothed them and sent them back without any expense.  From that instant that generous heart was altogether devoted to me, and, as I had no interest in opposition to Russia, and should never have spoken or acted but with justice, there is no doubt that I should have been enabled, for the future, to dispose of the cabinet of St. Petersburg.  Our enemies were sensible of the danger, and it has been thought that this good-will of Paul proved fatal to him, It might well have been the case, for there are cabinets with whom nothing is sacred.”

The death of Paul brought the enemies of France and the friends of England into power at St. Petersburg.  The new emperor, the first day after his accession to the throne, issued a proclamation declaring his intention to follow in the footsteps of his grandmother, Catharine.  He liberated all the English sailors whom Paul had taken from the ships laid under sequestration.  All the decrees against the free importation of English merchandise were abolished; and the young emperor soon wrote, with his own hand, a letter to the King of England, expressing his earnest desire again to establish friendly relations between the courts of Russia and England.  This declaration was received in London with shouts of joy.