because it suited him better to take a money tribute from her, and to enjoy for French ships the benevolent neutrality of Spanish ports, more necessary to them than to the British.  Moreover, if Spain joined in the war, Minorca, restored to her at the peace, would be at the mercy of Great Britain, and Port Mahon, the fine haven of that island, was always a menace to Toulon.  The harbors of remote Portugal, where Lisbon formerly had given powerful support to the British fleet, were now closed to it for offensive operations; and Nelson, within whose command its seaboard lay, was strictly enjoined to refrain from any such use of them, even from sending in prizes, except under stress of weather.  In Italy, Piedmont had been incorporated with France, while the Italian and Ligurian (Genoa) Republics in the North were so identified with her in action, and so submissive to her, that the capture of the latter’s ships was at once ordered by Nelson; and he recommended to his Government that a formal blockade should be proclaimed of her ports, as well as of Leghorn, where the French flag was flown on the same staff as the Tuscan.  The States of the Pope, intermediate between these tributaries of Bonaparte in the North and his garrisoned province in Naples, enjoyed only such precarious independence as he from day to day allowed.  But, mighty as was the growth of French ascendency, as shown by these changes, the very advantages accruing to France from her advanced maritime positions laid her further open to the Sea Power of Great Britain.  The neutrality of Genoa and Tuscany could no longer embarrass the British admiral, as it had Nelson in 1795 and 1796.  Offensive operations against them were now merely a question of adequate force, and the South of France depended greatly upon free access to their ports.  Taking Piedmont from the King of Sardinia, too, relieved any scruples the British might have concerning their use of the island of Sardinia injuring a friendly monarch, a consideration which kept them away from Sicily.

Nelson, instructed by the experience and observation of the recent past, and by a certain prescient sagacity which was at once native and cultivated in him, recognized that the Mediterranean, with its immense indented coast line, its positions of critical importance,—­such as the Straits of Gibraltar and the Bosphorus, Egypt and Malta,—­and its comparatively short water distances, was the field of operations to which the maritime ambitions of Bonaparte, debarred a wider flight by the sea-power of Great Britain, must inevitably incline.  To this contributed also its remoteness from England, as well as its nearness to France and to the ports subject to her influence in Italy and Spain; while the traditional ambitions of French rulers, for three centuries back, had aspired to control in the Levant, and had regarded Turkey for that reason as a natural ally.  It was, therefore, not merely as magnifying his own office, nor yet as the outcome