The six months of his independent command, though unmarked by striking incidents at sea, were crowded with events, important in themselves, but far more important as pregnant of great and portentous changes in the political and military conditions of Europe.  When Keith passed the Straits in pursuit of the Franco-Spanish fleet, on the 30th of July, the forces of the Coalition in Upper Italy were in the full tide of repeated victories and unchecked success.  On that same day the fortress of Mantua, the siege of which in 1796 had stayed for nine months the triumphal progress of Bonaparte, was surrendered by the French, whose armies in the field, driven far to the westward, were maintaining a difficult position on the crests of the Apennines.  Seeking to descend from there into the fields of Piedmont, they were met by Suwarrow, and on the 15th of August, at Novi, received once more a ruinous defeat, in which their commander-in-chief was slain.

At this moment of success, instead of pressing onward to drive the enemy out of Italy, and possibly to pursue him into France, it was decided that the Russians should be sent across the Alps into Switzerland, to take the place of a number of Austrians.  The latter, in turn, were to move farther north, on the lower Rhine, to favor by a diversion an intended invasion of Holland by a combined force of Russians and British.  This gigantic flank movement and change of plan resulted most disastrously.  In the midst of it the French general Massena, commanding in Switzerland, the centre of the great hostile front which extended from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, made a vehement and sustained attack upon the Austro-Russians at Zurich, on the 25th of September.  Gaining a complete victory, he drove the enemy back beyond the point where Suwarrow expected to make his junction.  The veteran marshal, who had left Italy on the 11th of September, arrived two days after the Battle of Zurich was fought.  Isolated in insufficient numbers from the friends he expected to meet, it was only after severe hardships and superhuman efforts, extending over ten days, that he at length, on the 9th of October, reached a place of safety at Ilanz.  Declining further co-operation with the Austrians, and alleging the need of rest for his troops after their frightful exposure in the mountains, he withdrew into winter quarters in Bavaria at the end of the month.  Thus Switzerland remained in possession of the French, inactivity continued in Italy, and the Czar, furious at the turn events had taken, was rapidly passing into hatred of both Austria and Great Britain.