without involving the necessity of proclaiming the independence of Poland; thereby giving a character of mortal rancour to the war with Russia, and, in all likelihood, calling Austria once more into the field.  Under such circumstances the minds of Napoleon and Alexander were equally disposed towards negotiation:  General Bennigsen sent, on the 21st of June, to demand an armistice; and to this proposal the victor of Friedland yielded immediate assent.

In truth over and above the parsimony of the court of St. James in regard to subsidies, the recent conduct of the war on the part of England had been so ill-judged, and on the whole so unfortunate, that the Czar might be excused for desiring to escape from that alliance.  Almost the only occasion on which the character of the British arms had been gloriously maintained, was the battle of Maida, in Calabria, fought July the 4th, 1806—­when Sir John Stuart and 7000 English soldiers encountered a superior French force under General Regnier, and drove them from the field with great loss.  This was one of those rare occasions on which French and English troops have actually crossed bayonets—­the steadiness of the latter inspired the former with panic, and they fled in confusion.  But this occurrence, except for its moral influence on the English soldiery, was of small importance.  General Stuart had been sent to support the Calabrian peasantry in an insurrection against Joseph Buonaparte; the insurgents were on the whole unable to stand their ground against the regular army of the intrusive king; and the English, soon after their fruitless victory, altogether withdrew.  The British had, indeed, taken possession of Curacao, and of the Cape of Good Hope (this last an acquisition of the highest moment to the Indian empire); but on the whole the ill success of our measures had been answerable to the narrow and shallow system of policy in which they originated—­the system of frittering away blood and gold upon detached objects, instead of rallying the whole resources of the empire around some one great leader for some one great purpose.  The British expeditions of this period to the Turkish dominions and to Spanish America were especially distinguished for narrowness of design, imbecility of execution, and consequent misadventure.

On the assumption of the Imperial dignity by Napoleon, the Ottoman Porte, dazzled by the apparently irresistible splendour of his fate, sent an embassy to congratulate him; and in effect the ancient alliance between France and Turkey was re-established.  Napoleon consequently had little difficulty in procuring from Constantinople a declaration of war against Russia, the great hereditary enemy of the Turk, at the time when he was about to encounter the armies of the Czar in Poland.  The Dardanelles were shut against Russian vessels; and the English government, considering this as sufficient evidence that the Grand Seignior was attaching himself to the Antibritannic Confederacy, despatched a squadron