r
son. For a time Paul had been diverted from the task by the turn of
affairs in Western Europe, where the victories of the French Republic
threatened an utter overthrow of the powers opposed to it, which would
have foiled the plans of Russia by bringing about a European union that
must have paralysed her advance. The Czar therefore acted strictly in
the spirit of Catharine's policy when he stepped in again to feed the
strife by raising the combatants to a new equality, and when he withdrew
his armies at the very moment that this was done. But successful as his
diversion had been, Paul saw that one obstacle remained in the way of
his projects upon Turkey. Pitt had never hidden his opposition to the
Russian plans. His whole policy at the outbreak of the Revolution had
been guided by a desperate hope of binding the powers again together to
prevent the ruin of Poland, or of hindering it by a league of England
and France alone. Foiled as he had been in these efforts, he was even
more resolute to check the advance of Russia on Constantinople. Already
her growing empire in India was telling on the European policy of
England; and the security of Egypt, of Syria, of Turkey at large, was
getting deemed to be essential to the maintenance of her communication
with her great dependency. The French descent on Egypt, the attack on
Syria, had bound Britain and Turkey together; and Paul saw that an
attack on the one would bring him a fresh opponent in the other.

[Sidenote: The League broken up.]

It was to check the action of Britain in the East that the Czar now
turned to the French Consul, and seconded his efforts for the formation
of a naval confederacy in the North, while his minister, Rostopchin,
planned a division of the Turkish Empire in Europe between Russia and
her allies. Austria was to be satisfied with the western provinces of
the Balkan peninsula; Russia gained Moldavia, Bulgaria, and Roumelia as
far as Constantinople; while Greece fell to the lot of France, whose
troops were already on the Italian shores, at a day's sail from the
Illyrian coast. A squabble over Malta, which had been blockaded since
its capture by Buonaparte, and which surrendered at last to a British
fleet, but whose possession the Czar claimed as his own on the ground of
an alleged election as Grand Master of the Order of St. John, served as
a pretext for a quarrel with England; and at the close of 1800 Paul
openly prepared for hostilities. In October