to tax Russia's
strength. Despite Alexander's offer of a perpetual guarantee for the
Finnish constitution and customs, that interesting people opposed a
stubborn resistance. Napoleon must also have known that Russia's
forces were then wholly unequal to the invasion of India; and his
invitation to Alexander to engage in two serious enterprises certainly
had the effect of postponing the partition of Turkey. Delay was all in
his favour, if he was to gain the lion's share of the spoils. Russian
troops were ready on the banks of the Danube; but he was not as yet
fully prepared. His hold on Dalmatia, Ragusa, and Corfu was not wholly
assured. Sicily and Malta still defied him; and not until he seized
Sicily could he gain the control of the Mediterranean--"the constant
aim of my policy." Only when that great sea had become a French lake
could he hope to plant himself firmly in Albania, Thessaly, Greece,
Crete, Egypt, and Syria.

For the present, then, the Czar was beguiled with the prospect of an
eastern expedition; and, while Russian troops were overrunning
Finland, Napoleon sought to conquer Sicily and reduce Spain to the
rank of a feudatory State. From this wider point of view, he looked on
the Iberian Peninsula merely as a serviceable base for a greater
enterprise, the conquest of the East. This is proved by a letter that
he wrote to Decres, Minister of Marine and of the Colonies, from
Bayonne on May 17th, 1808, when the Spanish affair seemed settled:
"There is not much news from India. England is in great penury there,
and the arrival of an expedition [from France] would ruin that colony
from top to bottom. The more I reflect on this step, the less
inconvenience I see in taking it." Two days later he wrote to Murat
that money must be found for naval preparations at the Spanish ports:
"I must have ships, for I intend striking a heavy blow towards the end
of the season." But at the close of June he warned Decres that as
Spanish affairs were going badly, he must postpone his design of
despatching a fleet far from European waters.[198]

Spain having proved to be, not a meek purveyor of fleets, but a
devourer of French armies, there was the more need of a close accord
with the Czar. Napoleon desired, not only to assure a further
postponement of the Turkish enterprise, but also to hold Austria and
Germany in check. The former Power, seeing Napoleon in difficulties,
pushed on apace her military organization; and Germany heaved