announced was one of peace with Europe--a
cessation of those wars by which his mother had for thirty-four years
been draining the treasury. He was going to turn his conquests toward
the East; and vast plans, with vague and indefinite outlines, were
forming in the narrow confines of his restless brain. But these were
interrupted by unexpected conditions.

In 1796 the military genius of a young man twenty-seven years old
electrified Europe. Napoleon Bonaparte, at the head of a ragged,
unpaid French army, overthrew Northern Italy, and out of the fragments
created a Cisalpine Republic. The possession of the Ionian Isles,
quickly followed by the occupation of Egypt, threatened the East. So
Turkey and Russia, contrary to all old traditions, formed a defensive
alliance, which was quickly followed by an offensive one between Russia
and Austria. But the tactics so successful against Poles and Turks
were unavailing against those employed by the new Conqueror. The
Russian commander Suvorov was defeated and returned in disgrace to his
enraged master at St. Petersburg, who refused to receive him. In 1798
Bonaparte had secured Belgium, had compelled Austria to cede to him
Lombardy, also to promise him help in getting the left bank of the
Rhine from the Germanic body, and to acknowledge his Cisalpine Republic.

The Emperor Paul's feelings underwent a swift change. He was blinded
by the glory of Napoleon's conquests and pleased with his despotic
methods. He conceived not only a friendship but a passion for the man
who could accomplish such things. Austria and England had both
offended him, so he readily fell into a plan for a Franco-Russian
understanding for mutual benefit, from which there developed a larger
plan.

The object of this was the overthrow of British dominion in India.
Paul was to move with a large army into Hindostan, there to be joined
by a French army from Egypt; then they would together sweep through the
country of the Great Mogul, gathering up the English settlements by the
way and so placating the native population and Princes that they would
join them in the liberation of their country from English tyranny and
usurpation. Paul said in his manifesto to the army that the Great
Mogul and the Sovereign Princes were to be undisturbed; nothing was to
be attacked but the commercial establishments acquired by money and
used to oppress and to enslave India. At the same time he said to his
army, "The treasures