aples on the coast of the mainland, and Messina in Sicily; and to
throw a force into the mountains of Calabria, which should sustain and
give cohesion to the insurrection that he confidently expected would
follow. With the British fleet covering the approaches by water, and
sustaining and reinforcing garrisons in the ports, there would be
imposed upon the enemy, unless he chose to abandon Southern Italy, a
scene of operations in a distant, difficult country, with a long and
narrow line of communications, flanked throughout by the sea, and
particularly by the two fortified harbors which he proposed to occupy.
"The peasantry would, I believe, defend their mountains, and at least
it would give a check to the movements of the French, and give us time
to get a fleet into the Mediterranean." That the attempt would have
been ultimately successful, against such power as Napoleon then
wielded, cannot be affirmed; but, until put down, it necessarily would
have engaged a force very disproportionate to its own numbers, drawing
off in great part the army destined against England, as it was
diverted two years later by Austria, and giving opportunity for
changes in the political conditions, even to the formation of a new
Coalition.

Nelson, therefore, was not far from right in reasoning that the
Mediterranean should, and therefore would, be the chief scene of
operations. In Bonaparte's eyes, to invade Britain was, justly, the
greatest of all ends, the compassing of which would cause all the rest
to fall. Nelson, weighing the difficulties of that enterprise more
accurately than could be done by one unaccustomed to the sea, doubted
the reality of the intention, and thought it more consonant to the
true policy of France to seize control of the Mediterranean, by a
sudden concentration of her fleets, and then to transport her troops
by water to the heel of Italy, to the Ionian Islands, to the Morea, to
Egypt. So stationed, with fortified stepping-stones rising at short
intervals from the deep, future movements of troops and supplies from
point to point would be but an affair of coasters, slipping from
battery to battery, such as he had experienced to his cost in the
Riviera. In this project he thought it likely that France could secure
the co-operation of Russia, by allowing the latter her share of the
spoils of Turkey, especially in Constantinople. He saw, indeed, that
the partition would involve some difficulty between the two partners,