essive vivacity. The
Directory lacked the practical qualities that selected one great
enterprise at a time and brought to bear on it the needful
concentration of effort. In brief, he selected the war against
England's eastern commerce as his next sphere of action; for it
offered "an arena vaster, more necessary and resplendent" than war
with Austria; "if we compel the [British] Government to a peace, the
advantages we shall gain for our commerce in both hemispheres will be
a great step towards the consolidation of liberty and the public
welfare."[94]

For this eastern expedition he had already prepared. In May, 1797, he
had suggested the seizure of Malta from the Knights of St. John; and
when, on September 27th, the Directory gave its assent, he sent
thither a French commissioner, Poussielgue, on a "commercial mission,"
to inspect those ports, and also, doubtless, to undermine the
discipline of the Knights. Now that the British had retired from
Corsica, and France disposed of the maritime resources of Northern
Italy, Spain, and Holland, it seemed quite practicable to close the
Mediterranean to those "intriguing and enterprising islanders," to
hold them at bay in their dull northern seas, to exhaust them by
ruinous preparations against expected descents on their southern
coasts, on Ireland, and even on Scotland, while Bonaparte's eastern
conquests dried up the sources of their wealth in the Orient: "Let us
concentrate all our activity on our navy and destroy England. That
done, Europe is at our feet."[95]

But he encountered opposition from the Directory. They still clung to
their plan of revolutionizing Italy; and only by playing on their fear
of the army could he bring these civilians to assent to the
expatriation of 35,000 troops and their best generals. On La
Reveilliere-Lepeaux the young commander worked with a skill that
veiled the choicest irony. This Director was the high-priest of a
newly-invented cult, termed _Theo-philanthropie_, into the dull embers
of which he was still earnestly blowing. To this would-be prophet
Bonaparte now suggested that the eastern conquests would furnish a
splendid field for the spread of the new faith; and La Reveilliere was
forthwith converted from his scheme of revolutionizing Europe to the
grander sphere of moral proselytism opened out to him in the East by
the very chief who, on landing in Egypt, forthwith professed the
Moslem creed.

After gaining the doubtful assent of the