xplanation which is more consonant
with the grandeur of Napoleon's designs. At that time he was
all-powerful in the Old World. As First Consul for Life he was master
of forty millions of men: he was President of the Italian Republic: to
the Switzers, as to the Dutch, his word was law. Against the
infractions of the Treaty of Luneville, Austria dared make no protest.
The Czar was occupied with domestic affairs, and his rebuff to
Napoleon's oriental schemes had not yet reached Paris. As for the
British Ministry, it was trembling from the attacks of the Grenvilles
and Windhams on the one side, and from the equally vigorous onslaughts
of Fox, who, when the Government proposed an addition to the armed
forces, brought forward the stale platitude that a large standing army
"was a dangerous instrument of influence in the hands of the Crown."
When England's greatest orator thus impaired the unity of national
feeling, and her only statesman, Pitt, remained in studied seclusion,
the First Consul might well feel assured of the impotence of the
Island Power, and view the bickering of her politicians with the same
quiet contempt that Philip felt for the Athens of Demosthenes.

But while his prospects in Europe and the East were roseate, the
western horizon bulked threateningly with clouds. The news of the
disasters in St. Domingo reached Paris in the first week of the year
1803, and shortly afterwards came tidings of the ferment in the United
States and the determination of their people to resist the acquisition
of Louisiana by France. If he persevered with this last scheme, he
would provoke war with that republic and drive it into the arms of
England. From that blunder his statecraft instinctively saved him, and
he determined to sell Louisiana to the United States.

So unheroic a retreat from the prairies of the New World must be
covered by a demonstration towards the banks of the Nile and of the
Indus. It was ever his plan to cover retreat in one direction by
brilliant diversions in another: only so could he enthrall the
imagination of France, and keep his hold on her restless capital. And
the publication of Sebastiani's report, with its glowing description
of the fondness cherished for France alike by Moslems, Syrian
Christians, and the Greeks of Corfu; its declamation against the
perfidy of General Stuart; and its incitation to the conquest of the
Levant, furnished him with the motive power for effecting a telling
transformatio