his energies on
the task of postponing the rupture to a convenient date and of casting
on his foes the odium of the approaching war. He made no proposal that
could reassure Britain as to the security of the overland routes; and
he named no other island which could be considered as an equivalent to
Malta.

To many persons his position has seemed logically unassailable; but it
is difficult to see how this view can be held. The Treaty of Amiens
had twice over been rendered, in a technical sense, null and void by the
action of Continental Powers. Russia and Prussia had not guaranteed the
state of things arranged for Malta by that treaty; and the action of
France and Spain in confiscating the property of the Knights in their
respective lands had so far sapped the strength of the Order that it
could never again support the expense of the large garrison which the
lines around Valetta required.

In a military sense, this was the crux of the problem; for no one
affected to believe that Malta was rendered secure by the presence at
Valetta of 2,000 troops of the King of Naples, whose realm could
within a week be overrun by Murat's division. This obvious difficulty
led Lord Hawkesbury to urge, in his notes of April 13th and later,
that British troops should garrison the chief fortifications of
Valetta and leave the civil power to the Knights: or, if that were
found objectionable, that we should retain complete possession of the
island for ten years, provided that we were left free to negotiate
with the King of Naples for the cession of Lampedusa, an islet to the
west of Malta. To this last proposal the First Consul offered no
objection; but he still inflexibly opposed any retention of Malta,
even for ten years, and sought to make the barren islet of Lampedusa
appear an equivalent to Malta. This absurd contention had, however,
been exploded by Talleyrand's indiscreet confession "that the
re-establishment of the Order of St. John was not so much the point to
be discussed as that of suffering Great Britain to acquire a
_possession in the Mediterranean_."[253]

This, indeed, was the pith and marrow of the whole question, whether
Great Britain was to be excluded from that great sea--save at
Gibraltar and Lampedusa--looking on idly at its transformation into a
French lake by the seizure of Corfu, the Morea, Egypt, and Malta
itself; or whether she should retain some hold on the overland route
to the East. The difficulty was frankly p