a there was a prospect that the tricolour would
wave over areas as great and settlements as prosperous as those of New
South Wales and the infant town of Sydney. From the Ile de France and
the Cape of Good Hope as convenient bases of operations, British India
could easily be assailed; and a Franco-Mahratta alliance promised to
yield a victory over the troops of the East India Company. In Europe the
imminent collapse of the Turkish Empire invited a partition, whence
France might hope to gain Egypt and the Morea. The Ionian Isles were
ready to accept French annexation; and, if England withdrew her troops
from Malta, the fate of the weak Order of St. John could scarcely be a
matter of doubt.

For the fulfilment of these bright hopes one thing alone was needed, a
policy of peace and naval preparation. As yet Napoleon's navy was
comparatively weak. In March, 1803, he had only forty-three
line-of-battle ships, ten of which were on distant stations; but he
had ordered twenty-three more to be built--ten of them in Holland;
and, with the harbours of France, Holland, Flanders, and Northern
Italy at his disposal, he might hope, at the close of 1804, to
confront the flag of St. George with a superiority of force. That was
the time which his secret instructions to Decaen marked out for the
outbreak of the war that would yield to the tricolour a world-wide
supremacy.

These schemes miscarried owing to the impetuosity of their contriver.
Hustled out of the arena of European politics, and threatened with
French supremacy in the other Continents, England forthwith drew the
sword; and her action, cutting athwart the far-reaching web of the
Napoleonic intrigues, forced France to forego her oceanic plans, to
muster her forces on the Straits of Dover, and thereby to yield to the
English race the supremacy in Louisiana, India, and Australia, leaving
also the destinies of Egypt to be decided in a later age. Viewed from
the standpoint of racial expansion, the renewal of war in 1803 is the
greatest event of the century.

[Since this chapter was printed, articles on the same subject have
appeared in the "Revue Historique" (March-June, 1901) by M.
Philippson, which take almost the same view as that here presented. I
cannot, however, agree with the learned writer that Napoleon wanted
war. I think he did not, _until his navy was ready_; but it was not in
him to give way.]

NOTE TO THE FIFTH EDITION

M. Coquelle, in a work which h