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By Root 2463 0

gain by going to war? A descent upon your coasts is the only means of offence I possess . . . I am well aware of the risks of such an enterprise but you impel me to incur them. I will hazard my army, my life, in the attempt . . . There are a hundred chances to one against me, but I am determined to make the attempt, and such is the disposition of the troops that army after army will be found ready to engage in the enterprise . . . If I had not felt the enmity of the British government on every occasion since the peace of Amiens, there is nothing I would not have done to prove my desire to conciliate - participation in indemnities . . . treaties of commerce, in short, anything that would have testified confidence. Nothing, however, has been able to overcome the hostility of the British government, and thence we are now come to the point: shall we have peace or war? Will you or will you not execute the Treaty of Amiens? For my part I have performed its conditions with scrupulous fidelity . . . Peace or war depends on Malta. It is in vain to talk of Piedmont and Switzerland. They are mere trifles and must have been foreseen when the treaty was going forward. You have no right to speak of them at this time of day . . . Malta . . . is doubtless of great importance [from] a maritime point of view, but it has a value far more important in my eyes: it touches the honour of France. What would the world say if we were to submit to the violation of a solemn treaty signed by ourselves? Would they not doubt our energy? For myself, my part is taken: I would rather put you in possession . . . of Montmartre than of Malta.40

This bombast proved counter-productive, however. In London, it was perceived as the ‘trick of an Italian bully’ and an attempt ‘to frighten us into submission, to blind us by fear’.41 This alone was enough to suggest that firmness was the only possibility, but, setting that aside, Britain was no longer quite so isolated. Thus Alexander I had belatedly realized that he had been bamboozled by Napoleon over the Holy Roman Empire in that, rather than enhancing their status, and, by extension, Russian influence, the territory lavished upon his German connections had clearly made them so many French puppets. Also alarming in his eyes was Napoleon’s assumption of the Consulate for Life, the tsar commenting that the French ruler had ‘missed the glory . . . of proving that he had worked without personal aims for the happiness and glory of his country’ and stood revealed as simply ‘one of the most famous tyrants that history has produced’.42 At the same time Alexander, disillusioned with the chances of achieving domestic reform, was becoming less inclined to side with those of his advisers who advocated a policy of disengagement from the rest of Europe. In September , then, St Petersburg saw the appointment of a new Foreign Minister in the person of Alexander Vorontzov, an anglophile whose brother was Russian ambassador to London and who balanced generally pacific inclinations with a determination not to see Russia humiliated on the international stage. More specifically, there were also growing doubts about Napoleon’s intentions in the Mediterranean and more particularly in the Ottoman Empire: not only were French agents known to be penetrating the Balkans, but Constantinople had come under pressure from Paris to allow French ships unrestricted access to the Black Sea. Also an issue in the tsar’s mind were the rights of the smaller states in Europe: Alexander envisaged the defence of such polities as his responsibility, and was much concerned by the manner in which Napoleon was riding over them roughshod. None of this meant that Alexander was eager to challenge France - on the contrary, Russia backed away from providing the international guarantee of Maltese independence that had been agreed at Amiens as the price of British withdrawal - but by early 1803 the Russians were hinting that they would not be averse to the Union Jack continuing to fly from the walls of Valetta, and even that they might be persuaded to sign a defensive