anxious blockades, and long cruises full of tension and peril. Even when
the end of the war saw the great Conqueror conquered and consigned to his
foam-fenced prison in the South Atlantic, Great Britain gave back many of
the fruits which it had cost her much, in the lives of her brave and the
sufferings of her poor, to win; and Castlereagh defended this policy in
the House of Commons on the curious ground that it was expedient "freely
to open to France the means of peaceful occupation, and that it was not
the interest of this country to make her a military and conquering,
instead of a commercial and pacific nation."* (* Parliamentary Debates 28
462.)

PART 2.

The events with which this book is mainly concerned occurred within the
four years 1800 to 1804, during which Europe saw Bonaparte leap from the
position of First Consul of the French Republic to the Imperial throne.
After great French victories at Marengo, Hochstadt, and Hohenlinden
(1800), and a brilliant naval triumph for the British at Copenhagen
(1801), came the fragile Peace of Amiens (1802)--an "experimental peace,"
as Cornwallis neatly described it. Fourteen months later (May 1803) war
broke out again; and this time there was almost incessant fighting on a
titanic scale, by land and sea, until the great Corsican was humbled and
broken at Waterloo.

The reader will be aided in forming an opinion upon the events discussed
hereafter, by a glance at the colonial situation during the period in
question. The extent of the dependencies of France and England in 1800
and the later years will be gathered from the following summary.

In America France regained Louisiana, covering the mouth of the