all those who were the friends of France as traitors to the common
cause, as well as to their own individual sovereigns. There are
situations in which the most opposite and hostile parties may
mean equally well, and yet act equally wrong. The court of Naples,
unconscious of committing any crime by continuing the system of misrule
to which they had succeeded, conceived that, in maintaining things as
they were, they were maintaining their own rights, and preserving
the people from such horrors as had been perpetrated in France. The
Neapolitan revolutionists thought that without a total change of system,
any relief from the present evils was impossible, and they believed
themselves justified in bringing about that change by any means.
Both parties knew that it was the fixed intention of the French to
revolutionise Naples. The revolutionists supposed that it was for
the purpose of establishing a free government; the court, and all
disinterested persons, were perfectly aware that the enemy had no other
object than conquest and plunder.

The battle of the Nile shook the power of France. Her most successful
general, and her finest army, were blocked up in Egypt--hopeless, as it
appeared, of return; and the government was in the hands of men without
talents, without character, and divided among themselves. Austria, whom
Buonaparte had terrified into a peace, at a time when constancy on her
part would probably have led to his destruction, took advantage of the
crisis to renew the war. Russia also was preparing to enter the field
with unbroken forces, led by a general, whose extraordinary military
genius would have entitled him to a high and honourable rank in history,
if it had not been sullied by all the ferocity of a barbarian. Naples,
seeing its destruction at hand, and thinking that the only means of
averting it was by meeting the danger, after long vacillations, which
were produced by the fears and treachery of its council, agreed at last