Napoleon must also have known that Russia's forces were then wholly unequal to the invasion of India; and his invitation to Alexander to engage in two serious enterprises certainly had the effect of postponing the partition of Turkey.

Delay was all in his favour, if he was to gain the lion's share of the spoils.

Russian troops were ready on the banks of the Danube; but he was not as yet fully prepared.

His hold on Dalmatia, Ragusa, and Corfu was not wholly assured.

Sicily and Malta still defied him; and not until he seized Sicily could he gain the control of the Mediterranean--"the constant aim of my policy." Only when that great sea had become a French lake could he hope to plant himself firmly in Albania, Thessaly, Greece, Crete, Egypt, and Syria.
For the present, then, the Czar was beguiled with the prospect of an eastern expedition; and, while Russian troops were overrunning Finland, Napoleon sought to conquer Sicily and reduce Spain to the rank of a feudatory State.