From this wider point of view, he looked on the Iberian Peninsula merely as a serviceable base for a greater enterprise, the conquest of the East.

This is proved by a letter that he wrote to Decres, Minister of Marine and of the Colonies, from Bayonne on May 17th, 1808, when the Spanish affair seemed settled: "There is not much news from India.

England is in great penury there, and the arrival of an expedition [from France] would ruin that colony from top to bottom.

The more I reflect on this step, the less inconvenience I see in taking it." Two days later he wrote to Murat that money must be found for naval preparations at the Spanish ports: "I must have ships, for I intend striking a heavy blow towards the end of the season." But at the close of June he warned Decres that as Spanish affairs were going badly, he must postpone his design of despatching a fleet far from European waters.[198] Spain having proved to be, not a meek purveyor of fleets, but a devourer of French armies, there was the more need of a close accord with the Czar.

Napoleon desired, not only to assure a further postponement of the Turkish enterprise, but also to hold Austria and Germany in check.