Nelson, weighing the difficulties of that enterprise more accurately than could be done by one unaccustomed to the sea, doubted the reality of the intention, and thought it more consonant to the true policy of France to seize control of the Mediterranean, by a sudden concentration of her fleets, and then to transport her troops by water to the heel of Italy, to the Ionian Islands, to the Morea, to Egypt.

So stationed, with fortified stepping-stones rising at short intervals from the deep, future movements of troops and supplies from point to point would be but an affair of coasters, slipping from battery to battery, such as he had experienced to his cost in the Riviera.

In this project he thought it likely that France could secure the co-operation of Russia, by allowing the latter her share of the spoils of Turkey, especially in Constantinople.

He saw, indeed, that the partition would involve some difficulty between the two partners, and in his correspondence he attributes the Morea and the islands, now to one, now to the other; but the prediction, elicited piece-meal from his letters, received a close fulfilment four years later in the general tenor of the agreements of Tilsit, nor was it less accurate in its dim prophecy of a disagreement.
Such, in broad outline, were the prepossessions and views Nelson took with him from England in 1803, as modified by the information he received upon reaching the station; and such the counter-projects of Bonaparte, to whom belonged, as the privilege of the offensive, the choice of direction for his attack.

The essential difference between the two was, that one believed the invasion of England, however difficult, to be possible, and therefore to be the true and first object of his efforts; while the other, without pronouncing that attempt impossible, saw its difficulties so clearly, that he conceived his enemy must be aiming for the Mediterranean from the beginning.