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352 frontier was not absolutely inaccessible to invasion from Europe by land. His imagination was fired by the recollection that Asia had more than once been traversed by conquering armies.

That Napoleon should seriously have contemplated marching across Europe and half Asia to invade the territory of an island within twenty miles of the French coast, that he should have thought it on the whole less impracticable to send a force from the Danube or Constantinople to Delhi than to transport his troops from Calais to Dover, is certainly a remarkable illustration of the impregnability of effective naval defence. But his proposals obtained very half-hearted encouragement from the Russians, who had some useful acquaintance with the difficulties of Asiatic campaigning, and a wholesome distrust of the associate in whose company they were invited to set out. They were by no means eager to embark on distant Eastern adventures, or to lock up their troops in the heart of Asia, upon the advice and for the advantage of the restless and powerful autocrat whose armies still hovered about their western frontier. They stipulated for a partition of the Turkish Empire as a preliminary dividend upon the joint-stock enterprise and as a strategic base for any further advance eastward. To this condition, however, Napoleon refused his assent, alleging, reasonably enough, that it would be playing into the hands of England, since if the Russians were to take Constantinople, the English would at once retaliate by seizing Egypt. An imposing French mission was, nevertheless, sent to Persia, and