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Rh avec la Perse et la Turquie. L'Armée française, par exemple, en ferait une avec la Porte, puisque Constantinople est son chemin naturel. Celle de Votre Majesté passerait par le Caucase, si on n'avait pas les moyens nécessaires pour lui faire traverser la mer Caspienne.

Alexandre I: Mon cher général, c'est un bien grand projet. Mais que de difficultés, pour ne pas dire plus.

While in the time of Paul the First the combined French and Russian armies were to march upon India via Warsaw and the Caspian Sea, Napoleon now proposed that the French army should march via Constantinople. He evidently sought for a pretext of occupying and controlling that town and the Straits, and with them the Russian Black Sea. Meanwhile he continued playing with Alexander. On February 2, 1808, he wrote to his Ambassador in Russia that he was on the point of arranging for an expedition to India, combined with the partition of Turkey, that a joint army of twenty to twenty-five thousand Russians, eight to ten thousand Austrians, and thirty to forty thousand Frenchmen, should be set in motion towards India; 'que rien n'est facile comme cette opération; qu'il est certain qu'avant que cette armée soit sur l'Euphrate la terreur sera en Angleterre.' On February 6, 1808, Napoleon told the Russian Ambassador, Count Tolstoi, according to the report of the latter, 'Une fois sur l'Euphrate, rien n'empêche d'arriver aux Indes. Ce n'est pas une raison pour échouer dans cette entreprise parce qu'Alexandre et Tamerlan n'y ont pas réussi. Il s'agit de faire mieux qu'eux.'

While Napoleon was amusing Alexander with vain hopes and fantastic proposals, the Czar had begun a very costly war with England in accordance with the stipulations of the Treaty of Tilsit. Feeling at last that the question of Turkey was being treated dilatorily and with the greatest vagueness by Napoleon, he pressed for some more definite arrangement, and a series of non-official conferences regarding that country took place between the French Ambassador