Soult with 10,000 troops thereupon occupied Otranto, Taranto, and Brindisi, in order to hold the Neapolitan Government to its engagements, and to facilitate French intercourse with Egypt.
In his relations with the New World Bonaparte had also prospered.
Certain disputes between France and the United States had led to hostilities in the year 1798.

Negotiations for peace were opened in March, 1800, and led to the treaty of Morfontaine, which enabled Bonaparte to press on the Court of Madrid the scheme of the Parma-Louisiana exchange, that promised him a magnificent empire on the banks of the Mississippi.
These and other grandiose designs were confided only to Talleyrand and other intimate counsellors.

But, even to the mass of mankind, the transformation scene ushered in by the nineteenth century was one of bewildering brilliance.

Italy from the Alps to her heel controlled by the French; Austria compelled to forego all her Italian plans; Switzerland and Holland dominated by the First Consul's influence; Spain following submissively his imperious lead; England, despite all her naval triumphs, helpless on land; and France rapidly regaining more than all her old prestige and stability under the new institutions which form the most enduring tribute to the First Consul's glory.
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