General Stuart had been sent to support the Calabrian peasantry in an insurrection against Joseph Buonaparte; the insurgents were on the whole unable to stand their ground against the regular army of the intrusive king; and the English, soon after their fruitless victory, altogether withdrew.

The British had, indeed, taken possession of Curacao, and of the Cape of Good Hope (this last an acquisition of the highest moment to the Indian empire); but on the whole the ill success of our measures had been answerable to the narrow and shallow system of policy in which they originated--the system of frittering away blood and gold upon detached objects, instead of rallying the whole resources of the empire around some one great leader for some one great purpose.

The British expeditions of this period to the Turkish dominions and to Spanish America were especially distinguished for narrowness of design, imbecility of execution, and consequent misadventure.
On the assumption of the Imperial dignity by Napoleon, the Ottoman Porte, dazzled by the apparently irresistible splendour of his fate, sent an embassy to congratulate him; and in effect the ancient alliance between France and Turkey was re-established.

Napoleon consequently had little difficulty in procuring from Constantinople a declaration of war against Russia, the great hereditary enemy of the Turk, at the time when he was about to encounter the armies of the Czar in Poland.

The Dardanelles were shut against Russian vessels; and the English government, considering this as sufficient evidence that the Grand Seignior was attaching himself to the Antibritannic Confederacy, despatched a squadron of ships under Admiral Duckworth, in February, 1807, with orders to force the passage of the Dardanelles, present themselves before Constantinople, and demand from the Porte the custody _pro tempore_ of all her ships of war.