The ministers, apparently convinced by this reasoning, forbad lord William Bentinck to proceed, and they expressed their discontent at his conduct. Nevertheless their former instructions had unquestionably conferred on him a discretionary power to act in Italy, and so completely had he been misled by their previous despatches, that besides delaying the expedition to Spain, he had placed twelve hundred men under admiral Fremantle, to assist the Montenegrins. And he was actually entangled in a negotiation with the Russian admiral, Greig, relative to the march of a Russian army; a march planned, as it would appear, without the knowledge of the Russian court, and which, from the wildness of its conception and the mischief it would probably have effected, deserves notice. While the Russian war was still uncertain, admiral Tchtchagoff, who commanded sixty thousand men on the Danube, proposed to march with them, through Bosnia and the ancient Epirus, to the mouths of the Cattaro, and, there embarking, to commence the impending contest with France in Italy. He was, however, without resources, and expecting to arrive in a starving and miserable condition on the Adriatic, demanded, through admiral Greig, then commanding a squadron in the Mediterranean, that lord William Bentinck should be ready to supply him with fresh arms, ammunition, and provisions, and to aid him with an auxiliary force. That nobleman saw at a glance the absurdity of this scheme, but he was falsely informed that Tchtchagoff, trusting to his good will, had already commenced the march; and thus he had only to choose between aiding an ally, whose force, if it arrived at all, and was supplied by England, would help his own project, or permit it, to avoid perishing, to ravage Italy, and so change the people of that country from secret friends into deadly enemies. It would be foreign to this history to consider what effect the absence of Tchtchagoff’s army during the Russian campaign would have had upon Napoleon’s operations, but this was the very force whose march to the Beresina afterwards obliged the emperor to abandon Smolensko, and continue the retreat to Warsaw.