The Admiral, who was almost as far-seeing in politics as he was in sea-strategy, had recognised that Buonaparte was France, and that the policy of Buonaparte was to swallow the weak nations in order to use their resources against the Great Powers. Undoubtedly he had his eye on Naples, and undoubtedly Naples had resources as well as a position which would render her a very dangerous tool in his capable hands. The Queen did not think so much about Naples being a tool in his hands as about the prior evil of losing her kingdom; but she had a presentiment of this; and, besides, she hated the French worse than hell for the murder of her beautiful, innocent sister, Marie Antoinette. She was a masterful woman, of not a little capacity, and saw as clearly as the Admiral that France was only biding a favourable opportunity to seize her kingdom. The Admiral also believed it suicidal for Naples to leave the declaration of war to the French; but he had at the outset more correct views as to entering upon the contest. Before our Battle of the Nile it would have removed our principal difficulties to have the freedom of the Sicilian ports and the co-operation of the Sicilian Navy. Not that their ships counted in the fighting line. In the Admiral's opinion neither the Sicilians, nor the Venetians, nor the Portuguese--hardly even the Spanish--signified in an action between two fleets. But we were obliged to waste a good deal of time owing to their fear of supplying us, and their treaty with the French that only two or four of our ships should enter a Sicilian port at one time. And had we had frigates, which they could have supplied us, for spying out the movements of the enemy, we should never have missed the French on our first voyage to Alexandria, and should in consequence have destroyed their transports, and their army, and Buonaparte, as well as their fleet. His first view, therefore, was that the Two Sicilies should wage their quarrel with the French by forming a base for the British, the only one of the great Powers left uncrippled in the war with the all-devouring Republic. He was right, moreover, in judging that the only immediate danger to be apprehended from the presence of the French force in the Papal States was the spread of their pernicious doctrines, and the formation of a base for the insurrection of the numerous disaffected persons in the Two Sicilies. The only person who had the power of driving the French out of Italy was the Emperor, who feared retaliation by a blow nearer home.