Yet it is impossible to feel sure of the First Consul's innermost desire, in view of the great army at his back eager for war and still posted at the most advantageous strategic points of Europe. Where such an army exists there must be a powerful military party, and such a party must influence a great general. As late as 1875 the great military leaders of the German Empire nearly thwarted the statecraft of Bismarck, and almost succeeded in renewing the Franco-Prussian war for the purpose of reducing France to vassalage. Similar influences may have weighed at times with Bonaparte; but the charge that already in 1802 France was the destined victim of Bonaparte's ambition, and all Europe but its tool, remains unproved. He was not yet convinced that war was essential for the extension of his influence, and there is no proof until two years later that his dreams of Western empire had taken definite form. Then, when France was fighting for her life with an England governed by a narrow-minded and unwholesome king, and when dynastic Europe was all allied against him, he appears to have become convinced that the time had finally arrived when, to defeat England and destroy dynastic rule in Europe, he must by all means at his command unite the Western world under his sway. Both the preliminaries of London and the peace of Amiens had been hailed with joy by the industrial and mercantile classes of England. It is true the Christian sentiment of the country was shocked by the official restoration of the slave-trade on the part of France; but that feeling was momentarily stilled in view of the untold benefits to commerce which might justly be expected as the result of peace. In this expectation, however, the merchants were disappointed, for the Consulate immediately put in force certain arbitrary and annoying shipping regulations intended to limit any encroachments on its rigid protective policy. The pious philanthropy of England has ever seen missionary zeal go hand in hand with British commerce as the best means of simultaneously fulfilling England's destiny and ameliorating the world. Accordingly, public opinion again took up the cry against the slave-trade, and soon was so changed that the cheers of the multitude were turned into renewed execrations of Bonaparte. Thenceforward the influences which combined to create a warlike temper in England were cumulative. It was found by private citizens that the clause of the treaty which removed all sequestrations from their property in France was not easily enforced. Statesmen began to say that by a further extension of the system of federated states under French hegemony their maritime empire would insure nothing but the insignificant carrying-trade with the colonies, while the European commerce, which was far more important, would be delivered into other hands. The King feared lest, with the guarantee of territorial sanctity, which was its mainstay, absolutism itself would go.