The much debated question as to whether or not Bonaparte was victor in the diplomatic struggle, desired the rupture as it occurred and wanted war, is, in the light of the fullest information, apparently unanswerable. If he were a profound philosopher and constructive statesman disposed to abandon the struggle for mastery on the high seas and confine the expansion of France to the Continent, he was ready and his wishes were fulfilled; if, on the other hand, he intended to confront England by sea and her allies by land, he was unready, for he had no fighting navy and he had not expected war so soon. There were the beginnings of colonial empire in Australia, Decaen was on his way to Réunion with a squadron to establish a base of action against British India, the Cape of Good Hope was French, there was every prospect of a powerful Mahratta-French alliance in India itself. There were high hopes in the Ionian Isles, in Greece, and for Egypt. Malta might be wrested from England, and so forth. Ten of his battle-ships were far away, the remaining thirty-three were just available and no more; there were orders out for building twenty-three new ones, and a visit to Normandy convinced him that all sixty-six could be manned by splendid crews from western France. He indulged in much bravado about possibilities. But the hard fact is that in May, 1803, the French naval power was negligible, while the French land power was in the highest state of efficiency. Pitt had his enormous fleets and his possible coalition in hand, Bonaparte his army and his incomparable military genius. Hostilities began by the seizure of many French merchantmen which were constructively in English harbors, though in many cases really at sea. The reply of the First Consul to this conduct was equally high-handed: every Englishman between the ages of eighteen and sixty within the borders of France was seized and thrown into confinement. For twelve long years these unfortunate persons were held as prisoners of war. The French embargo on hostile ships antedated England's by three days, and simultaneously with its publication Clarke was instructed to drive English ships from the harbors of Tuscany. In the last days of May an army under Mortier occupied Hanover, and, closing both Bremen and Hamburg to British commerce, exacted large contributions of money from them. In June another force under Saint-Cyr entered Naples, which in strict observance of the treaty of Amiens had been evacuated, and laid a similar embargo on the ports of Taranto, Brindisi, and Otranto. In the case of Hanover, France utterly disregarded the fine point in international law which had so far distinguished between George III as King of England and the German Elector whose patrimony was Hanover; in that of Naples she displayed a disregard for treaty obligations not entirely consistent with Bonaparte's maledictions on those who did not observe them.