Indian March of Paul
The Indian March of Paul () was a secret project of a planned allied Russo-French expedition against the British Company rule in India. It was scuttled following the assassination of Emperor Paul I of Russia in March 1801. Russia and Britain were allied during the French Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s. The simultaneous failure of their 1799 joint invasion of the Netherlands, as well as the 1799 Austro-Russian Italian and Swiss expedition which Britain partially financed, precipitated a change in attitudes. Britain's occupation of Malta in October 1800 incensed Emperor Paul in his capacity of Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller. He hastily broke with Britain and allied himself with Napoleon who came up with an extravagant plan of a Russo-French expedition to attack the British possessions in India. Secret plans The secret plan of the expedition, as preserved in the Russian archives, envisaged the joint operations of two infantry corps, one French (with artillery support) and one Russian. Each infantry corps had 35,000 men, the total force thus containing 70,000 men, plus artillery and a large contingent of Cossack cavalry. Napoleon insisted that the command of the French corps be entrusted to General André Masséna. The route of advance