Tsar Paul I died at a critical moment in the affairs of Europe. During the last fifteen months of his life he had become estranged from Great Britain and Austria, his erstwhile allies, who were being hard pressed by their French enemy on several fronts. By the beginning of 1801 the tsar's government seemed on the verge of concluding an alliance with Napoleonic France. Russia's “cold war” with Britain heated up as the tsar ordered the confiscation of British merchant vessels in his ports and the incarceration of British seamen. A British fleet under Admirals Parker and Nelson was dispatched to the Baltic to deal with the new threat to British interests. Then, quite suddenly, the tsar was dead.