The preservation and the consolidation of international peace was the general aim of Emperor Alexander I of Russia in the first year of his reign. The young autocrat, faced with the novelty of international politics and bent on domestic reform, hoped for good relations with all the powers and tried to avoid any serious entanglement in European affairs. Diplomatic relations with Great Britain, which had been severed by the unstable Emperor Paul, were restored in June 1801, and a treaty of friendship was signed with the French Republic in October of the same year. Alexander expressed his readiness to co-operate with Bonaparte, whom he at first much admired, in arranging a general continental pacification and in settling the indemnities for the German princes dispossessed by France's expansion to the Rhine. The only issue that could have marred Franco-Russian relations at die time was Alexander's concern that full inde- pendence be restored to Piedmont and Naples. Nevertheless, the appointment of V. P. Kochubey, an advocate of a passive foreign policy, as head of the College for Foreign Affairs in October 1801, confirmed Alexander's pacific intentions. Yet widun four years Russia was to find herself at war with France as a leading and zealous promoter of a wide European coalition and the champion of a new European order.