The principal habitués of the ministry were M. de Montrond, Duc de Laval, M. de Saint-Foix, General Duroc, Colonel Beauharnais, afterwards Prince Eugène, Fox, Erskine, &c., &c.
Some few yet remember the easy nonchalance with which, reclining on his sofa by the side of the fire, the minister of foreign affairs welcomed those whom he wished to make at home, the extreme and formal civility which marked his reception of his colleagues and the senators with whom he was not intimate, and the careless and pleasing familiarity that he used towards the favourite officers of the first consul, and the ladies and diplomatists to whom he was partial.
The enmity which for the last few years had been so violent between the French and English people was beginning to subside amidst their intercourse; but, unhappily for them and for the world, the peace, or rather truce, which they had concluded could only be maintained by acknowledging a galling inferiority to the French ruler, who, it was evident, regarded our retirement from the contest we had long waged without dishonour as a means for relieving St. Domingo, confirming his dominion over Italy, and invading Switzerland, circumstances which rendered it justifiable for England to retain Malta, even though she had foolishly and inconsiderately engaged to resign it.
I need hardly observe that the conduct of Napoleon throughout the whole of this affair was overbearing; but that of his minister of foreign affairs was the reverse; and I should add that that minister had the credit of having obtained, just as Lord Whitworth was departing, the first consul’s permission to propose an arrangement which would have left us Malta for such a compensation as, under all the circumstances, might perhaps have been accepted. But this compromise being haughtily rejected, war somewhat abruptly recommenced.
The respite, however, thus secured, had served Napoleon’s purposes, and enabled him, by the popularity it brought, to lay the first stones of the Empire,—in the Legion of Honour, out of which grew the nobility of the Empire;—in the consulship for life, which was a step towards the hereditary rank he soon assumed; and in the Concordat, which preluded his coronation by the Pope.
It is not to be presumed that these great innovations on the principles which had so long been dominant took place without a struggle. All the ardent republicans combated them as a matter of course, designating the tyrant who proposed them as a second Cæsar, who evoked the patriotism of a second Brutus. But a more serious party also attacked them in the legislative bodies, nor was it without an illegal act of authority that this party was vanquished.
The measures in question were not in fact popular, and the Concordat at one time seemed not unlikely to provoke an insurrection in the army.
M. de Talleyrand, nevertheless, supported these measures warmly; and, with the aid of Cambacérès, softened and conciliated many of their opponents.
“We have,” he constantly repeated, “to consolidate a government and reorganize a society. Governments are only consolidated by a continued policy, and it is not only necessary that this policy should be continued,—people should have the conviction that it will be so.