While these stirring events had been happening, the health of the English minister had been sensibly declining. Cheered for a moment by the news of Trafalgar, clouded though they were by the death of Nelson, the rapidly-occurring disasters of Ulm and Austerlitz, and the dissolution, by the Treaty of Presburg, of the coalition he had so laboriously established, went far to render fatal the disease which was already threatening him. He returned from Bath, still hoping against hope that he might be present at the opening of Parliament, withdrew for quiet to his villa at Putney, and there died on the 23rd of January 1806.
New ministry.
The death of Pitt was followed by the break-up of his Cabinet, which was not so constituted as to be able to stand without him. The King did indeed attempt to continue it under the leadership of Lord Hawkesbury; but upon his refusal to accept the responsibilities of the Premiership, the King was obliged to have recourse to the Opposition, and to summon Lord Grenville to his Councils. The admission of Grenville to the ministry implied the admission of Fox; the close political alliance they had formed, the determination they had already expressed, when rejecting Pitt's offers, never to join in any separate arrangements, rendered it quite impossible for either to accept office without the other. In spite, therefore, of the King's anger and dislike, he was compelled to admit his old enemy Fox to the ministry. The basis on which Grenville and Fox had been united in opposition was the strong belief which both felt that in the present crisis a ministry of a broad and national character was required. On this principle they formed their new administration, which was known by the name of "the Ministry of all the talents." Lord Grenville became First Lord of the Treasury; Earl Spencer and Mr. Windham, members of Pitt's first administration, Secretaries for the Home and War departments; Fox became Foreign Secretary, and his friends Earl Fitzwilliam and Grey (now Lord Howick), the one Lord President of the Council, and the other First Lord of the Admiralty. Lord Moira, Master-General of the Ordnance, represented the friends of the Prince of Wales; while Lord Sidmouth became Lord Privy Seal, and as he insisted on bringing one friend with him into the Cabinet, introduced with questionable wisdom Lord Ellenborough, the Lord Chief Justice. It has since this time been generally held that such a position is incompatible with high judicial duties. Lord Henry Petty, afterwards Lord Lansdowne, was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Before the ministry went out all due honour had been paid to the late minister; a public funeral and monument had been voted, together with the sum of £40,000 for the payment of his debts.
Character of Fox.
The character of Fox as a statesman was now upon its trial. After thirty years of exclusion from office, in perpetual opposition to the King and the general feeling of the upper classes, Fox had at length an opportunity of proving the justice of the reliance which men of liberal opinions had always placed in him. Large-hearted, with great warmth of personal affection, and general love of the human race, he had uniformly opposed war, had constantly declared that either the mismanagement or ill-will of the ministers had been the main obstacle to peace: he had believed devoutly in the excellence of the Revolution, traced its excesses to the wanton opposition of the crowned heads of Europe, and still persisted in believing that straightforward and friendly negotiations would bring about a right understanding with Napoleon. The brief period which elapsed between his acceptance of office in January and his death on the 13th of September, sufficed to prove to him the futility of his hopes; and the ministry found itself obliged to take up identically the same position as that of their predecessors. Like his great rival, he closed his life in the midst of the unutterable sadness caused by the complete frustration of those plans on which, according to his view, the welfare of his country rested, with this additional bitterness in his cup that upon him was forced the conviction, not only that circumstances were too strong for him, but that the optimism which had been the very breath of his political life rested upon no solid ground, and that the work to which he had devoted himself, and the maintenance of which had perpetually debarred him from a share in the government of the country, had been wholly misdirected. That destruction of illusions which comes to most men in their youth fell upon him when he was already breaking with age and disease, and when he must have been conscious that no time was left him to correct the errors into which he had been led. It is difficult to conceive a sadder close to a noble political career than that which fell upon the minister as he discovered too late that the practical logic of facts contradicted all those high aspirations which had throughout guided his conduct. So complete, however, was the proof afforded him by his short ministry of the futility of his hopes, that his friend Lord Howick, after just a year of office, was compelled to declare of the late negotiations that "there never was any opportunity of procuring any such terms as would have been adequate to the just pretensions and consistent with the honour and interests of this country; 'one thing is clear, the progress of Bonaparte has never yet been stopped by submission, and our only hope therefore is in resistance, as far as we can resist his ambitious projects.'"
Negotiations for peace. March.
The negotiations of which Lord Howick thus confessed the disastrous conclusion were opened by Fox almost immediately after his accession to office. A few days after his appointment an unknown person called upon him, and disclosed a plan for the assassination of the Emperor. With natural indignation, Fox caused the man to be apprehended, and while warning Bonaparte that the law of England prevented his lengthened detention, he promised that it should be long enough to enable the Emperor to provide against the nefarious plan. It is not improbable that the whole conspiracy was devised by Napoleon himself for the purpose of opening a negotiation with Fox, in whom he believed he had a sincere well-wisher, and on whose simple-hearted optimism he believed he could play. He caused a copy of a speech to reach Fox in which he expressed his willingness to make peace with England on the stipulations of the Treaty of Amiens. This led to a direct negotiation between Fox and Talleyrand, in which the English minister, in accordance with his views, attempted, as he said, to act upon the assumption that the countries would treat as two great powers, despising any idea of chicane. But this was not at all Napoleon's view of negotiation. His diplomacy constantly assumed the same form—separate treaties with different members of the coalition, and the hurried continuance of aggression during the time that negotiations were pending, so as to compel the treating power either to accept the aggressions or to break off the treaty. This had been his plan before the Treaty of Amiens, and this he had just repeated after the battle of Austerlitz.
Treaty of Schönbrunn, Dec 15, and Presburg, Dec. 26, 1805.
Prussia was already so far pledged to join the coalition that it was on the point of receiving the first payment of a subsidy from England. But Bonaparte succeeded in inducing the vacillating court to break with both its allies. Two separate treaties were made, one at Schönbrunn, by which Prussia withdrew from the coalition, and entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with France, receiving Hanover in exchange for Anspach, which was to be restored to Bavaria, and the Principality of Neuchatel, which was to be annexed to France, and the other at Presburg, in which Austria, having lost all hope of any assistance Prussia might have rendered, was induced to accept the most disastrous terms. The kingdom of Italy was to receive Venice and the Adriatic provinces; the three German powers which were consistently friends of France—Bavaria, Wurtemberg and Baden—obtained portions of the German dominions of Austria; the royal title was secured to Bavaria and Wurtemberg; the rights of the Empire over the immediate nobility were renounced; the reorganization of Italy was admitted; and Austria even agreed not to interfere in the affairs of Naples. On these terms the constitution of the Germanic Confederation was guaranteed. It is needless to point out what a seed of hatred was sown by these treaties, in which one of the German powers was humiliated by its ignominious bargain, the other driven almost to despair by the ruthless manner in which it was pillaged.