Peace can rarely be attained unless one of the combatants is overcome or both are exhausted. But neither Great Britain nor France was in this position. By sea our successes had been as continuous as those of Napoleon over our allies on land. In January we captured the Cape from the Dutch: in February the French force at St. Domingo surrendered to Sir James Duckworth: Admiral Warren in March closed the career of the adventurous Linois; and early in July a British force seized great treasure at Buenos Ayres, whence, however, it was soon obliged to retire. After these successes Fox could not but be firm. He refused to budge from the standpoint of uti possidetis which our envoy had stated as the basis of negotiations: and the Earl of Lauderdale, who was sent to support and finally to supersede the Earl of Yarmouth, at once took a firm tone which drew forth a truculent rejoinder. If that was to be the basis, wrote Clarke, the French plenipotentiary, then France would require Moravia, Styria, the whole of Austria (Proper), and Hanover, and in that case leave England her few colonial conquests.
This reply of August 8th nearly severed the negotiations on the spot: but Talleyrand persistently refused to grant the passports which Lauderdale demanded—evidently in the hope that the Czar's ratification of Oubril's treaty would cause us to give up Sicily.[[88]] He was in error. On September 3rd the news reached Paris that Alexander scornfully rejected his envoy's handiwork. Nevertheless, Napoleon refused to forego his claims to Sicily; and the closing days of Fox were embittered by the thought that this negotiation, the last hope of a career fruitful in disappointments, was doomed to failure. After using his splendid eloquence for fifteen years in defence of the Revolution and its "heir," he came to the bitter conclusion that liberty had miscarried in France, and that that land had bent beneath the[pg.82] yoke in order the more completely to subjugate the Continent. He died on September 13th.
French historians, following an article in the "Moniteur" of November 26th, have often asserted that the death of Fox and the accession to power of the warlike faction changed the character of the negotiations.[[89]] Nothing can be further from the truth. Not long before his end, Fox thus expressed to his nephew his despair of peace:
"We can in honour do nothing without the full and bonâ fide consent of the Queen and Court of Naples; but, even exclusive of that consideration and of the great importance of Sicily, it is not so much the value of the point in dispute as the manner in which the French fly from their word that disheartens me. It is not Sicily, but the shuffling, insincere way in which they act, that shows me that they are playing a false game; and in that case it would be very imprudent to make any concessions, which by any possibility could be thought inconsistent with our honour, or could furnish our allies with a plausible pretence for suspecting, reproaching, or deserting us."
It is further to be noted that Lauderdale stayed on at Paris three weeks after the death of Fox; that he put forward no new demand, but required that Talleyrand should revert to his first promise of renouncing all claim to Sicily, and should treat conjointly with England and Russia. It was in vain. Napoleon's final concessions were that the Bourbons, after losing Sicily, should have the Balearic Isles and be pensioned by Spain; that Russia should hold Corfu (as she already did); and that we should recover Hanover from Prussia, and keep Malta, the Cape, Tobago, and the three French towns in India; but, except Hanover, all of these were in our power. On Sicily he would not bate one jot of his pretensions. The negotiations were therefore broken off on October 6th, twelve days after Napoleon left Paris to marshal his troops against Prussia.[[90]] The whole affair revealed[pg.83] Napoleon's determination to trick the allies into signing separate and disadvantageous treaties, and thus to regain by craft the ground which he had lost in fair fight at Maida.
If Sicily was the rock of stumbling between us and Napoleon, Hanover was the chief cause of the war between France and Prussia. During the negotiations at Paris, Lord Yarmouth privately informed Lucchesini, the Prussian ambassador, that Talleyrand made no difficulty about the restitution of Hanover to George III. The news, when forwarded to Berlin at the close of July, caused a nervous flutter in ministerial circles, where every effort was being made to keep on good terms with France.
Even before this news arrived, the task was far from easy. Murat, when occupying his new Duchy of Berg, pushed on his troops into the old Church lands of Essen and Werden. Prussia looked on these districts as her own, and the sturdy patriot Blücher at once marched in his soldiers, tore down Murat's proclamations, and restored the Prussian eagle with blare of trumpet and beat of drum.[[91]] A collision was with difficulty averted by the complaisance of Frederick William, who called back his troops and referred the question to lawyers; but even the King was piqued when the Grand-Duke of Berg sent him a letter of remonstrance on Blücher's conduct, commencing with the familiar address, Mon frère.
Blücher meanwhile and the soldiery were eating out their hearts with rage, as they saw the French pouring across the Rhine, and constructing a bridge of boats at Wesel; and had they known that that important stronghold, the key of North Germany, was quietly declared to be a French garrison town, they would probably have forced the hands of the King.[[92]] For at this time Frederick William and Haugwitz were alarmed by the formation of the Rhenish Confederation, and were not wholly reassured by Napoleon's suggestion that the abolition of the old[pg.84] Empire must be an advantage to Prussia. They clutched eagerly, however, at his proposal that Prussia should form a league of the North German States, and made overtures to the two most important States, Saxony and Hesse-Cassel. During a few halcyon days the King even proposed to assume the title Emperor of Prussia, from which, however, the Elector of Saxony ironically dissuaded him. This castle in the air faded away when news reached Berlin at the beginning of August that Napoleon was seeking to bring the Elector of Hesse-Cassel into the Rhenish Confederation, and was offering as a bait the domains of some Imperial Knights and the principality of Fulda, now held by the Prince of Orange, a relative of Frederick William. Moreover, the moves of the French troops in Thuringia were so threatening to Saxony that the Court of Dresden began to scout the project of a North German Confederation.
Still, the King and Haugwitz tried to persuade themselves that Napoleon meant well for Prussia, that England had been doing her utmost to make bad blood between the two allies, and that "great results could not be attained without some friction." In this hope they were encouraged by the French ambassador, the man who had enticed Prussia to her demobilization. He was charged by Talleyrand to report at Berlin that "peace with England would be made, as well as with Russia, if France had consented to the restitution of Hanover.—I have renewed," added Laforest, "the assurance that the Emperor [Napoleon] would never yield on this point."
And yet at that very time the French Foreign Office was at work upon a Project of a Treaty in which the restitution of Hanover to George III. was expressly named and received the assent of Napoleon.[[93]] The Prussian ambassador, Lucchesini, had some inkling of[pg.85] this from French sources,[[94]] as well as from Lord Yarmouth, and on July 28th penned a despatch which fell like a thunderbolt on the optimists of Berlin. It crossed on the way—such is the irony of diplomacy—a despatch from Berlin that required him to show unlimited confidence in Napoleon. From confidence the King now rushed to the opposite extreme, and saw Napoleon's hand in all the friction of the last few weeks.