Cathcart's "most secret" despatch of June 4⁄16 from Reichenbach. Just a month earlier he reported that the Czar's proposals to Austria included all these terms in an absolute form, and also the separation of Holland from France, the restoration of the Bourbons to Spain, and "L'Italie libre dans toutes ses parties du Gouvernement et de l'influence de la France." Such were also Metternich's private wishes, with the frontier of the Oglio on the S.W. for Austria. See Oncken, vol. ii., p. 644. The official terms were in part due to the direct influence of the Emperor Francis.

[325]

In a secret article of the Treaty we promised to advance to Austria a subsidy of £500,000 as soon as she should join the allies.

[326]

Martens, vol. ix., pp. 568-575. Our suspicion of Prussia reappears (as was almost inevitable after her seizure of Hanover), not only in the smallness of the sum accorded to her—for we granted £2,000,000 in all to the Swedish, Hanseatic, and Hanoverian contingents—but also in the stipulation that she should assent to the eventual annexation of the formerly Prussian districts of East Frisia and Hildesheim to Hanover. We also refused to sign the Treaty of Reichenbach until she, most unwillingly, assented to this prospective cession. This has always been thought in Germany a mean transaction; but, as Castlereagh pointed out, those districts were greatly in the way of the development of Hanover. Prussia was to have an indemnity for the sacrifice; and we bore the chief burden in the issue of "federative paper notes," which enabled the allies to prepare for the campaign ("Castlereagh Papers," 2nd series, vol. iv., p. 355; 3rd series, vol. i., pp. 7-17; and "Bath Archives," vol. ii., p. 86). Moreover, we were then sending 30,000 muskets to Stralsund and Colberg for the use of Prussian troops (Despatch from "F.O.," July 28th, to Thornton, "Sweden," No. 79). On July 6th we agreed to pay the cost of a German Legion of 10,000 men under the Czar's orders. Its Commissary was Colonel Lowe.

[327]

For the official reports see Garden, vol. xiv., pp. 486-499; also Bausset's account, "Cour de Napoléon."