From Caulaincourt's letter of March 3rd to Napoleon; Bignon, vol. xiii., p. 379.
"Castlereagh Papers," vol. ix., p. 555.
"Castlereagh Papers," vol. ix., pp. 335, 559. Caulaincourt's project of March 15th much resembled that dictated by Napoleon three days later; Austria was to have Venetia as far as the Adige, the kingdom of Italy to go to Eugène, and the duchy of Warsaw to the King of Saxony, etc. The allies rejected it (Fain, p. 388).
Fournier, p. 232, rebuts, and I think successfully, Houssaye's objections (p. 287) to its genuineness. Besides, the letter is on the same moral level with the instructions of January 4th to Caulaincourt, and resembles them in many respects. No forger could have known of those instructions. At Elba, Napoleon admitted that he was wrong in not making peace at this time. "Mais je me croyais assez fort pour ne pas la faire, et je me suis trompé" (Lord Holland's "Foreign Rem.," p. 319). The same writer states (p. 296) that he saw the official correspondence about Châtillon: it gave him the highest opinion of Caulaincourt, but N.'s conduct was "full of subterfuge and artifice."