A belated attempt had, indeed, been made to retain Tobago. The Premier and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Hawkesbury, were led by the French political agent in London, M. Otto, to believe that, in the ensuing negotiations at Amiens, every facility would be given by the French Government towards its retrocession to us, and that this act would be regarded as the means of indemnifying Great Britain for the heavy expense of supporting many thousands of French and Dutch prisoners. The Cabinet, relying on this promise as binding between honourable men, thereupon endeavoured to obtain the assent of George III. to the preliminaries in their ultimate form, and only the prospect of regaining Tobago by this compromise induced the King to give it. When it was too late, King and Ministers realized their mistake in relying on verbal promises and in failing to procure a written statement.[[182]]
The abandonment by Ministers of their former claim to Malta is equally strange. Nelson, though he held Malta to be useless as a base for the British fleet watching Toulon, made the memorable statement: "I consider Malta as a most important outwork to India." But a despatch from St. Petersburg, stating that the new Czar had concluded a formal treaty of alliance with the Order of St. John settled in Russia, may have convinced Addington and his colleagues that it would be better to forego all claim to Malta in order to cement the newly won friendship of Russia. Whatever may have been their motive, British Ministers consented to cede the island to the Knights of St. John under the protection of some third Power.
The preliminaries of peace were further remarkable for[pg.334] three strange omissions. They did not provide for the renewal of previous treaties of peace between the late combatants. War is held to break all previous treaties; and by failing to require the renewal of the treaties of 1713, 1763, and 1783, it was now open to Spain and France to cement, albeit in a new form, that Family Compact which it had long been the aim of British diplomacy to dissolve: the failure to renew those earlier treaties rendered it possible for the Court of Madrid to alienate any of its colonies to France, as at that very time was being arranged with respect to Louisiana.
The second omission was equally remarkable. No mention was made of any renewal of commercial intercourse between England and France. Doubtless a complete settlement of this question would have been difficult. British merchants would have looked for a renewal of that enlightened treaty of commerce of 1786-7, which had aroused the bitter opposition of French manufacturers. But the question might have been broached at London, and its omission from the preliminaries served as a reason for shelving it in the definitive treaty—a piece of folly which at once provoked the severest censure from British manufacturers, who thereby lost the markets of France, and her subject States, Holland, Spain, Switzerland, Genoa, and Etruria.
And, finally, the terms of peace provided no compensation either for the French royal House or for the dispossessed House of Orange. Here again, it would have been very difficult to find a recompense such as the Bourbons could with dignity have accepted; and the suggestion made by one of the royalist exiles to Lord Hawkesbury, that Great Britain should seize Crete and hand it over to them, will show how desperate was their case.[[183]] Nevertheless, some effort should have been made by a Government which had so often proclaimed its championship of the legitimist cause. Still more glaring was the omission of any stipulation for an indemnity for[pg.335] the House of Orange, now exiled from the Batavian Republic. That claim, though urged at the outset, found no place in the preliminaries; and the mingled surprise and contempt felt in the salons of Paris at the conduct of the British Government is shown in a semiofficial report sent thence by one of its secret agents:
"I cannot get it into my head that the British Ministry has acted in good faith in subscribing to preliminaries of peace, which, considering the respective position of the parties, would be harmful to the English people.... People are persuaded in France that the moderation of England is only a snare put in Bonaparte's way, and it is mainly in order to dispel it that our journals have received the order to make much of the advantages which must accrue to England from the conquests retained by her; but the journalists have convinced nobody, and it is said openly that if our European conquests are consolidated by a general peace, France will, within ten years, subjugate all Europe, Great Britain included, despite all her vast dominions in India. Only within the last few days have people here believed in the sincerity of the English preliminaries of peace, and they say everywhere that, after having gloriously sailed past the rocks that Bonaparte's cunning had placed in its track, the British Ministry has completely foundered at the mouth of the harbour. People blame the whole structure of the peace as betraying marks of feebleness in all that concerns the dignity and the interests of the King; ... and we cannot excuse its neglect of the royalists, whose interests are entirely set aside in the preliminaries. Men are especially astonished at England's retrocession of Martinique without a single stipulation for the colonists there, who are at the mercy of a government as rapacious as it is fickle. All the owners of colonial property are very uneasy, and do not hide their annoyance against England on this score."[[184]]
This interesting report gives a glimpse into the real thought of Paris such as is rarely afforded by the tamed or venal Press. As Bonaparte's spies enabled him to feel every throb of the French pulse, he must at once have seen how great was the prestige which he gained by[pg.336] these first diplomatic successes, and how precarious was the foothold of the English Ministers on the slippery grade of concession to which they had been lured. Addington surely should have remembered that only the strong man can with safety recede at the outset, and that an act of concession which, coming from a master mind, is interpreted as one of noble magnanimity, will be scornfully snatched from a nerveless hand as a sign of timorous complaisance. But the public statements and the secret avowals of our leaders show that they wished "to try the experiment of peace," now that France had returned to ordinary political conditions and Jacobinism was curbed by Bonaparte. "Perhaps," wrote Castlereagh, "France, satisfied with her recent acquisitions, will find her interest in that system of internal improvement which is necessarily connected with peace."[[185]] There is no reason for doubting the sincerity of this statement. Our policy was distinctly and continuously complaisant: France regained her colonies: she was not required to withdraw from Switzerland and Holland. Who could expect, from what was then known of Bonaparte's character, that a peace so fraught with glory and profit would not satisfy French honour and his own ambition?
Peace, then, was an "experiment." The British Government wished to see whether France would turn from revolution and war to agriculture and commerce, whether her young ruler be satisfied with a position of grandeur and solid power such as Louis XIV. had rarely enjoyed. Alas! the failure of the experiment was patent to all save the blandest optimists long before the Preliminaries of London took form in the definitive Treaty of Amiens. Bonaparte's aim now was to keep our Government strictly to the provisional terms of peace which it had imprudently signed. Even before the negotiations were opened at Amiens, he ordered Joseph Bonaparte to listen to no proposal concerning the King of Sardinia and the ex-Stadholder of Holland,[pg.337] and asserted that the "internal affairs of the Batavian Republic, of Germany, of Helvetia, and of the Italian Republics" were "absolutely alien to the discussions with England." This implied that England was to be shut out from Continental politics, and that France was to regulate the affairs of central and southern Europe. This observance of the letter was, however, less rigid where French colonial and maritime interests were at stake. Dextrous feelers were put forth seawards, and it was only when these were repulsed that the French negotiators encased themselves in their preliminaries.
The task of reducing those articles to a definitive treaty devolved, on the British side, on the Marquis Cornwallis, a gouty, world-weary old soldier, chiefly remembered for the surrender which ended the American War. Nevertheless, he had everywhere won respect for his personal probity in the administration of Indian affairs, and there must also have been some convincing qualities in a personality which drew from Napoleon at St. Helena the remark: "I do not believe that Cornwallis was a man of first-rate abilities: but he had talent, great probity, sincerity, and never broke his word.... He was a man of honour—a true Englishman."
Against Lord Cornwallis, and his far abler secretary, Mr. Merry, were pitted Joseph Bonaparte and his secretaries. The abilities of the eldest of the Bonapartes have been much underrated. Though he lacked the masterful force and wide powers of his second brother, yet at Lunéville Joseph proved himself to be an able diplomatist, and later on in his tenure of power at Naples and Madrid he displayed no small administrative gifts. Moreover, his tact and kindliness kindled in all who knew him a warmth of friendship such as Napoleon's sterner qualities rarely inspired. The one was loved as a man: for the other, even his earlier acquaintances felt admiration and devotion, but always mingled with a certain fear of the demi-god that would at times blaze forth. This was the dread personality that urged Talleyrand and Joseph Bonaparte to their utmost [pg.338] endeavours and steeled them against any untoward complaisance at Amiens.