The immediate results of the device were startling. By an act of January 4th, 1801, as many as 130 prominent Jacobins were "placed under special surveillance outside the European territory of the Republic"—a specious phrase for denoting a living death amidst the wastes of French Guiana or the Seychelles. Some of the threatened persons escaped, perhaps owing to the connivance of Fouché; some were sent to the Isle of Oléron; but the others were forthwith despatched to the miseries of captivity in the tropics. Among these were personages so diverse as Rossignol, once the scourge of France with his force of Parisian cut-throats, and Destrem, whose crime was his vehement upbraiding of Bonaparte at St. Cloud. After this measure had taken effect, it was discovered by judicial inquiry that the Jacobins had no connection with the outrage, which was the work of royalists named Saint-Réjant and Carbon. These were captured, and on January 31st, 1801, were executed; but their fate had no influence whatever on the sentence of the transported Jacobins. Of those who were sent to Guiana and the Seychelles, scarce twenty saw France again.[170]
Bonaparte's conduct with respect to plots deserves close attention. Never since the age of the Borgias have conspiracies been so skilfully exploited, so cunningly countermined. Moreover, his conduct with respect to the Aréna and Nivôse affairs had a wider significance; for he now quietly but firmly exchanged the policy of balancing parties for one which crushed the extreme republicans, and enhanced the importance of all who were likely to approve or condone the establishment of personal rule.
It is now time to consider the effect which Bonaparte's foreign policy had on his position in France. Reserving for a later chapter an examination of the Treaty of Amiens, we may here notice the close connection between Bonaparte's diplomatic successes and the perpetuation of his Consulate. All thoughtful students of history must have observed the warping influence which war and diplomacy have exerted on democratic institutions. The age of Alcibiades, the doom of the Roman Republic, and many other examples might be cited to show that free institutions can with difficulty survive the strain of a vast military organization or the insidious results of an exacting diplomacy. But never has the gulf between democracy and personal rule been so quickly spanned as by the commanding genius of Bonaparte.
The events which disgusted both England and France with war have been described above. Each antagonist had parried the attacks of the other. The blow which Bonaparte had aimed at Britain's commerce by his eastern expedition had been foiled; and a considerable French force was shut up in Egypt. His plan of relieving his starving garrison in Malta, by concluding a maritime truce, had been seen through by us; and after a blockade of two years, Valetta fell (September, 1800). But while Great Britain regained more than all her old power in the Mediterranean, she failed to make any impression on the land-power of France. The First Consul in the year 1801 compelled Naples and Portugal to give up the English alliance and to exclude our vessels and goods. In the north the results of the war had been in favour of the islanders. The Union Jack again waved triumphant on the Baltic, and all attempts of the French to rouse and support an Irish revolt had signally failed. Yet the French preparations for an invasion of England strained the resources of our exchequer and the patience of our people. The weary struggle was evidently about to close in a stalemate.
For political and financial reasons the two Powers needed repose. Bonaparte's authority was not as yet so firmly founded that he could afford to neglect the silent longings of France for peace; his institutions had not as yet taken root; and he needed money for public works and colonial enterprises. That he looked on peace as far more desirable for France than for England at the present time is clear from a confidential talk which he had with Roederer at the close of 1800. This bright thinker, to whom he often unbosomed himself, took exception to his remark that England could not wish for peace; whereupon the First Consul uttered these memorable words:
"My dear fellow, England ought not to wish for peace, because we are masters of the world. Spain is ours. We have a foothold in Italy. In Egypt we have the reversion to their tenure. Switzerland, Holland, Belgium—that is a matter irrevocably settled, on which we have declared to Prussia, Russia, and the Emperor that we alone, if it were necessary, would make war on all, namely, that there shall be no Stadholder in Holland, and that we will keep Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine. A stadholder in Holland would be as bad as a Bourbon in the St. Antoine suburb."[171]
The passage is remarkable, not only for its frank statement of the terms on which England and the Continent might have peace, but also because it discloses the rank undergrowth of pride and ambition that is beginning to overtop his reasoning faculties. Even before he has heard the news of Moreau's great victory of Hohenlinden, he equates the military strength of France with that of the rest of Europe: nay, he claims without a shadow of doubt the mastery of the world: he will wage, if necessary, a double war, against England for a colonial empire, and against Europe for domination in Holland and the Rhineland. It is naught to him that that double effort has exhausted France in the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. Holland, Switzerland, Italy, shall be French provinces, Egypt and the Indies shall be her satrapies, and la grande nation may then rest on her glories.
Had these aims been known at Westminster, Ministers would have counted peace far more harmful than war. But, while ambition reigned at Paris, dull common sense dictated the policy of Britain. In truth, our people needed rest: we were in the first stages of an industrial revolution: our cotton and woollen industries were passing from the cottage to the factory; and a large part of our folk were beginning to cluster in grimy, ill-organized townships. Population and wealth advanced by leaps and bounds; but with them came the nineteenth-century problems of widening class distinctions and uncertainty of employment. The food-supply was often inadequate, and in 1801 the price of wheat in the London market ranged from £6 to £8 the quarter; the quartern loaf selling at times for as much as 1s. 10-1/2d.[172]
The state of the sister island was even worse. The discontent of Ireland had been crushed by the severe repression which followed the rising of 1798; and the bonds connecting the two countries were forcibly tightened by the Act of Union of 1800. But rest and reform were urgently needed if this political welding was to acquire solid strength, and rest and reform were alike denied. The position of the Ministry at Westminster was also precarious. The opposition of George III. to the proposals for Catholic Emancipation, to which Pitt believed himself in honour bound, led to the resignation in February, 1801, of that able Minister. In the following month Addington, the Speaker of the House of Commons, with the complacence born of bland obtuseness, undertook to fill his place. At first, the Ministry was treated with the tolerance due to the new Premier's urbanity, but it gradually faded away into contempt for his pitiful weakness in face of the dangers that threatened the realm.
Certain unofficial efforts in the cause of peace had been made during the year 1800, by a Frenchman, M. Otto, who had been charged to proceed to London to treat with the British Government for the exchange of prisoners. For various reasons his tentative proposals as to an accommodation between the belligerents had had no issue: but he continued to reside in London, and quietly sought to bring about a good understanding. The accession of the Addington Ministry favoured the opening of negotiations, the new Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Lord Hawkesbury, announcing His Majesty's desire for peace. Indeed, the one hope of the new Ministry, and of the king who supported it as the only alternative to Catholic Emancipation, was bound up with the cause of peace. In the next chapter it will appear how disastrous were the results of that strange political situation, when a morbidly conscientious king clung to the weak Addington, and jeopardised the interests of Britain, rather than accept a strong Minister and a measure of religious equality.