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 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, 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 endeavours and steeled them against any untoward complaisance at Amiens.
The selection of so honourable a man as Cornwallis afforded no slight guarantee for the sincerity of our Government, and its sincerity will stand the test of a perusal of its despatches. Having examined all those that deal with these negotiations, the present writer can affirm that the official instructions were in no respect modified by the secret injunctions: these referred merely to such delicate and personal topics as the evacuation of Hanover by Prussian troops and the indemnities to be sought for the House of Orange and the House of Savoy. The circumstances of these two dispossessed dynasties were explained so as to show that the former Dutch Stadholder had a very strong claim on us, as well as on France and the Batavian Republic; while the championship of the House of Savoy by the Czar rendered the claims of that ancient family on the intervention of George III. less direct and personal than those of the Prince of Orange. Indeed, England would have insisted on the insertion of a clause to this effect in the preliminaries had not other arrangements been on foot at Berlin which promised to yield due compensation to this unfortunate prince. Doubtless the motives of the British Ministers were good, but their failure to insert such a clause fatally prejudiced their case all through the negotiations at Amiens.
The British official declaration respecting Malta was clear and practical. The island was to be restored to the Knights of the Order of St. John and placed under the protection of a third Power other than France and England. But the reconstitution of the Order was no less difficult than the choice of a strong and disinterested protecting Power. Lord Hawkesbury proposed that Russia be the guaranteeing Power. No proposal could have been more reasonable. The claims of the Czar to the protectorate of the Order had been so recently asserted by a treaty with the knights that no other conclusion seemed feasible. And, in order to assuage the grievances of the islanders and strengthen the rule of the knights, the British Ministry desired that the natives of Malta should gain a foothold in the new constitution. The lack of civil and political rights had contributed so materially to the overthrow of the Order that no reconstruction of that shattered body could be deemed intelligent, or even honest, which did not cement its interests with those of the native Maltese. The First Consul, however, at once demurred to both these proposals. In the course of a long interview with Cornwallis at Paris,[186] he adverted to the danger of bringing Russia's maritime pressure to bear on Mediterranean questions, especially as her sovereigns "had of late shown themselves to be such unsteady politicians." This of course referred to the English proclivities of Alexander I., and it is clear that Bonaparte's annoyance with Alexander was the first unsettling influence which prevented the solution of the Maltese question. The First Consul also admitted to Cornwallis that the King of Naples, despite his ancient claims of suzerainty over Malta, could not be considered a satisfactory guarantor, as between two Great Powers; and he then proposed that the tangle should be cut by blowing up the fortifications of Valetta.
The mere suggestion of such an act affords eloquent proof of the difficulties besetting the whole question. To destroy works of vast extent, which were the bulwark of Christendom against the Barbary pirates, would practically have involved the handing over of Valetta to those pests of the Mediterranean; and from Malta as a new base of operations they could have spread devastation along the coasts of Sicily and Italy. This was the objection which Cornwallis at once offered to an other-wise specious proposal: he had recently received papers from Major-General Pigot at Malta, in which the same solution of the question was examined in detail. The British officer pointed out that the complete dismantling of the fortifications would expose the island, and therefore the coasts of Italy, to the rovers; yet he suggested a partial demolition, which seems to prove that the British officers in command at Malta did not contemplate the retention of the island and the infraction of the peace.
Our Government, however, disapproved of the destruction of the fortifications of Valetta as wounding the susceptibilities of the Czar, and as in no wise rendering impossible the seizure of the island and the reconstruction of those works by some future invader. In fact, as the British Ministry now aimed above all at maintaining good relations with the Czar, Bonaparte's proposal could only be regarded as an ingenious device for sundering the Anglo-Russian understanding. The French Minister at St. Petersburg was doing his utmost to prevent the rapprochement of the Czar to the Court of St James, and was striving to revive the moribund league of the Armed Neutrals. That last offer had "been rejected in the most peremptory manner and in terms almost bordering upon derision." Still there was reason to believe that the former Anglo-Russian disputes about Malta might be so far renewed as to bring Bonaparte and Alexander to an understanding. The sentimental Liberalism of the young Czar predisposed him towards a French alliance, and his whole disposition inclined him towards the brilliant opportunism of Paris rather than the frigid legitimacy of the Court of St. James. The Maltese affair and the possibility of reopening the Eastern Question were the two sources of hope to the promoters of a Franco-Russian alliance; for both these questions appealed to the chivalrous love of adventure and to the calculating ambition so curiously blent in Alexander's nature. Such, then, was the motive which doubtless prompted Bonaparte's proposal concerning Valetta; such also were the reasons which certainly dictated its rejection by Great Britain.
In his interview with the First Consul at Paris, and in the subsequent negotiations at Amiens with Joseph Bonaparte, the question of Tobago and England's money claim for the support of French prisoners was found to be no less thorny than that of Malta. The Bonapartes firmly rejected the proposal for the retention of Tobago by England in lieu of her pecuniary demand. A Government which neglected to procure the insertion of its claim to Tobago among the Preliminaries of London could certainly not hope to regain that island in exchange for a concession to France that was in any degree disputable. But the two Bonapartes and Talleyrand now took their stand solely on the preliminaries, and politely waved on one side the earlier promises of M. Otto as unauthorized and invalid, They also closely scrutinized the British claim to an indemnity for the support of French prisoners. Though theoretically correct, it was open to an objection, which was urged by Bonaparte and Talleyrand with suave yet incisive irony. They suggested that the claim must be considered in relation to a counter-claim, soon to be sent from Paris, for the maintenance of all prisoners taken by the French from the various forces subsidized by Great Britain, a charge which "would probably not leave a balance so much in favour of His [Britannic] Majesty as His Government may have looked forward to." This retort was not so terrible as it appeared; for most of the papers necessary for the making up of the French counterclaim had been lost or destroyed during the Revolution. Yet the threat told with full effect on Cornwallis, who thereafter referred to the British claim as a "hopeless debt."[187] The officials of Downing Street drew a distinction between prisoners from armies merely subsidized by us and those taken from foreign forces actually under our control; but it is clear that Cornwallis ceased to press the claim. In fact, the British case was mismanaged from beginning to end: the accounts for the maintenance of French and Dutch prisoners were, in the first instance, wrongly drawn up; and there seems to have been little or no notion of the seriousness of the counter-claim, which came with all the effect of a volley from a masked battery, destructive alike to our diplomatic reputation and to our hope of retaining Tobago.
It is impossible to refer here to all the topics discussed at Amiens. The determination of the French Government to adopt a forward colonial and oceanic policy is clearly seen in its proposals made at the close of the year 1801. They were: (1) the abolition of salutes to the British flag on the high seas; (2) an absolute ownership of the eastern and western coasts of Newfoundland in return for a proposed cession of the isles of St. Pierre and Miquelon to us—which would have practically ceded to France in full sovereignty all the best fishing coasts of that land, with every prospect of settling the interior, in exchange for two islets devastated by war and then in British hands; (3) the right of the French to a share in the whale fishery in those seas; (4) the establishment of a French fishing station in the Falkland Isles; and (5) the extension of the French districts around the towns of Yanaon and Mahé in India.[188] To all these demands Lord Cornwallis opposed an unbending opposition. Weak as our policy had been on other affairs, it was firm as a rock on all maritime and Indian questions. In fact, the events to be described in the next chapter, which led to the consolidation of British power in Hindostan, would in all probability never have occurred but for the apprehensions excited by these French demands; and our masterful proconsul in Bengal, the Marquis Wellesley, could not have pursued his daring and expensive schemes of conquest, annexation, and forced alliances, had not the schemes of the First Consul played into the hands of the soldiers at Calcutta and weakened the protests of the dividend-hunters of Leadenhall Street.