No Thoroughfare—Occasional Visitors—Negotiations—Fox—M. P.’s—Ex-and Prospective M. P.’s—Peers and their Families—Baronets—Soldiers—Sailors—Functionaries—Lawyers—Doctors—Clergymen—Savants—Artists—Actors—Inventors—Claimants and Men of Business—Writers on France—Other Authors—Residents—Ancestors—Fugitives—Emigrés.
The Peace of Amiens reopened France, and not merely France but central and southern Europe, to British travellers. Since the outbreak of hostilities in 1793 the ‘grand tour’ had been suspended. Maritime ascendency, indeed, had always ensured our communications with North Germany and Italy, but the risk of capture by privateers such as befell Richard (afterwards the Marquis) Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington’s elder brother, on his return from Lisbon in 1794, coupled with intermittent campaigns and conquests by France, had virtually put a stop to foreign travel. Young noblemen in charge of tutors or ‘bear-wards’ had ceased to traverse the Continent, and French schools had ceased to receive British students. The schools, moreover, had mostly been closed by the Revolution. An Arthur Wellesley, even if inclined, could not have studied horsemanship at Angers, nor could a Gilbert Elliot have been the comrade of a Mirabeau at Fontainebleau. So also as to girls. Pentemont Abbey in Paris, where daughters of such aristocratic families as Annesley, Hobart, De Ros and De Bathe had been educated between 1780 and 1789, was shut, preparatory to conversion into a barrack,[3] while the English Austin convent, where for 150 years Towneleys, Dormers, and Fermors had been pupils, sometimes when adults returning as nuns, though still in the possession of the community, had not yet been reopened as a school. London newspapers complacently calculated the money thus prevented from leaving the country.
It it true that a few of the Englishmen arrested as hostages for Toulon in the autumn of 1793, though released after the Terror, had been unable or unwilling to quit France. Christopher Potter, ex-M.P. for Colchester, in 1796 offered Lord Malmesbury, on behalf of Barras, to secure peace for a bribe of half a million. Captain Henry Swinburne, commissioner for exchanging prisoners, a collateral ancestor of the poet, likewise found in Paris about that date Mrs. Grace Dalrymple Elliott, ex-mistress of ‘Egalité’ Orleans, who remained till 1801, Admiral Rodney’s Portuguese wife and her two daughters, Richard Chenevix, grand-nephew of a Bishop of Waterford, Walter Smythe, brother of the famous Mrs. Fitzherbert, two sons of the Whitehall preacher Charles Este, and George Hamilton, a Jamaica planter whose wife, a daughter of Lord Leven, was afterwards, as we shall see, the companion of Sir Herbert Croft; but of course there had been scarcely any fresh arrivals. Indeed it was illegal for British subjects, unless with special permission, to cross over to France.[4] They were liable at home to punishment for the attempt, just as they were liable if they reached the French shore to being prevented from landing or to incarceration as spies. Lord Camelford, Pitt’s eccentric cousin, who threatened if Horne Tooke was refused admission as a clergyman to the seat for Old Sarum,[5] to nominate in his place his negro servant—a black man in lieu of a black coat—was arrested in February 1799 when on the point of crossing the Channel; but as his object was to examine the Mediterranean ports he was liberated, being, however, deprived of his naval post. We shall hear of him again. Boyd and Ker, bankers of whom too we shall hear again, made their way back to Paris in 1797 in the hope of recovering confiscated property, but were promptly packed off. A London newspaper of that year mentions that two men who had paid a Prussian captain eighty guineas for a passage from Dover to Calais were also unceremoniously expelled. Braham, however, and Miss Storace got to Paris and gave concerts in 1797. Thomas Hardy, the radical shoemaker, managed to send Thomas Paine a pair of shoes so good that Paine lent them as a model to a Parisian craftsman, but Hardy would not have found it easy to carry them over himself. Fishermen and smugglers, it is true, kept up intermittent communications, conveying newspapers or merchandise, but they seldom ran the risk of taking passengers. Even fishing-boats, moreover, which on both sides had been unmolested, were in January 1801 declared by the British Government liable to capture; but Bonaparte’s threat of recalling Otto, the commissioner of exchanges, from a country where the laws and usages of war were disregarded and violated,[6] coincidentally with the resignation of Pitt on account of George III.’s objection to Catholic emancipation, led to this order being rescinded. Indeed the explanations given on this point by the new Addington Administration paved the way for peace negotiations.
There had been, it is true, isolated opportunities for Englishmen of forming or communicating impressions of France. Malmesbury[7] had not only been at Paris in 1796, but at Lille in 1797, on both occasions receiving an offer from Barras through a Bostonian named Melville—probably the son of Major Thomas Melville, one of the Boston tea-party, the last American to wear a cocked hat—to conclude peace for £450,000.[8] Malmesbury[9] and his staff on their return assuredly found much avidity for information on the France transformed by the Revolution. That staff consisted at Paris of George Ellis, of the Anti-Jacobin, Lord Granville Leveson-Gower, of whom we shall hear again, and James Talbot, afterwards Secretary of Legation in Switzerland.[10] To avoid being mobbed they were obliged to wear the republican cockade whenever they appeared in the street. At Lille Malmesbury was accompanied not only by Ellis and Talbot, but by Henry Wellesley, afterwards Earl Cowley, and by Lord Morpeth, afterwards Earl of Carlisle. Not merely Swinburne but Captain James Cotes and General Knox were also sent to Paris between 1796 and 1799 to effect an exchange of prisoners. They must have been eagerly questioned on their return. The notorious Governor Wall, who, living in the south of France, had been refused service in the French army,[11] went back to England in 1797, but clandestinely, and it would have been better for him had he remained on the Continent. He had to conceal his identity and his experiences.[12] But Sir Sidney Smith had escaped from the Temple in 1798 after two years’ incarceration, and Napoleon in the following year released some English prisoners, sending them home with professions of a desire for peace. Sir Robert Barclay, a diplomatist captured at sea, was also, after half an hour’s conversation, liberated by him. Lord Carysfort, whose mutinous crew had taken him to Brest, was likewise permitted, in November 1800, after nine months’ detention, to visit his family on parole. Masquerier managed, moreover, in that year to visit Paris and to sketch Napoleon’s portrait for exhibition in London. Tallien, on the other hand, captured by the English on his way back from Egypt, had been allowed in March 1800 to return to France, where he could give a glowing account of the attentions paid him by the Opposition leaders, and of his presence, the observed of all observers, at parliamentary debates. On re-entering Paris he found that his handsome wife, Thérése Cabarrus, had become the mistress of the army contractor Ouvrard, and she never rejoined him.
But, broadly speaking, Englishmen and Frenchmen had for nearly a decade been perfect strangers, so that a British cartoon entitled ‘The First Kiss this Ten Years’ depicted Monsieur François stooping to kiss Britannia with the words, ‘Madam, permit me to pay my profound esteem to your engaging person and to seal on your divine lips my everlasting attachment.’ To which Britannia replies, ‘Monsieur, you are truly a well-bred gentleman, and though you make me blush, yet you kiss so delicately that I could not refuse you, though I was sure that you would deceive me again.’
The peace preliminaries were signed on the 1st October 1801. England, without waiting for the ratifications, released her 14,000 French prisoners,[13] and on the 23rd October Boulogne, for the first time for nearly nine years, saw the arrival of an English vessel bringing 160 of these captives.
It is not my purpose to enter into the details of the negotiations, nor need I dwell on the rejoicings for the peace. Cobbett in London had his windows smashed for refusing to illuminate, and the jury recommended to mercy three of the delinquents, but Cobbett, though invited by the judge to join in this recommendation, declined, stating that he expected justice. The London mob took the horses out of Otto’s carriage and drew it, while Lauriston, grand-nephew of the famous speculator Law,[14] on coming over with the ratifications received ovations. On the 1st November Lord Cornwallis, ex-Governor of India, accompanied by his son, Lord Brome (afterwards the second and last marquis), by his illegitimate son, Colonel (eventually General Sir Miles) Nightingale,[15] his son-in-law, Captain Singleton, Colonel Littlehales (afterwards Sir E. Littlehales Baker), and Francis (brother of Sir John) Moore, started for Paris.[16]
Amiens had been chosen for the negotiations, but Napoleon, evidently wishing Lord Cornwallis to see how firmly the Consulate was established, had invited him to come round by Paris on the plea of showing him the illuminations of the 9th November in celebration of the peace with Austria. The road from Calais to Paris, which had since 1793 been almost deserted, was hastily put in repair for him, and was soon to be dotted with mail-coaches and post-chaises. Cornwallis arrived on the 7th November; he alighted at the Hotel Grange Batelière, the finest in Paris, it being an old mansion with spacious grounds, and he was received by Napoleon on the 10th. Napoleon suggested to him a reciprocal expulsion of foreign conspirators, the Bourbon princes to be packed off by England, and the United Irishmen by France; but Cornwallis naturally evaded so delicate a question. Napoleon did not invite him to dinner, and did not rise to receive Lord Brome in his box at the Opera, an incivility much commented upon. Cornwallis gave a dinner on the 16th to Lord Minto, who was on his way home from the Vienna Embassy, and five other fellow-countrymen.
‘After dinner,’ says the Times, ‘the company went to the Opera, where the performance was the Mysteries of Isis. Every part of the house was so crowded that numbers were unable to procure places. Some couplets were sung in celebration of the union of the two nations, which excited an enthusiasm that displayed itself by universal and repeated bursts of applause.
‘Lord Cornwallis was so extremely affected by the scene, that he shed tears! On his rising to go away, the audience recommenced their testimonies of applause. His Lordship showed how much he was flattered by the reception he had met with, by bowing to them in the most affecting manner. The following may be given as a specimen of the verses sung upon this occasion:—