[252] See excellent remarks on the ‘Rights of war as against Enemies’ in Wheaton, vol. ii. ch. ii. pp. 75-131.
[253] It is said that of thirty-five thousand men (including reinforcements) scarcely seven thousand reached France again (Alison, v. p. 43).
[254] The most striking instance was the prosecution of M. Peltier for an alleged libel on the First Consul. In this Peltier was condemned, though defended with extraordinary power and eloquence by Sir James Mackintosh (see ‘Trial of Peltier,’ etc., Lond. 1801).
[255] Perhaps the most graphic description of this remarkable scene is that by M. Thiers, in his ‘History of the Consulate and the Empire.’
[256] “Effroyable parole!” (“Frightful expression!”) ejaculates M. Thiers, “which was afterwards but too truly realised for the misfortune of our country” (France).
[257] M. Thiers dwells on all these aggressive schemes with a certain national pride. The lives of millions were to be sacrificed to carry out these mad freaks of ambition!
[258] The English Legislature was nearly unanimous in supporting the Declaration of War; the numbers in the House of Commons being three hundred and ninety-eight for, sixty-seven against; and in the House of Lords, one hundred and forty-two to ten (Alison, v. p. 126).
[259] Speech of M. de Fontanes in his reply to the Corps d’ l’Etat, when war was announced by Bonaparte.
[260] Others who had not held the King’s commission were occasionally thus detained. Thus the Rev. Mr. Lee, then a Fellow of New College Oxford, was kept a prisoner at Verdun till 1814. The number altogether arrested is said to have been ten thousand (Alison, v. 114).
[261] Extracted from two letters which appeared in the Morning Chronicle in the early part of 1804, and which attracted considerable attention at the time.