[291] "In the secret treaty, Alexander and Napoleon shared between them the continental world: all the south was abandoned to Napoleon, already master of Italy and arbiter of Germany, pushing his advanced post as far as the Vistula, and making Dantzic one of the most formidable arsenals."—Fouché, tom. i., p. 310.
[292] "It was perhaps a misfortune to me that I had not married a sister of the Emperor Alexander, as proposed to me by Alexander himself at Erfurth. But there were inconveniences in that union arising from her religion. I did not like to allow a Russian priest to be the confessor of my wife, as I considered that he would have been a spy in the Tuileries for Alexander."—Napoleon, Voice, &c., vol. ii., p. 150.
[293] See the treaty between Prussia and France, Annual Register, vol. xlix., p. 714.
[294] "De l'Egypte après la Balle d'Héliopolis."
[295] For Sir John Stuart's detail of the memorable battle of Maida, see Annual Register, vol. xlviii., p. 590; see also Jomini, tom. ii., p. 238.
[296] "The French soldiers had a great contempt for the English troops at the beginning of the war, caused, perhaps, by the failure of the expeditions under the Duke of York, the great want of alertness in the English advanced posts, and the misfortunes which befell your armies. In this they were fools, as the English were well known to be a brave nation. It was probably by a similar error that Reynier was beaten by General Stuart; as the French imagined you would run away and be driven into the sea. Reynier was a man of talent, but more fit to give counsel to an army of twenty or thirty thousand men, than to command one of five or six. It is difficult to conceive how little the French soldiers thought of yours, until they were taught the contrary."—Napoleon, Voice, &c., vol. ii., p. 47.
[297] Reynier died at Paris in 1814, at the age of forty-four. Besides his work on Egypt, he published "Conjectures sur les anciens habitans de l'Egypte," and "Sur les Sphinx qui accompagnent les Pyramides."
[298] See the very extraordinary account of the Pampas, published by Captain Head of the engineers.
[299] See Annual Register, vol. xlix., p. 223.
[300] In the time of Louis XIV., when the French envoy at the court of Constantinople came, in a great hurry, to intimate as important intelligence, some victory of his master over the Prussians, "Can you suppose it of consequence to his Serene Highness," said the Grand Vizier, with infinite contempt, "whether the dog bites the hog, or the hog bites the dog?"