For the treaty of Amiens contained other stipulations. England's warfare was not to be in vain. Trinidad and Ceylon were splendid acquisitions to her colonial empire, and she retained her right to use the harbors of the Cape of Good Hope. Except the two islands just mentioned, Spain and the Batavian Republic got all their colonies back, and the House of Orange was to be indemnified for its loss of power in Holland. As to the Oriental question, England's pride was not humbled, Turkey being left as before the war in respect to her territorial boundaries, and being recognized again as the suzerain both of the Ionian Isles and of Egypt. In return Great Britain was to evacuate the latter country, and by the surrender of Malta abandon her control of the Mediterranean highway. France was to evacuate Rome, Naples, and Elba. Such was the paper to which on March twenty-seventh, 1802, Joseph Bonaparte, Cornwallis, Azara, and Schimmelpenninck set their hands for their respective countries—France, Great Britain, Spain, and the Batavian Republic. No mention was made of Piedmont, or of the Helvetian Republic, or of the reconstruction of Germany in accordance with the peace of Lunéville, a matter which was to be settled by agreement between France and Russia according to a treaty which had been signed on October eighth, 1801. Alexander, the new Czar, on his accession in the previous March, had promptly abandoned the armed neutrality and the doctrine of "neutral flag, neutral goods." Ostensibly he remained friendly to Bonaparte, but he declared in his instructions to Markoff, his ambassador at Paris, that the First Consul, "in flattering the deceased Czar, had been mainly desirous to use him as a weapon against England." To Paul, who had been ready to fight for the "liberty of the seas," and to check Great Britain in India, Bonaparte might have yielded control in Italy; but to Alexander, who, it was clear, was about to desert France, he would naturally not yield one shred of continental control beyond what was absolutely essential for peace.
The success of the negotiations at Amiens was largely due to the personal characters of two men—Lord Cornwallis and Joseph Bonaparte. The latter was conciliatory; the former, as Napoleon told Lord Ebrington, in 1814, was from his integrity and goodness an honor to his country. No sooner was the treaty signed than the opposition leaders of the English Parliament began to declare that it gave to France the mastery of the Continent. Addington stoutly denied the allegation. Addison had always held the view that Great Britain had been made an island in order that she might be the arbiter of the Continent. This well-worn doctrine Addington vigorously maintained, and, stung by the taunts of his opponents, he began the reign of peace with a stronger emphasis than ever upon the time-honored policy of meddling in continental affairs. In the Batavian, Helvetian, Cisalpine, and Ligurian republics the English diplomatic agents renewed their efforts to discredit the French influence, giving comfort and support to those who would gladly have overturned all that Bonaparte had done. The malcontents were, however, comparatively few, because the people, having so long been the plaything of the old European dynasties, had been but slightly invigorated by the revolutionary epoch, and were content if only they might enjoy a period of uninterrupted repose.
In Germany, however, the English envoys had a better field, for in that disrupted land the case of the population, though resembling that of those who dwelt in the countries just enumerated, was not identical. Ever since France had asserted the doctrine that her natural frontier was the Rhine, the simplest answer to the question of how the temporal princes of the Germanic body were to be indemnified for the territories she was seizing had evidently been found in recurring to Richelieu's policy at the close of the Thirty Years' War, namely, the secularization of bishoprics, and their incorporation with dynastic states. In the Congress of Rastadt, Austria had grudgingly admitted this as a guiding principle, disastrous as it was to her supremacy in the empire—a supremacy based on the support of the ecclesiastical rulers, who, being bound to no dynasty, naturally rallied about the great Roman Catholic power, in opposition to Prussia, her Protestant rival. So far, therefore, Roman Catholicism in Germany had been in the main conservative, and English diplomatists found ample room for the display of their ingenuity in offsetting religious factions, as well as political cliques and dynastic interests, one against the other.
But after the Concordat Bonaparte's position was so utterly changed that all the liberal Roman Catholics in Germany, and a large proportion of the rest, had little to choose between France and Austria. He was therefore able to carry out in Germany the excellent policy of entire reconstruction which he had pursued in Italy—a policy which had had the sanction of French royalism and of French republicanism. As a protector of the Church he could go only so far in the wholesome process as he was able to make the world believe to be necessary. Insisting, with this in view, that both the great German powers should be separated from the Rhine by a line of little states, he began to carve lands and transfer communities without the slightest regard to their will. Nothing proves more conclusively how entirely the balance of power had been destroyed, or how the old conceptions of international relations were crushed, than the position of the Germanic body and the disposition Bonaparte made of it. The petty states fell suppliant at Talleyrand's feet, and the venal minister spared those which paid the most; the others disappeared from the map without any protest except from their own deposed princes. Scores of the corrupt little courts which had disgraced the German name died without any to mourn their demise, and proud imperial cities were forced to bow before the semi-feudal dynasties. The process wrought havoc in the local jealousies which had prevented in Germany that wholesome national development already advanced among other European peoples.
In a succession of treaties the work went steadily on. The Czar was pacified by liberal grants to his relatives of the reigning house of Würtemberg. Prussia got an exchange for Cleves and the price of her neutrality in such fine domains as Hildesheim, Paderborn, Quedlinburg, and many others; Austria suffered for her defeats in accepting the Italian arrangements, and a smaller share than seemed her right in Germany; but the Grand Duke of Tuscany got Salzburg, Berchtesgaden, Brixen, Trent, and part of Eichstädt. Bavaria received Passau in fulfilment of Bonaparte's promises. Baden and Darmstadt were, as border states, made slightly stronger than they had been. The substance of the arrangement between France and Russia was the humiliation of Austria, the strengthening of Prussia, the dismemberment of the Holy Roman Empire, and the dislocation of the hitherto existing scheme of European politics. The ruling houses of Bavaria, Würtemberg, Baden, and Darmstadt were all related to the Czar. It seemed a gain for him that their strength was increased; on the other hand, they discerned in Bonaparte the power which rewarded them for their fidelity to France, and became his firm supporters. It is needless to say that English statesmen looked on aghast at this reconstruction of Europe, and began to ask if their country's traditional enemy could thus work its will without hindrance, and to the hurt, not only of England's glory, but of England's prosperity, perhaps to the menace even of her independence.
These changes were in steady progress throughout the autumn of 1802 and the first month of 1803, being completed in February of this year. They were not announced as the "enactment of the imperial delegates," so called by courtesy, until then, and whatever might have been suspected, they were not definitely known before then. But as early as September, 1802, Addington took a step which proves that at that early date his government was determined to put its own interpretation on the treaty of Amiens, or rather to consider any interpretation of the treaty of Lunéville not in England's favor as a breach of the treaty of Amiens. This step was the appointment as British ambassador at Paris of Lord Whitworth, a stately, unbending, self-restrained aristocrat. He would have been an admirable representative of Great Britain at a Bourbon court; his presence at the quasi-republican consular levees of Bonaparte was in itself a standing rebuke to the new order. The character of his instructions was in consonance with his appointment. They expressed suspicion that France was secretly planning to harm English interests, and required him to pay special attention to the lands "under the dominion of the republic." The annexation of Piedmont was cited as a grievance, as was also the attitude of France to the three new republics. He was to refuse any satisfaction concerning Malta, and not to commit "his Majesty as to what may be eventually his intentions with respect to the island." In particular, he was to watch the French policy in regard to the Indies, both East and West. Such a man with such instructions could in no wise be considered or felt to be a minister of peace. He began in December to assert that the French nation despised its government, and that Bonaparte's finances were in serious disorder. Thenceforward carping and faultfinding were intermingled in his correspondence with statements outwardly calm but suppressedly indignant about the course of France. He said, moreover, that every year of peace was better for Great Britain than a year of war, because it would give strength and courage to those of the French whose interest lay in overthrowing the Consulate, which, on the other hand, would be weakened by inactivity.
The First Consul was equally astute. It is said that during the winter a member of the council of state expressed his satisfaction with the peace. "Do the signatures of the great powers make them any less our foes?" was the rejoinder of Bonaparte. The response was of course in the negative. "Well, then," he continued, "draw the necessary conclusion. If these states are always keeping war in petto in order to renew it, the sooner it comes the better; for with every day fades the memory of their defeats, while the prestige of our victories is forgotten in equal measure. Every advantage, then, is on their side. Remember that a first consul is in no respect like these kings by the grace of God, who look on their kingdoms as heirlooms. This is for them an advantage, for us a hindrance. Hated by its neighbors, compelled to hold in restraint various classes of internal malcontents and at the same time to inspire respect in so many external foes, the French state needs glory, and therefore war. It must either surpass all others or fall. I shall put up with peace as long as my neighbors are able to keep it, but I shall think it an advantage if they compel me to take up my arms before they are rusty.... From our point of view I regard the peace as a short armistice, and consider myself doomed to fight almost without intermission throughout my term of office." This language, though credibly reported, was set down at a much later time, as also was a statement of Lucien's in his memoirs that it was ambition, not patriotism, which after the peace of Amiens made war a necessity to his brother. The notices of the time which have come to us from those not in the thick of plot and intrigue—men like Rapp and others of his kind—create a different impression: that Bonaparte was heartily sick of war, and really desired peace, not of course a peace of recession, but one of further penetration for French prestige and influence, an invading peace as it has been aptly styled.
Yet it is impossible to feel sure of the First Consul's innermost desire, in view of the great army at his back eager for war and still posted at the most advantageous strategic points of Europe. Where such an army exists there must be a powerful military party, and such a party must influence a great general. As late as 1875 the great military leaders of the German Empire nearly thwarted the statecraft of Bismarck, and almost succeeded in renewing the Franco-Prussian war for the purpose of reducing France to vassalage. Similar influences may have weighed at times with Bonaparte; but the charge that already in 1802 France was the destined victim of Bonaparte's ambition, and all Europe but its tool, remains unproved. He was not yet convinced that war was essential for the extension of his influence, and there is no proof until two years later that his dreams of Western empire had taken definite form. Then, when France was fighting for her life with an England governed by a narrow-minded and unwholesome king, and when dynastic Europe was all allied against him, he appears to have become convinced that the time had finally arrived when, to defeat England and destroy dynastic rule in Europe, he must by all means at his command unite the Western world under his sway.
Both the preliminaries of London and the peace of Amiens had been hailed with joy by the industrial and mercantile classes of England. It is true the Christian sentiment of the country was shocked by the official restoration of the slave-trade on the part of France; but that feeling was momentarily stilled in view of the untold benefits to commerce which might justly be expected as the result of peace. In this expectation, however, the merchants were disappointed, for the Consulate immediately put in force certain arbitrary and annoying shipping regulations intended to limit any encroachments on its rigid protective policy. The pious philanthropy of England has ever seen missionary zeal go hand in hand with British commerce as the best means of simultaneously fulfilling England's destiny and ameliorating the world. Accordingly, public opinion again took up the cry against the slave-trade, and soon was so changed that the cheers of the multitude were turned into renewed execrations of Bonaparte. Thenceforward the influences which combined to create a warlike temper in England were cumulative. It was found by private citizens that the clause of the treaty which removed all sequestrations from their property in France was not easily enforced. Statesmen began to say that by a further extension of the system of federated states under French hegemony their maritime empire would insure nothing but the insignificant carrying-trade with the colonies, while the European commerce, which was far more important, would be delivered into other hands. The King feared lest, with the guarantee of territorial sanctity, which was its mainstay, absolutism itself would go.
The bitter discontent of the British was expressed in the public press almost before the ink was dry on the treaty of Amiens. Bonaparte, demanding the right to establish consuls in the chief ports of England and Ireland, designated the officials and sent them to their posts. Under the pretext that these men were spies, charged to make and forward to Paris plans of the harbors, they were seized, and forbidden to enter on their duties. Moreover, one Peltier, an emigrant, began without hindrance from the authorities to publish in London a French royalist journal, "L'Ambigu," which lampooned and abused the First Consul in a shameful but brilliant way. Two months after the date of the treaty Bonaparte began to remonstrate against such license. The English administration pleaded the freedom of the press under constitutional guarantees, and asserted the truth of the allegations brought against the consuls. Soon the tide of recrimination was in full flood, and the columns of the "Moniteur" were filled with matter similar to the offensive contents of the English press. The journals of Paris began to declare that "Carthage must be destroyed." It was the irony of fate that while in England the government could deny its responsibility for the utterances of the newspapers, Bonaparte, who had utterly destroyed the freedom of the press in France, could be held to strict account for every word printed.