As early as July, the First Consul made his grievances a subject of diplomatic remonstrance. Receiving a mild reply, he then enumerated as matters of complaint, in addition to the license of the English papers, the residence of emigrants in Great Britain, her harboring conspirators like Georges Cadoudal, and her protection of the Bourbon princes. Although the Alien Act would have made it possible for the government of England to banish political refugees, it was contrary to a wise policy to do so, and this was explained to the French ambassador. In order, however, temporarily to appease the French government, Peltier was prosecuted for libel of the First Consul. By the skill of the defendant's counsel the trial was turned into a jubilation over the liberty of the press; and though the culprit was technically condemned, he was never brought to punishment. Thereafter, by the aid of a subvention from Bonaparte, the Irish radicals began to publish in London a fiery paper, the contents of which were supplied from Paris, and were intended to counteract the influence of the English journals.
Meantime the First Consul gave every evidence that his only warfare was to be a diplomatic one; his chief interest was clearly the improvement of French industries, the extension of beneficent public works, and the consolidation of his colonial empire. Louisiana had been ceded to France by Spain in exchange for the kingdom of Etruria, and an expedition was being fitted out to go and take possession of it. Efforts were directed also to the eastward, Sebastiani, a skilful diplomat, being despatched in September, under the guise of a commercial agent, carefully to examine Persian affairs and report on the situation in the Levant. As a countercheck to the outcry which Bonaparte believed would be raised over the annexation of Piedmont, he filled Ireland with secret agents whose duty it was to foment and organize the spirit of insurrection, while carefully studying the country. Ostensibly they too were commercial agents, and even when some of their instructions were seized by English officials, nothing to the contrary could be proved. In their case, as in that of Sebastiani, it does not appear that Bonaparte was aiming at anything but to secure an alternative in case of extremity. That he had eventually to take the alternative in Ireland is no proof to the contrary. Similarly there was no overt hostility in the fact, considered from any point of view, that Ney's fine army of thirty thousand men, sent to Switzerland ostensibly in the interest of good order, served likewise to check both Prussia and Austria, should they prove restive under the new reorganization of Europe. When England remonstrated, Bonaparte declared in a note of October twenty-third, 1802, to his ambassador in England, that his resolution was taken. If war was threatened, it must needs be a continental war, the consequence of which could only be to force him to conquer Europe. He was about thirty-three years old. Hitherto he had destroyed only second-class states. "Who knew how long he would take to change the face of Europe again, and resuscitate the empire of the West?" This paper Otto, the ambassador, virtually suppressed, knowing how far the threat would jeopardize the peace.
During the summer of 1802, Fox journeyed to Paris, where he was presented to Bonaparte early in September. The English statesman was fascinated, and departed with the conviction that his host desired nothing but peace with a liberal policy both domestic and foreign as far as was consistent with safety. But the English press became none the less virulent in consequence of Fox's favorable report, or of a brilliant defense of France, which he made from his place in Parliament. Toward the close of January, 1803, Talleyrand remonstrated with Whitworth, plumply demanding what England intended to do about Malta. Whitworth made an evasive answer, hinting that the King's opinion of the changes which had taken place in Europe since the treaty might be of importance in determining him as to the disposal of the island. This was the first official intimation that England did not intend to keep her promise. A few days later Sebastiani returned from the East, and on January thirtieth, 1803, the "Moniteur" published his thorough and careful report. It was a long document, fully explaining every source of English weakness in the Orient, and setting forth the possibilities of re-establishing French colonies in Egypt and the Levant. There was only one menacing phrase, but it expressed an unpalatable truth, that "six thousand French troops could now conquer Egypt." The publication in England of this paper raised a tremendous popular storm, and it has pleased many historians to regard Bonaparte's course as a virtual declaration of war. In reality it was merely a French Roland for the English Oliver. If England intended to keep Malta, let her beware of her prestige in the East. Had Bonaparte proposed to act on Sebastiani's report, he certainly would not have published it. Of course, the English populace utterly failed to grasp so nice a point, and the incident so strained the relations of France and England that all Europe saw the impending crisis—one or the other, or both, must consent to a modification of the treaty in respect to Malta, or there would be war.
CHAPTER XXV
Tension between England and France[26]
Reciprocal Impressions — Imminence of War — State of England — Bonaparte as a French Burgher — The Democracy of the Tuileries — Private Interview of Bonaparte and Whitworth — The English Militia Mobilized — Hot Words at Bonaparte's Reception — Explanation of the Scene — France Still Pacific — England Immovable — Declaration of War.
1803
A trustworthy estimate has fixed the number of strangers who flocked to France during 1802 at twenty thousand, of whom four fifths were Britons—Fox and Lord Holland among the number. The impressions of the sympathetic English were not merely favorable, their senses were stunned. Like Great Britain herself, France seemed rejuvenated by her successive revolutions, the national life getting new vigor from movement and change. It was clear to them that the new France would be a foe vastly more redoubtable than either the recent or the former one. Pleasure-seekers found nothing of what they desired, neither reckless vice nor flippant gaiety. Paris was serious, settled, almost reserved. The country was busy and peaceful, agriculture prosperous, the church restored, life and goods safe, the highways improved, social and mercantile relations regular and dignified. The person of Bonaparte impressed them as that of a sagacious statesman; a commingling, they thought and feared, of Cromwell and Washington. Of anything like their own industrial revival they saw nothing; the ruler, they could see, was not a great financier, not even a fair economist. But he was equally great as a warrior and a civilian, so they returned to report to deaf ears that peace must be maintained even at great sacrifice. Liberal and sympathetic Germans made similar observations, and they marked with interest the simple life and plain ways which prevailed in the Tuileries as the example given to the men of power who had risen to replace the theorists of the Revolution. The France that would offer itself in expiation of monarchical crimes, the regenerator of peoples, the expounder of Utopias, was no more. Firm and erect as her ruler, she appeared no longer as an enchantress, but as a Bellona; herself regenerate, she was defiant of the unregenerate dynasties, which retained but a single high quality: they were the only outward expression of continental nationality.
