468 NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE. [1806. Fox, a Bill introduced to the Peers by the First Lord of the Treasury, prohibiting British subjects from engaging in the trade for supplying foreign settlements or the conquered colonies, was carried. This almost unexpected success called for new efforts. On the 10th of June, Mr. Fox proposed a Resolution "that this House, conceiving the African Slave Trade to be contrary to the principles of justice, humanity, and sound policy, will, with all practical expedition, proceed to take effectual measures for abolishing the said trade, in such manner, and at such period, as may be deemed advisable." The motion was carried by 114 against 15. In moving his Resolution Mr. Fox used these touching words: "So fully am I impressed with the vast importance and necessity of attaining what will be the object of my motion this day, that if, during the forty years that I have now had the honour of a seat in parliament, I had been so fortunate as to accomplish that, and that only, I should think I had done enough, and could retire from public life with comfort, and conscious satisfaction that I had done my duty." On the 19th of June, Mr. Fox spoke, for the last time, in the House of Commons. There is a pleasant reminiscence of this, his last attendance in parliament, in the Diary of lord Colchester. In the room behind the Chair he drank tea with the Speaker, whilst the evidence upon the Oude charge against lord Wellesley was being discussed in Committee. They gossiped pleasantly upon a variety of subjects;-upon the dark ages, which Fox denied to be so dark as we were apt to represent them; upon Livy's history, which he looked upon as a beau tiful romance; upon the Greek historians; upon political economy, and his little faith in Adam Smith, and in the other economists, whose reasons were so plausible but so inconclusive; on the eminence of the Greeks in arts and arms, which he chiefly attributed to their abandonment of pursuits, such as those of commerce and manufactures, which engaged modern nations. this desultory talk he was extremely pleasant, and appeared to please himself." * A week later, Wilberforce records in his Diary, that William Smith, after they left the House, was talking of Fox constrainedly; "when at last, overcome by his feelings, he burst out, with a real divulging of his danger-dropsy. Poor fellow! how melancholy his case! he has not one religious friend, or one who knows anything about it. How wonderful God's Providence! How poor a master the world! No sooner grasps his long sought object than it shews itself a bubble, and he is forced to give it up." + "In The second great point upon which Mr. Fox had set his heart, when he accepted office, was the conclusion of a sound and honourable peace. He had not received the seals as Foreign Secretary longer than ten or twelve days, when he had occasion to address M. Talleyrand upon a very singular occurrence; which he felt it his duty," as an honest man," to communicate to the French minister. A person informed Mr. Fox that he had lately returned from Paris, and had something to impart which would give him satisfaction: "I received him," says Fox, "alone in my closet; when, after some unimportant conversation, this villain had the audacity to tell me, that it was necessary for the tranquillity of all crowned heads to put to death the ruler of * Lord Colchester's "Diary," vol. ii. p. 70. 1806.] NEGOTIATIONS FOR PEACE. 469 France; and that for this purpose a house had been hired at Passy, from which this detestable project could be carried into effect with certainty, and without risk." Mr. Fox caused the man to be detained, and wrote to Talleyrand, in continuation of this statement, that he could not, according to our laws, detain him long; but that the wretch should not be sent away till full time had been gained to avert any danger. The letter was laid before Bonaparte, who upon reading it said, "I recognize here the principles of honour and of virtue by which Mr. Fox has ever been actuated." On the 5th Talleyrand sent to Fox a copy of the emperor's speech to the Legislative Body. It contained these words: "I desire peace with England. On my part I shall never delay it for a moment. I shall always be ready to conclude it, taking for its basis the stipulations of the treaty of Amiens." On the 26th of March the Secretary for Foreign Affairs wrote a long despatch to the French minister, in which he stated that he had submitted the private letter to the king; that his majesty's wishes were uniformly pacific, but that a safe and lasting peace was what the king had in view, and not an uncertain truce; that the stipulations of the treaty of Amiens had been variously interpreted; but that the true basis of a negotiation would be the reciprocal recognition of the following principle: "That the object of both parties should be a peace honourable for both, and for their respective allies; and, at the same time, of a nature to secure, as far as is in their power, the future tranquillity of Europe." Many were the letters that passed between Fox and Talleyrand; in which the simple and straightforward style of the Englishman contrasts in a striking manner with the involved sentences, well adapted to conceal his thoughts, of the subtle Frenchman. Fox set out by assuming that the negotiation was to be conducted as by "two great powers, equally despising every idea of chicane." This correspondence went on up to the 14th June, the British minister insisting that the negotiation should be conducted with reference to the British alliance with Russia, and the French minister as constantly refusing to treat upon that principle. The negotiation then took another shape. Lord Yarmouth was amongst the Englishmen detained in France at the commencement of the war. Talleyrand induced him to be the medium of a communication with the Court of St. James's, of a private and confidential conversation, in which Talleyrand would explain the sentiments and views of France. At a second interview, Talleyrand told lord Yarmouth that the restoration of Hanover should be no difficulty; that the restoration of Naples to the king of Sicily should be no difficulty. Full powers were then sent to lord Yarmouth to negotiate; which he properly held back till he had seen more clearly what was really meant. Talleyrand had gone from his former propositions with regard to Sicily. At the end of July lord Yarmouth communicated to Mr. Fox that a separate treaty had been concluded between Russia and France. This was a great discouragement to the successful termination of the negotiation. But Fox still persevered in his endeavours for peace; and directed the earl of Lauderdale to proceed to Paris as a plenipotentiary, although he feared that no peace could be concluded upon terms which would be admissible. The negotiations were begun upon the principle of the uti possidetis-the principle of retaining what each party possessed. The French government shifted from that position. Meanwhile the emperor 470 END OF THE NEGOTIATIONS-DEATH OF FOX. [1806. of Russia repudiated the treaty which a rash if not treacherous agent had concluded. This fact was known in England on the 4th of September. Mr. Fox died on the 13th. The diplomatic intercourse was prolonged till the 1st of October, when lord Howick wrote to lord Lauderdale, that after six months of negotiation, there could be no reason why France should not give a plain and decisive answer upon points which had been so long under consideration. In the last note of Talleyrand which preceded the final rupture of the negotiation, he said, "The event will disclose whether a new coalition will be more disadvantageous to France than those which have preceded it. The event will also disclose whether those who complain of the grandeur and ambition of France should not impute to their own hatred and injustice this very grandeur and ambition of which they accuse her." When the papers were laid before Parliament, in January, 1807, lord Howick, who, in common with his party, had maintained that in the negotiations for peace, in the time of Mr. Pitt, the English government was chiefly to be blamed for their failure, now said that in the negotiations of 1806, "there never was any opportunity of procuring such terms as would have been adequate to the just pretensions, and consistent with the honour and interests, of this country." At that time the predictions of Talleyrand as to the issue of a new coalition had been partly accomplished. Lord Howick saw then what all true-hearted Englishmen began to see: "The event is in the hands of Him who giveth the victory. But one thing is clear-the progress of Bonaparte has never yet been stopped by submission, and our only hope, therefore, is in resistance, as far as we can resist his ambitious projects. We have done what our honour and duty called upon us to do. When this instrument of vengeance may be deprived of his terrors, I know not; but we may at least look to the honour and independence of this country as secure against all his attacks, and while this country exists as an honourable and independent nation, there will still remain some hopes of restoring that political balance in Europe which has for the present been overturned." * Thus, one of the two great objects upon which Fox had set his heart had utterly failed. More than a month before his death, he had almost ceased to hope for the accomplishment of this object. The failure was not to him a fatal blow, as Austerlitz was to Pitt; but the protracted negotiation wore his spirit, breaking down under disease, and his end came on rapidly. The final despatch from lord Lauderdale was received by him on the 7th of September, the day of his last interview with lord Howick. He died at the duke of Devonshire's villa at Chiswick, being unable to bear the journey from Downing-street to his beloved St Anne's Hill. He was buried with all public honours on the 10th of October. The grave of Fox in Westminster Abbey is within six yards of the grave of Pitt. "The mighty chiefs sleep side by side." + Most of that generation, who had looked upon the battles of these chiefs during a quarter of a century-fierce battles, but rarely wanting in chivalrous respect each for the other, most men felt what Francis Horner expressed,— "Hansard," vol. viii. col. 323. 1806.] CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE. 471 "The giant race is extinct; and we are left in the hands of little ones, whom we know to be diminutive, having measured them against the others." * We must turn back to the disreputable contests between the House of Commons and John Wilkes, to see the opening of the career of the great parliamentary advocate of liberty; of the never-failing enemy of oppression; of the constant opponent of war. The young orator of 1769 was not then a tribune of the people. He soon took his proper position by the side of Burke and Barré, as the greatest master of " argumentative vehemence." His acceptance of office as a member of the Coalition ministry, and his ejection from power by Pitt, made them rivals. Their different views of the French Revolution made their rivalry life-long. But what noble rivalry! What a contrast in the very nature of the eloquence of these orators-the sustained majesty of the one; the rapid transitions of the other; the withering sarcasm opposed to the passionate invective; the proud self-assertion checked by the generous tribute of genius to genius. No two statesmen, so dreaded for their mental powers, so hated and suspected by the violence of party, were ever more beloved in private life, or had more devoted friends. They were each loved with an attachment stronger than that of political ties-with the love that the genial nature, more than the towering intellect, endues with constancy, even beyond the grave. § Whilst the ministry of Grenville and Fox were negotiating for peace, with all honesty of purpose, Napoleon put himself at the head of the Confederation of the Rhine. This was not an empty title of honour for the emperor of the French. It was a result of the humiliation of the emperor of Germany, and of the terror which France was holding over the head of the king of Prussia. It placed the minor States of Germany under the absolute control of Napoleon; it destroyed all nascent feeling of Germanic unity; it confined the contest for Germanic independence to Austria and Prussia, always disunited and jealous; and it compelled the greater of these powers to renounce the proud title of the successor of the Cæsars, and to be content with the humbler dignity of emperor of Austria. The treaty for the federal alliance of the States that separated themselves from the empire of Germany, to place themselves under the protection of a new chief of the empire, was signed on the 15th of July. The king of Prussia made no resistance to this confederacy, for he had hoped to form another union of States in the north of Germany of which he should be the head. He was soon taught by Napoleon to have humbler aspirations. He had been bribed by the possession of Hanover into acts of hostility towards Great Britain in the exclusion of British vessels from her ports. The British government retaliated by a blockade of the Ems, the Weser, the Elbe, and the Trave, and also by an embargo upon Prussian vessels in the ports of the United Kingdom. The king of Prussia found that there was danger in quarrelling with the Court of St. James's. France had no hesitation in proposing to take out of the mouth of Prussia the bait which she had greedily snatched at. * "Life," vol. i. p. 373; Letter of 15th September. Ante, vol. vi. p. 293. Ibid. p. 343. In the "Life of William Pitt," by Earl Stanhope, there is a parallel between the two statesmen, written in a candid and impartial spirit-vol. i. p. 238 to 251. 472 AGGRESSIONS OF NAPOLEON-PALM. [1806. Hanover was to be restored to George III. The king of Prussia had begun to find that the ties which bound him to France were no silken fetters; that he was despised by his great ally; that his people were becoming indignant at the humiliating position of their sovereign, and impatient of the loss of their commerce in consequence of the British blockade. There was something more to raise the indignation of the Prussian people than the degradation of their sovereign or the loss of their trade. They had a foretaste of the tyranny with which the military slaves of Napoleon's will endeavoured to put down any manifestation of public opinion in opposition to that will. On the frontiers of Prussia was collected a large French army, occupying territories of Austria and of free States, and levying excessive contributions. In the imperial city of Nuremberg, a bookseller, John P. Palm, was arrested by order of the French government; as five other publishers had also been arrested in other towns. Palm was dragged from his house to the fortress of Braunau, and he was there shot by the sentence of a French military commission. He had published a book calculated to rouse a national spirit in Germany, but which his captors described as seditious writings tending to excite the populations to insurrections against the French armies. The merciful tribunal at Braunau offered the publisher his pardon, if he would give up the author of the book. He refused; and he was murdered. A touching letter which Palm wrote to his widow, a few hours before his execution on the 26th of August, was printed and extensively circulated in Germany. One yell of indignation rose against the foreign tyrant. There was another power rising up against Napoleon than the power of kings and cabinets-the power of opinion. The king of Prussia was compelled to yield to this power; and for a season he was crushed under the iron heel of the conqueror. He was tardily making up his mind to break his chains whilst lord Lauderdale was negotiating at Paris. Before the British envoy had quitted Paris, Napoleon had set off with the determination to cut short the vacillation of Prussia, by one blow which should destroy all the ascendancy which the House of Brandenburg had acquired since the days of Frederic the Great. England was no prompter in the contest for which Prussia was now preparing. Compared with the mighty warlike operations over Germany during the autumn of 1806, the exertions of the British arms read like trifling episodes of a great epic. In November, 1805, a Prussian and British force had landed in Naples, without opposition by the Neapolitan court, which had professed neutrality whilst the war of the coalition of Austria and Russia against France was in progress. This was an opportunity for Napoleon. From his camp at Schönbrunn, on the 27th of December, 1806, he addressed a proclamation to an army appointed to enter Naples: "The Neapolitan dynasty has ceased to reign. Its existence is incompatible with the tranquillity of Europe and the honour of my crown. Soldiers! march; throw into the waves, if they wait for you, the weak battalions of the tyrant of the seas." His brother Joseph was at the head of this army. Napoleon in a few weeks wrote to this brother, "My will is that the Bourbons shall have ceased to reign at Naples. I intend to seat on that throne a prince of my own house. In the first place you, if it suits you."* Whether it suited, or not, the *"Letters of Napoleon to Joseph," vol. i. p. 74. |