With this was mingled contempt for neighbouring peoples who either could not or would not gain a similar independence and prestige.  Everything helped to feed this self-confidence and contempt for others.  The venerable fabric of the Holy Roman Empire was rocking to and fro amidst the spoliations of its ecclesiastical lands by lay princes, in which its former champions, the Houses of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, were the most exacting of the claimants.  The Czar, in October, 1801, had come to a profitable understanding with France concerning these “secularizations.”  A little later France and Russia began to draw together on the Eastern Question in a way threatening to Turkey and to British influence in the Levant.[217] In fact, French diplomacy used the partition of the German ecclesiastical lands and the threatened collapse of the Ottoman power as a potent means of busying the Continental States and leaving Great Britain isolated.  Moreover, the great island State was passing through ministerial and financial difficulties which robbed her of all the fruits of her naval triumphs and made her diplomacy at Amiens the laughing-stock of the world.  When monarchical ideas were thus discredited, it was idle to expect peace.  The struggling upwards towards a higher plane had indeed begun; democracy had effected a lodgment in Western Europe; but the old order in its bewildered gropings after some sure basis had not yet touched bottom on that rock of nationality which was to yield a new foundation for monarchy amidst the strifes of the nineteenth century.  Only when the monarchs received the support of their French-hating subjects could an equilibrium of force and of enthusiasms yield the long-sought opportunity for a durable peace.[218]

The negotiations at Amiens had amply shown the great difficulty of the readjustment of European affairs.  If our Ministers had manifested their real feelings about Napoleon’s presidency of the Italian Republic, war would certainly have broken forth.  But, as has been seen, they preferred to assume the attitude of the ostrich, the worst possible device both for the welfare of Europe and the interests of Great Britain; for it convinced Napoleon that he could safely venture on other interventions; and this he proceeded to do in the affairs of Italy, Holland, and Switzerland.

On September 21st, 1802, appeared a senatus consultum ordering the incorporation of Piedmont in France.  This important territory, lessened by the annexation of its eastern parts to the Italian Republic, had for five months been provisionally administered by a French general as a military district of France.  Its definite incorporation in the great Republic now put an end to all hopes of restoration of the House of Savoy.  For the King of Sardinia, now an exile in his island, the British Ministry had made some efforts at Amiens; but, as it knew that the Czar and the First Consul had agreed on offering him some suitable indemnity,