The others divined that it was his own handiwork, drawn up in order to spin out the negotiations and leave his master a few days of grace.[434] They respected his intentions, and nine days of grace were gained; but the only answer that Napoleon vouchsafed to Caulaincourt’s appeals was the missive of March 17th from Rheims:  “I have received your letters of the 13th.  I charge the Duke of Bassano to answer them in detail.  I give you directly the power to make the concessions which would be indispensable to keep up the activity of the negotiations, and to get to know at last the ultimatum of the allies, it being well understood that the treaty would have for result the evacuation of our territory and the release of all prisoners on both sides.”  The instructions which he charged the Duke of Bassano to send to Caulaincourt were such as a victor might have dictated.  The allies must evacuate his territory and give up all the fortresses as soon as the preliminaries of peace were signed:  if the negotiations were to break off they had better break off on this question.  He himself would cease to control lands beyond the natural frontiers, and would recognize the independence of Holland:  as regards Belgium, he would refuse to cede it to a prince of the House of Orange, but he hinted that it might well go to a French prince as an indemnity—­evidently Joseph Bonaparte was meant.  If this concession were made, he expected that all the French colonies, including the Ile de France, would be restored.  Nothing definite was said about the Rhine frontier.

The courier who carried these proposals from Rheims to Chatillon was twice detained by the Russians, and had not reached the town when the Congress came to an end (March 19th).  Their only importance, therefore, is to show that, despite all the warnings in which the Prague negotiations were so fruitful, Napoleon clung to the same threatening and dilatory tactics which had then driven Austria into the arms of his foes.  He still persisted in looking on the time limit of the allies as meaningless, on their ultimatum as their first word, from which they would soon shuffle away under the pressure of his prowess—­and this, too, when Caulaincourt was daily warning him that the hours were numbered, that nothing would change the resolve of his foes, and that their defeats only increased their exasperation against him.

If anything could have increased this exasperation, it was the discovery that he was playing with them all the time.  On the 20th the allied scouts brought to head-quarters a despatch written by Maret the day before to Caulaincourt which contained this damning sentence:  “The Emperor’s desires remain entirely vague on everything relating to the delivering up of the strongholds, Antwerp, Mayence, and Alessandria, if you should be obliged to consent to these cessions, as he has the intention, even after the ratification of the treaty, to take counsel from the military situation of affairs.  Wait for the last moment."[435] Peace, then, was to be patched up for Napoleon’s convenience and broken by him at the first seasonable opportunity.  Is it surprising that on that same day the Ministers of the Powers decided to have no more negotiations with Napoleon, and that Metternich listened not unfavourably to the emissary of the Bourbons, the Count de Vitrolles, whom he had previously kept at arm’s length?