It is further to be noted that Lauderdale stayed on at Paris three weeks after the death of Fox; that he put forward no new demand, but required that Talleyrand should revert to his first promise of renouncing all claim to Sicily, and should treat conjointly with England and Russia.  It was in vain.  Napoleon’s final concessions were that the Bourbons, after losing Sicily, should have the Balearic Isles and be pensioned by Spain; that Russia should hold Corfu (as she already did); and that we should recover Hanover from Prussia, and keep Malta, the Cape, Tobago, and the three French towns in India; but, except Hanover, all of these were in our power.  On Sicily he would not bate one jot of his pretensions.  The negotiations were therefore broken off on October 6th, twelve days after Napoleon left Paris to marshal his troops against Prussia.[90] The whole affair revealed Napoleon’s determination to trick the allies into signing separate and disadvantageous treaties, and thus to regain by craft the ground which he had lost in fair fight at Maida.

If Sicily was the rock of stumbling between us and Napoleon, Hanover was the chief cause of the war between France and Prussia.  During the negotiations at Paris, Lord Yarmouth privately informed Lucchesini, the Prussian ambassador, that Talleyrand made no difficulty about the restitution of Hanover to George III.  The news, when forwarded to Berlin at the close of July, caused a nervous flutter in ministerial circles, where every effort was being made to keep on good terms with France.

Even before this news arrived, the task was far from easy.  Murat, when occupying his new Duchy of Berg, pushed on his troops into the old Church lands of Essen and Werden.  Prussia looked on these districts as her own, and the sturdy patriot Bluecher at once marched in his soldiers, tore down Murat’s proclamations, and restored the Prussian eagle with blare of trumpet and beat of drum.[91] A collision was with difficulty averted by the complaisance of Frederick William, who called back his troops and referred the question to lawyers; but even the King was piqued when the Grand-Duke of Berg sent him a letter of remonstrance on Bluecher’s conduct, commencing with the familiar address, Mon frere.

Bluecher meanwhile and the soldiery were eating out their hearts with rage, as they saw the French pouring across the Rhine, and constructing a bridge of boats at Wesel; and had they known that that important stronghold, the key of North Germany, was quietly declared to be a French garrison town, they would probably have forced the hands of the King.[92] For at this time Frederick William and Haugwitz were alarmed by the formation of the Rhenish Confederation, and were not wholly reassured by Napoleon’s suggestion that the abolition of the old Empire must be an advantage to Prussia.  They clutched eagerly, however, at his proposal that Prussia should form a league of the