And yet, if the circumstances of the time be considered, the first agreeable impressions aroused by the perusal of this letter must be clouded over by doubts.  The First Consul had just seized on power by illegal and forcible means, and there was as yet little to convince foreign States that he would hold it longer than the men whom he had displaced.  Moreover, France was in a difficult position.  Her treasury was empty; her army in Italy was being edged into the narrow coast-line near Genoa; and her oriental forces were shut up in their new conquest.  Were not the appeals to Austria and England merely a skillful device to gain time?  Did his past power in Italy and Egypt warrant the belief that he would abandon the peninsula and the new colony?  Could the man who had bartered away Venetia and seized Malta and Egypt be fitly looked upon as the sacred’r peacemaker?  In diplomacy men’s words are interpreted by their past conduct and present circumstances, neither of which tended to produce confidence in Bonaparte’s pacific overtures; and neither Francis nor George III. looked on the present attempt as anything but a skilful means of weakening the Coalition.

Indeed, that league was, for various reasons, all but dissolved by internal dissensions.  Austria was resolved to keep all the eastern part of Piedmont and the greater part of the Genoese Republic.  While welcoming the latter half of this demand, George III.’s Ministers protested against the absorption of so great a part of Piedmont as an act of cruel injustice to the King of Sardinia.  Austria was annoyed at the British remonstrances and was indignant at the designs of the Czar on Corsica.  Accordingly no time could have been better chosen by Bonaparte for seeking to dissolve the Coalition, as he certainly hoped to do by these two letters.  Only the staunch support of legitimist claims by England then prevented the Coalition from degenerating into a scramble for Italian territories.[137] And, if we may trust the verdict of contemporaries and his own confession at St. Helena, Bonaparte never expected any other result from these letters than an increase of his popularity in France.  This was enhanced by the British reply, which declared that His Majesty could not place his reliance on “general professions of pacific dispositions”:  France had waged aggressive war, levied exactions, and overthrown institutions in neighbouring States; and the British Government could not as yet discern any abandonment of this system:  something more was required for a durable peace:  “The best and most natural pledge of its reality and permanence would be the restoration of that line of princes which for so many centuries maintained the French nation in prosperity at home and in consideration and respect abroad.”  This answer has been sharply criticised, and justly so, if its influence on public opinion be alone considered.  But a perusal of the British Foreign Office Records reveals the reason for the use of these stiffly legitimist claims.  Legitimacy alone promised to stop the endless shiftings of the political kaleidoscope, whether by France, Austria, or Russia.  Our ambassador at Vienna was requested to inform the Government of Vienna of the exact wording of the British reply: