In returning to breakfast at General Soult’s, he observed the countenances of his soldiers rather inclined to laughter than to wrath; and he heard some jests, significant enough in the vocabulary of encampments, and which informed him that contempt was not the sentiment with which your navy had inspired his troops.  The occurrences of these two days hastened his departure from the coast for Aix-la-Chapelle, where the cringing of his courtiers consoled him, in part, for the want of respect or gallantry in your English tars.

LETTER X.

Paris, August, 1805.

My lord:—­According to a general belief in our diplomatic circles, it was the Austrian Ambassador in France, Count von Cobenzl, who principally influenced the determination of Francis II. to assume the hereditary title of Emperor of Austria, and to acknowledge Napoleon Emperor of the French.

Johann Philipp, Count von Cobenzl, enjoys, not only in his own country, but through all Europe, a great reputation as a statesman, and has for a number of years been employed by his Court in the most intricate and delicate political transactions.  In 1790 he was sent to Brabant to treat with the Belgian insurgents; but the States of Brabant refusing to receive him, he retired to Luxembourg, where he published a proclamation, in which Leopold II. revoked all those edicts of his predecessor, Joseph II., which had been the principal cause of the troubles; and reestablished everything upon the same footing as during the reign of Maria Theresa.  In 1791 he was appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. Petersburg, where his conduct obtained the approbation of his own Prince and of the Empress of Russia.

In 1793 the Committee of Public Safety nominated the intriguer, De Semonville, Ambassador to the Ottoman Porte.  His mission was to excite the Turks against Austria and Russia, and it became of great consequence to the two Imperial Courts to seize this incendiary of regicides.  He was therefore stopped, on the 25th of July, in the village of Novate, near the lake of Chiavenne.  A rumour was very prevalent at this time that some papers were found in De Semonville’s portfolio implicating Count von Cobenzl as a correspondent with the revolutionary French generals.  The continued confidence of his Sovereign contradicts, however, this inculpation, which seems to have been merely the invention of rivalry or jealousy.

In October, 1795, Count von Cobenzl signed, in the name of the Emperor, a treaty with England and Russia; and in 1797 he was one of the Imperial plenipotentiaries sent to Udine to negotiate with Bonaparte, with whom, on the 17th of October, he signed the Treaty of Campo Formio.  In the same capacity he went afterwards to Rastadt, and when this congress broke up, he returned again as an Ambassador to St. Petersburg.

After the Peace of Lunwille, when it required to have a man of experience and talents to oppose to our so deeply able Minister, Talleyrand, the Cabinet of Vienna removed him from Russia to France, where, with all other representatives of Princes, he has experienced more of the frowns and rebukes, than of the dignity and good grace, of our present Sovereign.