efore Napoleon's letter
reached the Emperor Francis. The negotiations with Caulaincourt were
resumed at Chatillon on February the 17th; and there is every reason
to think that Austria, England, Prussia, and perhaps even Russia would
now gladly have signed peace with Napoleon on the basis of the French
frontiers of 1791, provided that he renounced all claims to
interference in the affairs of Europe outside those limits.[417]

These demands would certainly have been accepted by the French
plenipotentiary had he listened to his own pacific promptings. But he
was now in the most painful position. Maret had informed him, the day
after Montmirail, that Napoleon was set on keeping the Rhenish and
Alpine frontiers.[418] He could, therefore, do nothing but temporize.
He knew how precarious was the military supremacy just snatched by his
master, and trusted that a few days more would bring wisdom before it
was too late. But his efforts for delay were useless.

While he was marking time, Napoleon was sending him despatches
instinct with pride. "I have made 30,000 to 40,000 prisoners," he
wrote on the 17th: "I have taken 200 cannon, a great number of
generals, and destroyed several armies, almost without striking a
blow. I yesterday checked Schwarzenberg's army, which I hope to
destroy before it recrosses my frontier." And two days later, after
hearing the allied terms, he wrote that they would make the blood of
every Frenchman boil with indignation, and that he would dictate _his_
ultimatum at Troyes or Chatillon. Of course, Caulaincourt kept these
diatribes to himself, but his painfully constrained demeanour betrayed
the secret that he longed for peace and that his hands were tied.

On all sides proofs were to be seen that Napoleon would never give up
Belgium and the Rhine frontier. When the allies (at the suggestion of
Schwarzenberg, and _with the approval of the Czar_) sued for an
armistice, he forbade his envoys to enter into any parleys until the
allies agreed to accept the "natural frontiers" as the basis for a
peace, and retired in the meantime on Alsace, Lorraine, and
Holland.[419] These last conditions he agreed three days later to
relax; but on the first point he was inexorable, and he knew that the
military commissioners appointed to arrange the truce had no power to
agree to the _political_ article which he made a _sine qua non_.

Accordingly, no armistice was concluded, and his unbending attitude
made a bad impres