ve years certain. A courier from Duroc was said to have
brought this news, which at first made some impression, but it wore away
by degrees; and our Government, to judge from the expressions of persons
in its confidence, seems more to court than to fear a rupture with
Prussia. Indeed, besides all other reasons to carry on a war in the
North of Europe, Bonaparte's numerous and young generals are impatient to
enrich themselves, as Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and the South of
Germany are almost exhausted.

LETTER XXX.

PARIS, October, 1805.

MY LORD:--The provocations of our Government must have been extraordinary
indeed, when they were able to awaken the Cabinet of Berlin from its long
and incomprehensible infatuation of trusting to the friendly intentions
of honest Talleyrand, and to the disinterested policy of our generous
Bonaparte. To judge its intents from its acts, the favour of the Cabinet
of St. Cloud was not only its wish but its want. You must remember that,
last year, besides his ordinary Ambassador, Da Lucchesini, His Prussian
Majesty was so ill advised as to despatch General Knobelsdorff as his
extra representative, to assist at Napoleon's coronation, a degradation
of lawful sovereignty to which even the Court of Naples, though
surrounded with our troops, refused to subscribe; and, so late as last
June, the same Knobelsdorff did, in the name of his Prince, the honours
at the reviews near Magdeburg, to all the generals of our army in Hanover
who chose to attend there. On this occasion the King lodged in a
farmhouse, the Queen in the house of the curate of Koestelith, while our
sans-culotte officers, Bernadotte & Co., were quartered and treated in
style at the castle of Putzbull, fitted up for their accommodation. This
was certainly very hospitable, and very civil, but it was neither prudent
nor politic. Upstarts, experiencing such a reception from Princes, are
convinced that they are dreaded, because they know that they have not
merit to be esteemed.

Do not confound this Knobelsdorff with the late Field-marshal of that
name, who, in 1796, answered to a request which our then Ambassador at
Berlin (Abbe Sieges) had made to be introduced to him, NON ET SANS
PHRASE, the very words this regicide used when he sat in judgment on his
King, and voted LA MORT ET SANS PHRASE. This Knobelsdorff is a very
different character. He pretends to be equally conspicuous in the
Cabinet as in the field, in the