oast-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