emnity for the support of French prisoners.
Though theoretically correct, it was open to an objection, which was
urged by Bonaparte and Talleyrand with suave yet incisive irony.
They suggested that the claim must be considered in relation to a
counter-claim, soon to be sent from Paris, for the maintenance of all
prisoners taken by the French from the various forces subsidized by
Great Britain, a charge which "would probably not leave a balance so
much in favour of His [Britannic] Majesty as His Government may have
looked forward to." This retort was not so terrible as it appeared;
for most of the papers necessary for the making up of the French
counterclaim had been lost or destroyed during the Revolution. Yet the
threat told with full effect on Cornwallis, who thereafter referred to
the British claim as a "hopeless debt."[187] The officials of Downing
Street drew a distinction between prisoners from armies merely
subsidized by us and those taken from foreign forces actually under
our control; but it is clear that Cornwallis ceased to press the
claim. In fact, the British case was mismanaged from beginning to end:
the accounts for the maintenance of French and Dutch prisoners were,
in the first instance, wrongly drawn up; and there seems to have been
little or no notion of the seriousness of the counter-claim, which
came with all the effect of a volley from a masked battery,
destructive alike to our diplomatic reputation and to our hope of
retaining Tobago.

It is impossible to refer here to all the topics discussed at Amiens.
The determination of the French Government to adopt a forward colonial
and oceanic policy is clearly seen in its proposals made at the close
of the year 1801. They were: (1) the abolition of salutes to the
British flag on the high seas; (2) an _absolute_ ownership of the
eastern and western coasts of Newfoundland in return for a proposed
cession of the isles of St. Pierre and Miquelon to us--which would
have practically ceded to France _in full sovereignty_ all the best
fishing coasts of that land, with every prospect of settling the
interior, in exchange for two islets devastated by war and then in
British hands; (3) the right of the French to a share in the whale
fishery in those seas; (4) the establishment of a French fishing
station in the Falkland Isles; and (5) the extension of the French
districts around the towns of Yanaon and Mahe in India.[188] To all
these demands Lord Cornwallis oppos