Because Britain gained so little, her commitment to the peace was correspondingly weak

Thursday, January 9th, 2025

Napoleon ofby Andrew RobertsOn Thursday, March 25, 1802, after nearly six months of negotiations, Andrew Roberts explains (in Napoleon: A Life), France and Britain signed a peace treaty at Amiens:

France had kept all her ‘natural’ frontiers up to the Rhine and the Alps, retained hegemony over western Europe, and had all her colonies restored to her. Yet in a sense Joseph and Talleyrand had been too successful: because Britain gained so little, her commitment to the peace was correspondingly weak.

[…]

On the conclusion of the Peace of Amiens, around 5,000 Britons descended on Paris. Some were curious, some wanted to see the Louvre collections, some wanted to use that excuse to visit the fleshpots of the Palais-Royal (which did a roaring trade), some wanted to renew old friendships and almost all of them wanted to meet or at least catch a glimpse of the First Consul.

[…]

The Irish MP John Leslie Foster attended one of Napoleon’s levées at the Tuileries, and described him as:

delicately and gracefully made; his hair a dark brown crop, thin and lank; his complexion smooth, pale and sallow; his eyes grey, but very animated; his eyebrows light brown, thin and projecting. All his features, particularly his mouth and nose, fine, sharp, defined, and expressive beyond description … He speaks deliberately, but very fluently, with particular emphasis, and in a rather low tone of voice. While he speaks, his features are still more expressive than his words. Expressive of what? … A pleasing melancholy, which, whenever he speaks, relaxes into the most agreeable and gracious smile you can conceive … He has more unaffected dignity than I could conceive in man.

Similarly, a former captive of the French called Sinclair wrote of ‘the grace and fascination of his smile’, and a Captain Usher said he had ‘dignified manners’.

[…]

Napoleon took this opportunity to infiltrate spies to make plans of Irish harbours, but they were soon unmasked and repatriated.

Comments

  1. Phileas Frogg says:

    Both history and the schoolyard teach the same inescapable truth:

    “Victory must be absolute and irrefutable, an utter dominations which leaves no room for the defeated to hope. Indecisive victories only defer resolution of the conflict.”

  2. Curtis says:

    When it happens it usually turns out that there is no one available to fight for peace. Peace does not have any constituencies and its adherents are mostly professing religious types with no skin in the game.

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