Treaty of Amiens

• 1. Introduction

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  The Treaty of Amiens took its final shape in a negotiating session that lasted five hours and ended at 3 a.m. on the 25th of March 1802. Joseph Bonaparte and Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, then signed it in the Hôtel de Ville, the city hall of Amiens. The French Revolutionary calendar called that day 4 Germinal, year X. The document carried the title "Definitive Treaty of Peace". It pulled France, the Spanish Empire and the United Kingdom out of the War of the Second Coalition and closed the French Revolutionary Wars. The calm it produced was the only general peace Europe enjoyed between 1793 and 1814. It lasted a single year. Why did a treaty that so many people cheered collapse so quickly? Who signed it with a heavy heart, and who used the quiet to prepare for the next war? And what did painters, tourists and balloonists do with a few months of open roads between London and Paris?

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• 2. Reluctant Talks

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  Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul of France, sent his first truce proposals to the British foreign secretary, Lord Grenville, as early as 1799. Grenville and Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger distrusted Bonaparte and saw obvious defects in the offers. They rejected them out of hand. The war itself had swung both ways. The coalition began well, with successes in Egypt, Italy and Germany. Then French victories at Marengo and Hohenlinden drove Austria, Russia and Naples to ask for peace, and Austria eventually signed the Treaty of Lunéville. Horatio Nelson's victory at the Battle of Copenhagen on the 2nd of April 1801 stopped the League of Armed Neutrality from forming and led to a negotiated ceasefire.

  In February 1801 Pitt resigned over domestic issues, and the more accommodating Henry Addington took his place. Britain was also alarmed by the danger of a war with Russia. Addington's foreign secretary, Robert Jenkinson, Lord Hawkesbury, at once approached Louis Guillaume Otto, the French commissary for prisoners of war in London. Otto had carried Bonaparte's earlier proposals. Working under detailed instructions from Bonaparte, he negotiated with Hawkesbury in mid-1801. Hawkesbury was unhappy with that channel and sent the diplomat Anthony Merry to Paris. Merry opened a second line to the French foreign minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. By mid-September, Hawkesbury and Otto were meeting to draft a preliminary agreement. They signed it in London at the end of September, and it was published the next day.

  The preliminary text required Britain to restore most of the French colonial possessions it had captured since 1794. France agreed to preserve Portuguese sovereignty and to restore Newfoundland fishery rights to their prewar status. Britain was to recognise the Seven Islands Republic, which France had established on the Ionian Islands that now belong to Greece. Both sides would have access to the outposts on the Cape of Good Hope. A secret clause also cut against Spain, a blow to a power tied to France.

  Pamphlets, poems and odes in French, English, German and other languages poured out once news of the signing spread. Actors acted out the peace at dinner theatres, in vaudeville and on the legitimate stage. Britain held illuminations and fireworks. Many Britons expected peace to end the income tax Pitt had imposed, bring down grain prices and revive markets. King George III proclaimed the end of hostilities on the 12th of October 1801, but a final treaty was still unwritten.

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• 3. Cornwallis Against the Clock

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  In November 1801 Cornwallis was sent to France with full powers to negotiate a final agreement. Across Britain, people expected peace to be close at hand. That expectation put enormous pressure on him, and Bonaparte realised it and used it. The French side was led by Napoleon's brother Joseph and by Talleyrand, who kept shifting their positions. Cornwallis complained that even after winning agreement on a point, he could have "no confidence that it is finally settled."

  Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, ambassador to France for the Batavian Republic, reached Amiens on the 9th of December. His country's economy depended on trade that the war had ruined. The French treated the Dutch as a "vanquished and conquered" client whose present government "owed them everything". Schimmelpenninck and Cornwallis worked out understandings on Dutch questions. Joseph did not immediately accept them, presumably because he needed to consult the First Consul.

  In January 1802 Napoleon travelled to Lyon to accept the presidency of the Italian Republic. This client state, nominally independent, covered northern Italy and had been established in 1797. The step broke the Treaty of Lunéville, in which Bonaparte had promised to guarantee the independence of such client republics. He also kept backing General Pierre Augereau's coup of the 18th of September 1801 in the Batavian Republic. That coup brought a new constitution, ratified by a sham election.

  British newspapers followed events in strongly moralising colours. Hawkesbury called the Lyon episode a "gross breach of faith" that showed an "inclination to insult Europe". He warned Cornwallis that it caused the greatest alarm in Britain. Some who had favoured peace, he wrote, now wanted the war renewed.

  The Spanish negotiator, Marquis José Nicolás de Azara, did not reach Amiens until early February 1802. After some preliminary talks, he suggested a separate Anglo-Spanish agreement. Cornwallis refused, believing it would endanger the far more important talks with France.

  Malta proved the hardest problem. Bonaparte proposed that the British withdraw within three months of signing, handing the island to a recreated Order of St. John. All the major European powers would guarantee its sovereignty. The proposal did not say how the Order would be rebuilt, since it had essentially dissolved when France seized the island in 1798. None of the other powers had even been consulted. Meanwhile Parliament was working through the budget, and on the 14th of March London gave Cornwallis a hard deadline. If he could not agree terms within eight days, he was to return home. He stayed unhappy with the result, yet he feared "the ruinous consequences of... renewing a bloody and hopeless war."

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• 4. Terms and Trade-Offs

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  The treaty confirmed "peace, friendship, and good understanding" among the signatories and required the restoration of prisoners and hostages. Britain formally recognised the French Republic. The colonial bargains followed. Britain would return the Cape Colony and most of Dutch Guiana to the Batavian Republic. In exchange, the Batavian Republic ceded Ceylon, which had been held by the United Provinces and the Dutch East India Company. Britain also agreed to withdraw its forces from Egypt.

  Spain's share was bitter. It accepted British rule over Trinidad, and in return it received Menorca back. Gibraltar stayed under British rule. France agreed to pull its forces out of the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples, and the borders of French Guiana were to be defined. The Septinsular Republic won recognition from the signatory parties, and the House of Orange-Nassau was to be compensated for its losses in the Netherlands.

  Malta, Gozo and Comino were to be restored to the Knights Hospitaller and declared neutral. That clause would become the most contested line in the document.

  Two days after the signing, all four parties added an addendum about the treaty's wording. It was published only in English and French. The addendum stated that omitting the other signatories' languages was not prejudicial and set no precedent. It also said that any omitted personal titles were unintentional. The Dutch and French representatives signed a separate convention making clear that the Batavian Republic would not pay the compensation owed to the House of Orange-Nassau.

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• 5. Amiens Interlude

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  William Herschel took advantage of the peace in the second half of 1802 to confer with colleagues at the Observatoire in Paris. He was one of many upper-class British visitors who flocked to the French capital. On 18-the 24th of September 1802, booths and temporary arcades filled the courtyard of the Louvre for the third French Exposition des produits de l'industrie française. According to the memoirs of his private secretary, de Bourrienne, Bonaparte was above all delighted by the admiration the exhibition drew from foreigners.

  Charles James Fox received a personal tour from the minister Jean-Antoine Chaptal. Inside the Louvre, visitors could see recent works in the Salon of 1802. They could also see Italian paintings and Roman sculptures gathered from across Italy under the stringent terms of the Treaty of Tolentino. J. M. W. Turner filled a sketchbook with what he saw. Even the four Greek Horses of St Mark, furtively removed from Venice in 1797, could be viewed in an inner courtyard.

  William Hazlitt arrived in Paris on the 16th of October 1802. The Roman sculptures did not move him. He spent most of three months studying and copying Italian masters in the Louvre.

  The spending was lavish. Writing from London, the Russian Semyon Vorontsov grumbled to a correspondent: "That fool Demidov has ordered a porcelain dinner service every plate of which costs 16 gold louis."

  People who could not travel read about it. Helmina von Chézy gathered her impressions in a series of vignettes for the journal Französische Miscellen. F. W. Blagdon and John Carr updated English readers who felt starved of unbiased accounts. Carr noted in his preface: "During a separation of ten years, we have received very little account of this extraordinary people, which could be relied on."

  Traffic ran in both directions. A number of French émigrés returned home under relaxed restrictions. The wax artist Marie Tussaud came to London and set up an exhibition like the one she had run in Paris. The balloonist André-Jacques Garnerin staged displays in London and flew from London to Colchester in 45 minutes. Such journeys would stay open only until the spring of 1803.

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• 6. Peace as Strategy

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  British ministers hoped the peace would restore trade with continental Europe. They also wanted to end Britain's isolation from the other powers. A rapprochement with Russia achieved that and supplied the momentum for the talks with France. The settlement also calmed the antiwar Whig opposition in Parliament. Although the terms did not favour his country, Prime Minister Addington used the pause to rebuild British strength. When fighting renewed in spring 1803, the Royal Navy quickly gained control of the seas.

  Napoleon spent the interlude on reforms at home. He promulgated the legal system known as the Napoleonic Code and made peace with the Vatican through the Concordat. He also issued a new constitution that gave him lifetime control. France made territorial gains in Switzerland and Italy. His hopes of a North American empire collapsed when his army failed in Haiti. He abandoned the dream and sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States.

  President Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican administration used British banks to fund the Louisiana Purchase. It also cut the U.S. military budget and partly dismantled the Hamiltonian Federalist financial program. The treaty meant the French West Indies no longer needed American ships to carry products to Europe. The Federalist minority in Congress, among others, criticised the isolationist American foreign policy, which was hostile to both Britain and France.

  Spain's economy, badly hurt by the war, began to recover with the peace. As at the start of the wars in 1793, Spain remained caught diplomatically between Britain and France. King Charles IV was especially irritated that France would not block the cession of Trinidad to Britain. The Louisiana sale then injured Spanish interests further, because American merchants competed with Spain's. Charles wrote that he was ready to throw off the French alliance, declaring: "neither break with France, nor break with England."

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• 7. Road to War

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  In October 1802 Bonaparte sent French troops into the Helvetic Republic, as Switzerland was then known. He had also effectively annexed the Cisalpine Republic. Both moves broke the Treaty of Lunéville, though Britain had not signed that treaty and the powers that had signed it tolerated the actions. Tsar Alexander had just congratulated Bonaparte for withdrawing from places like Switzerland, and the move deepened distrust in his cabinet. Bonaparte answered British protests with belligerent statements. He denied that Britain had any right to be involved in continental affairs, and he noted that French troops already held Switzerland when the treaty was signed. He also demanded that Britain censor its strongly anti-French press and expel French expatriates. London read these demands as affronts to its sovereignty.

  Bonaparte also exploited the loosened British blockade of French ports. He organised and dispatched a naval expedition to recover revolutionary Haiti and occupy French Louisiana. These moves did not violate the treaty, but Britain saw them as proof that he was willing to threaten it worldwide.

  Britain refused to remove its troops from Egypt or Malta, as the treaty required. Bonaparte formally protested. In January 1803 he published a report by Horace Sebastiani on how easily France might capture Egypt, which alarmed most of the European powers. In an interview in February 1803, he told Britain's ambassador in Paris, Lord Whitworth, that war would follow if Malta was not evacuated. He implied he could already have retaken Egypt. Whitworth felt he had been handed an ultimatum. The next month Bonaparte pressed him again, in a public meeting with diplomats.

  The Russian ambassador, Arkadiy Ivanovich Morkov, reported the encounter to St. Petersburg in stark terms. He also passed on rumours that Bonaparte would seize Hamburg and Hanover if war resumed. Alexander wanted to avoid war, but the news apparently forced his hand. In late March he began collecting troops on the Baltic coast.

  When France moved on Switzerland, the British had ordered that the Cape Colony not be returned to the Batavian Republic. They countermanded the orders when the Swiss failed to resist. In March 1803 the Addington ministry learned that the Cape had been reoccupied by the military. It ordered military preparations against possible French retaliation. The ministry then issued a sudden ultimatum. It demanded that France evacuate Holland and Switzerland and that Britain control Malta for ten years. Foreigners began leaving France in large numbers. Bonaparte offered concessions, including a guarantee of Ottoman integrity and handing Malta to a neutral third party. He rejected a British ten-year lease of Malta, and Britain responded by reviving the blockade of the French coast. Bonaparte, not fully prepared for war, made moves that suggested a coming invasion of Britain.

  Historians still argue over the blame. In 2006 Frederick Kagan argued that Napoleon's control of Switzerland angered Britain most. Frank McLynn's 1997 biography put it down to a "mixture of economic motives and national neuroses" and "an irrational anxiety about Napoleon's motives and intentions". McLynn added that Napoleon was not ready for war, which made it an ideal moment for Britain to try to stop him. Paul Schroeder wrote that most historians agreed that Napoleon's determination to exclude Britain from the Continent made war inevitable. After the first fervour, objections to the treaty grew in Britain, where the governing class felt it had made every concession. Addington never demobilised and kept a large peacetime army of 180,000.

  The crisis peaked on the 10th of May, when Britain told Whitworth to leave Paris within 36 hours unless France met its demands. Britain had also rejected Tsar Alexander's offer to mediate. Last-minute attempts by Talleyrand failed, and Whitworth left France on the 13th of May. Britain declared war on the 18th of May 1803. Its official reasons were French imperialist policies in the West Indies, Italy and Switzerland. The Napoleonic Wars had begun, and they would rage across Europe for the next 12 years.

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• 8. Seizures and Fallout

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  On the 17th of May 1803, before any formal declaration and without warning, the Royal Navy captured all French and Dutch merchant ships in or near Britain. It seized more than two million pounds of commodities and took the crews prisoner. On the 22nd of May, 2 Prairial in year XI, the First Consul answered by ordering the arrest of all British males aged 18 to 60 in France and Italy. Many travelling civilians were trapped. All the major powers denounced both acts as illegal. Bonaparte told the French press that he held 10,000 British prisoners, but documents compiled in Paris a few months later showed the true number was 1,181. The last of the imprisoned British civilians were not allowed home until his abdication in 1814.

  Addington proved an ineffective wartime prime minister, and on the 10th of May 1804 William Pitt replaced him. Pitt formed the Third Coalition. Pitt was involved in failed assassination attempts on Bonaparte's life by Cadoudal and Pichegru. Napoleon, now Emperor of the French, massed armies on the French coast to invade Great Britain. But Austria and Russia, Britain's allies, were preparing to invade France. The French armies, christened La Grande Armée, left the coast in secret to strike Austria and Russia before they could combine. The Grande Armée defeated Austria at Ulm the day before the Battle of Trafalgar. Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Austerlitz then effectively destroyed the Third Coalition.

  In 1806 Britain retook the Cape Colony from the Batavian Republic. Later that year Napoleon abolished the republic and replaced it with the Kingdom of Holland, ruled by his brother Louis Bonaparte. On the 9th of July 1810, France officially annexed the Netherlands. The Dutch envoy Schimmelpenninck had been treated at Amiens as the representative of a conquered client. Eight years after the treaty, France absorbed his country outright.

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