affect the momentous question_that agitated in the councils of Great Britain. 1801. ty between ON the 21st of March, a secret treaty was signed at Madrid by Godoy, Prince of the Peace, and Secret treaLucien Buonaparte, in which the king of Spain France and engaged that the reigning duke of Parma should Spain. renounce his duchy and all its dependencies in favour of the French republic. The grand duchy of Tuscany, which the grand duke had renounced, and of which the cession to France had been guaranteed by the emperor of Germany, was to be given to the son of the duke of Parma, as an indemnification for the territories ceded by the infant, his father, and in fulfilment of another treaty concluded between Spain and the French republic, ceding to the latter power the possession of Louis- Louisiana iana. The prince of Parma was to be acknowledged sovereign of all the territories of the grand France. duchy, excepting part of the isle of Elba, to be retained by France; and he was to receive as an indemnity the country of Piombino, which belonged to the king of Naples. In July, the prince, Prince of protected by a body of French troops, commanded by general Murat, took possession of his domi- king of nions, and assumed the title of king of Etruria; and Europe beheld the singular spectacle of a Bourbon prince elevated to a throne under the This vassal auspices of the French republic. sovereignty was purchased by the cession of Parma, Elba, and Louisiana. ceded by Spain to Parma created Etruria. MEANTIME the court of Madrid, having, at the instigation of France, declared war against Portugal, a Spanish army under Godoy entered that country, and soon reduced all the strong places in the province of Alentejo. On the 6th of June Treaty between Spain preliminaries of peace were signed at Badajoz, by tapp which the fortress and district of Olivenza were tugal. ceded to Spain, and the ports of Portugal were closed against the English. The French govern B 2 ment LXX. 1801. CHAP. ment refused to concur in this treaty, under the pretext that Spain was bound not to make peace with Portugal, unless certain places in that country were allowed to be garrisoned by France until a general peace. A division of French troops advanced from Salamanca, and laid siege to Almeida. The Portuguese were encouraged to a brave resistance by pecuniary succours from their ancient ally, and an expedition was sent from England to protect the island of Madeira; but they at length found it necessary to negociate. On the 29th of September, only two days before the signature of preliminaries between Great Britain and France, the latter power exacted from Portugal a treaty by which compelled she agreed to shut her ports against English vessels both of war and trade, and open them to those of France, as well as to consent to a reduction of her limits in South America, for the extension of the French territory in Guiana. Portugal to close her ports against the English. Affairs of the French in Italy. ON the side of Italy, the power and influence of the French were predominant. They claimed the merit of having exercised great forbearance toward the king of Naples, in demanding only the port of Otranto as necessary to their designs in the east, since Malta had been occupied by the British. To the states of the pope they paid a dutiful regard, by leaving them in all their integrity, maintaining only a garrison in Ancona to preserve the communication with their army of the south. The Cisalpine and Ligurian republics, whose independence had been guaranteed at Luneville, were preparing to ensure it, by imploring Buonaparte to unite the office of president over them with his more sacred functions as first consul of France. Lucca was occupied in deprecating his vengeance, by re-organizing her institutions on the approved republican model; and four thousand Frenchmen were to keep Leghorn, for for the king of Tuscany, until his majesty should CHAP. organise a national army. LXX. 1801. tween the Porte. THE pacification of France with the Porte exhibited an ingenious specimen of diplomacy. On the Peace be9th of October, two days after the ratification of France and preliminaries with Great Britain by Buonaparte, a treaty was executed at Paris, between the minister for foreign affairs, and a Turkish agent, named Esseyd Ali, who on this occasion was prompted to assume the functions of ambassador, by which treaty the French consented to evacuate Egypt, (having been already expelled by the English,) and to acknowledge the Seven Islands, under a stipulation that the treaties before the war should be renewed in full force, and that France should enjoy throughout Turkey, her former rights of commerce and navigation, in common with the most favoured nations. In this treaty the Porte was to acknowledge the guaranty of the French republic as well as that of Russia, for the Ionian Islands; and England was not even mentioned. It has been observed, that extraordinary means were used to keep from the Turkish agent and his suite all intelligence of recent events, in order that France might assume the credit of having introduced into the preliminaries with Great Britain, the fifth article, which stipulates that Egypt shall be restored to the sublime Porte, whose territories and possessions shall be preserved entire, such as they existed before the war. of France IN Germany the ascendancy of France, and the Influence consequent depression of the house of Austria were in Gerparticularly manifested. By the treaty of Lune- many. ville the republic had acquired in full sovereignty the country and domains situated on the left bank of the Rhine from the frontier of Switzerland to that of Holland, which formerly belonged to the empire; and by another article in the same treaty, the princes and states who had sustained losses by B 3 this LXX. 1801. CHAP. this cession, were to receive indemnities taken from from the whole of the empire, according to arrangements to be determined in a diet held at Ratisbon. In the discussions which took place there the French government professed to take no immediate concern; but in reality they exerted their influence to benefit those members of the Germanic body who were devoted to their interests, at the expense of those who were hostile; and they were particularly disposed to favour Bavaria. Unhappily the jealousy of Prussia against Austria afforded them the means of fomenting those divisions which they deemed necessary for maintaining what was termed a just_equilibrium in Germany. By their treaty with Russia, concluded a week after that with England, they sought to repair those disappointments which they had sustained in the death of the emperor Paul, and to lead his youthful successor into a concurrence with Prussia, for the furtherance of their future schemes of policy. In Switzerland... In Hol land. SWITZERLAND, distracted by dissensions between the Helvetic government, which was entirely in the French interests, and the democratic states, who insisted on the restoration of their ancient laws and constitution, was but too likely to yield to those dictates which under the semblance of mediation, Buonaparte might prescribe to her. THE Dutch, in obedience to the intimations of the French cabinet, had accepted a new constitution, evidently framed on the same revolutionary model which had served for so many others, but more effectually calculated than them all, to defeat its avowed objects, liberty and equality. At the solicitation of the Batavian government the first consul consented to reduce the protecting force stationed in their territory from twenty-three thousand to ten thousand men. WHILE. pursuing their schemes of aggrandizement in Europe, the French were intent on acquir LXX. 1801. ing the ascendancy in the western world. A pow- CHA P. erful armament was in preparation, for the avowed purpose of subduing the revolted colony of St. Domingo, but there was little doubt that its ulterior Views of objects were the occupation of the ceded territory France of Louisiana and the consequent establishment of the West a power in the West Indies which might at a future Indies. period enable them to give the law in that quarter, both to Great Britain and the United States. respecting SUCH was the system of policy pursued by France after her splendid career of conquest; and such was the imposing attitude in which she stood, while extending the hand of amity to Great Britain. She had reduced Spain to the condition of a tributary ally; she had enthralled Italy; she had cajoled the Ottoman Porte; she had discomfited and humbled Austria; she had disorganized the Germanic body; she had overawed Prussia; she had conciliated Russia; she had planted around her frontier a vanguard of dependent republics, over which she held unlimited control; and which, as they were her tributaries in peace, must become her auxiliaries in war. And finally, she had entered into a treaty with Great Britain, of which the basis, in regard to herself and her allies, was the uti possidetis, and in regard to her rival, with few exceptions, the status quo ante bellum. In the parliamentary discussions which Debates took place on this treaty, the number of those who liminary disapproved it, was necessarily very small, in com- treaty. parison with the majority, consisting of three distinct parties in the state, who stood pledged to defend it. These were, the adherents of ministry; the friends of Mr. Pitt; and the whigs, who, under their leader, Mr. Fox, had uniformly contended against the policy of the late adminstration, Yet the arguments of the small phalanx who were now stigmatized as the war-party were of sufficient force to shake the confidence of those who, participating in the sanguine exultation of the people on their re B 4 lease on the pre |