Produced by David Widger
By Lewis Goldsmith
Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London
PARIS, September, 1805.
MY LORD:—Since my return here, I have never neglected to present myselfbefore our Sovereign, on his days of grand reviews and grand diplomaticaudiences. I never saw him more condescending, more agreeable, or, atleast, less offensive, than on the day of his last levee, before he setout to be inaugurated a King of Italy; nor worse tempered, more petulant,agitated, abrupt, and rude than at his first grand audience after hisarrival from Milan, when this ceremony had been performed. I am not theonly one who has made this remark; he did not disguise either his good orill-humour; and it was only requisite to have eyes and ears to see and bedisgusted at the difference of behaviour.
I have heard a female friend of Madame Bonaparte explain, in part, thecause of this alteration. Just before he set out for Italy, theagreeable news of the success of the first Rochefort squadron in the WestIndies, and the escape of our Toulon fleet from the vigilance of yourLord Nelson, highly elevated his spirits, as it was the first navalenterprise of any consequence since his reign. I am certain that onegrand naval victory would flatter his vanity and ambition more than allthe glory of one of his most brilliant Continental campaigns. He hadalso, at that time, great expectations that another negotiation withRussia would keep the Continent submissive under his dictature, until heshould find an opportunity of crushing your power. You may be sure thathe had no small hopes of striking a blow in your country, after thejunction of our fleet with the Spanish, not by any engagement between ourBrest fleet and your Channel fleet, but under a supposition that youwould detach squadrons to the East and West Indies in search of thecombined fleet, which, by an unexpected return, according to orders,would have then left us masters of the Channel, and, if joined with theBatavian fleet, perhaps even of the North Sea. By the incomprehensibleactivity of Lord Nelson, and by the defeat (or as we call it here, thenegative victory) of Villeneuve and Gravina, all this first prospect hadvanished. Our vengeance against a nation of shopkeepers we were not onlyunder the necessity of postponing, but, from the unpolite threats andtreaties of the Cabinet of St. Petersburg with those of Vienna and St.James, we were on the eve of a Continental war, and our gunboats, insteadof being useful in carrying an army to the destruction of the tyrants ofthe seas, were burdensome, as an army was necessary to guard them, and toprevent these tyrants from capturing or destroying them. Such changes,in so short a period of time as three months, might irritate a temperless patient than that of Napoleon the First.
At his grand audience here, even after the army, of England had movedtowards Germany, when the die was cast, and his mind should, therefore,have been made up, he was almost insupportable. The low bows, and thestill humbler expressions of the Prussian Ambassador, the Marquis daLucchesini, were hardly noticed; and the Saxon Ambassador, Count vonBuneau, was addressed in a language that no well-bred master ever uses inspeaking to a menial servant. He did not cast a look, or utter a word,that was not an insult to the audience and a disgrace to his rank. Inever before saw him vent his rage and disappointment soindiscriminately. We were, indeed (if I may use the