The relations of France and Prussia continued in this dubious state, until the Cabinet of Berlin learned some particulars of a negotiation between Napoleon and the English Government, which took place in the summer of 1806.
Mr. Pitt, who despaired of opposing Buonaparte on the continent after Marengo, did not long survive the disastrous intelligence of Austerlitz. Worn out and broken by the endless anxieties of his situation, not even the glorious tidings of Trafalgar could revive the sinking spirit of this great minister. He died on the 23rd of January, 1806, and was succeeded in the government by Mr. Fox, the same statesman who had, throughout every variety of fortune, arraigned his conduct of the war as imbecile and absurd, and who all along professed his belief that in the original quarrel between Great Britain and revolutionised France, the blame lay with his own country, and above all with Mr. Pitt.
The personal intercourse which took place between Fox and Napoleon, during the peace of Amiens, has already been alluded to. It was calculated to make all men regard the chances of a solid peace between France and England as increased by the event which transferred the reins of government, in the latter country, into the hands of the illustrious opponent of Mr. Pitt. But the peculiar feelings of English politicians have seldom been understood by foreigners--never more widely misunderstood than by Buonaparte. When Fox visited him, as First Consul, at the Tuileries, he complained that the English Government countenanced the assassins who were plotting against his life. Mr. Fox, forgetting all his party prejudice when the honour of his country was assailed, answered in terms such as Napoleon's own military bluntness could not have surpassed--"Clear your head of that nonsense." And now, in like manner, Mr. Fox, once placed in the responsible management of his country's interests, was found, not a little to the surprise and disappointment of Napoleon, about as close and watchful a negotiator as he could have had to deal with in Pitt himself. The English minister employed on this occasion, first, Lord Yarmouth,[54] one of the _detenus_ of 1803, and afterwards Lord Lauderdale. For some time strong hopes of a satisfactory conclusion were entertained; but, in the end, the negotiation broke up, on the absolute refusal of Napoleon to concede Malta to England, unless England would permit him to conquer Sicily from the unfortunate sovereign whose Italian Kingdom had already been transferred to his brother Joseph. Mr. Fox was lost to his country in September, 1806; and Napoleon ever afterwards maintained that, had that great statesman lived, the negotiation would have been resumed, and pushed to a successful close. Meantime, however, the diplomatic intercourse of the Tuileries and St. James's was at an end, and the course which the negotiation had taken transpired necessarily in Parliament.