LORD  BYRON  and  his  TIMES
Byron
Documents Biography Criticism
The “Pope” of Holland House
John Whishaw to Smithson Tennant, 31 December 1813
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
GO TO PAGE NUMBER:
Preface
Contents
Introduction
Chapter I: 1813
Chapter II: 1814
Chapter III: 1815
Chapter IV: 1816
Chapter V: 1817
Chapter VI: 1818
Chapter VII: 1819
Chapter VIII: 1820
Chapter IX: 1821
Chapter X: 1822
Chapter XI: 1824-33
Chapter XII: 1833-35
Chapter XIII: 1806-40
Chapter XIV: Appendix
Creative Commons License

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Produced by CATH
 
Dec. 31, 1813.

I am afraid that peace is still extremely doubtful. It is even problematical whether Lord Castlereagh’s mission be really pacific, and whether he may not have been sent for the purpose of reconciling differences and keeping Austria from the Alliance. Madame de Staël asserts that the Ministers here
46
News from Paris
are “tout a fait à la guerre,” and though she is a person of no great judgment, yet, as she sees a great number of people and has various means of information, I am afraid that her opinion is not altogether unfounded.

People arrived lately from Paris say there is great discontent there, but not of that kind that produces an explosion of popular feeling. It evaporated in a cold reception of the Emperor at public places, and a few lively epigrams.

In the provinces there is great despair on account of the conscription, but at the same time much apathy. The alarm was considerable for about six weeks, but the delay of the Allies in crossing the Rhine, and the ignorance in which people were for some time kept as to what was passing in Holland, gave them time to breathe; and the first panic was quite over. The terms to which Buonaparte had agreed as a preliminary basis, exclusively of Colonial compensations, are said to have been the following: To abandon Germany, Spain, Holland, and Italy, and restore the Valais to Switzerland. To give up Naples and the Ecclesiastical States to their own sovereigns; and the Tyrol, the Illyrian provinces, and Piedmont, together with Genoa, to the Archduke Francis of Austria, who has married a Sardinian princess. The Milanese to be erected into a principality for the Princess of Bavaria, who is married to Eugene Beauharnais; and the Ecclesiastical States to be formed into a detached sovereignty for Murat; the Netherlands and Antwerp to remain with France. I know not whether you will be
47
News from Paris
interested in this diplomatic detail, in which there is probably, as usual, a mixture of truth and falsehood. It is to be observed that these terms were agreed on before the Revolution in Holland, at which time, it is said, the Allies were not unwilling to consent to the restoration of Louis Buonaparte as a separate and wholly independent sovereign. They had a jealousy of Holland becoming a sort of province to England, by means of the restoration of the House of Orange, but as that event has now taken place without the assistance of the Allies, a new and very serious difficulty has arisen, by which the progress of the negotiation must be much impeded. It is probably to this that Buonaparte alluded in speaking of “delays not attributable to France.”