ONE:On the 6th of January there landed at Greenwich an illustrious visitor to the Court on an unwelcome errandnamely, Prince Eugene. The Allies, justly alarmed at the Ministerial revolution which had taken place in England, and at the obvious design of the Tories to render abortive all the efforts of the Whigs and the Allies through the war, from mere party envy and malice, sent over Eugene to convince the queen and the Government of the fatal consequences of such policy. Harley paid obsequious court to the prince as long as he hoped to win him over. He gave a magnificent dinner in his honour, and declared that he looked on that day as the happiest of his life, since he had the honour to see in his house the greatest captain of the age. The prince, who felt that this was a mean blow at Marlborough, replied with a polite but cutting sarcasm, which must have sunk deep in the bosom of the Lord Treasurer, "My lord, if I am the greatest captain of the age, I owe it to your lordship." That was to say, because he had deprived the really greatest captain of his command. The queen, though she was compelled to treat Eugene graciously, and to order the preparation of costly gifts to him as the representative of the Allies, regarded him as a most unwelcome guest, and in her private circle took no pains to conceal it. The whole Tory party soon found that he was not a man to be seduced from his integrity, or brought to acquiesce in a course of policy which he felt and knew to be most disgraceful and disastrous to the peace of Europe; and being fully convinced of this, they let loose on the illustrious stranger all the virulence of the press. Eugene returned to the Continent, his mission being unaccomplished, on the 13th of March.Another expedition was that of Colonel Sebastiani, a Corsican, who was despatched to Egypt, Syria, and other countries of the Levant. Sebastiani reported to Buonaparte that the British were so detested in Egypt that six thousand men would suffice to re-take it; that Buonaparte's name was so venerated that it had procured him the utmost honour everywhere, and especially with Djezzar Pacha, Viceroy of Egypt. He asserted[486] that General Stuart, the British envoy, had endeavoured to excite the Turks to assassinate him. He harangued the natives in the Ionian Isles, and assured them of the protection of Buonaparte, and besides many calumnies against the British officers, he told Napoleon that so hateful was the British rule that both Greeks and Venetians in those islands were ready to rise against them at the first word from France. On the appearance of this base report, our ambassador at Paris made a strong remonstrance; but Napoleon only replied by complaining of the late account of the campaign in Egypt by Sir Robert Wilson, in which he had detailed the butchery of the Turks and Arnauts at Jaffa, and Napoleon's command to poison his own wounded on the retreat from Acre. Through M. Otto, the French envoy in London, Napoleon demanded that statements injurious to his character made by the British press should be stopped by Government, that all French emigrants should be expelled from England, that Georges Cadoudal should be transported to Canada, and such princes of the House of Bourbon as remained there should be advised to repair to Warsaw, where the head of their house now resided. To these peremptory demands the British Government, through Lord Hawkesbury, replied that his Britannic Majesty did not possess the absolute power necessary for these acts, and that whilst the statements charging upon a British Ambassador instigations to murder were published in the Moniteur, the official organ of the French Government, the statements by the British press were protected by the freedom of that press guaranteed in Great Britain, which the king was not disposed to invade, but from which any man, British or foreign, might claim redress by an action at law. To show the First Consul how this might be done, the British Government commenced an action against M. Peltier, a French emigrant, for a libel on Napoleon in a newspaper published by him in London, called the Ambigu. Peltier was found guilty; but this by no means answered Buonaparte's object. He wanted the accounts of his darkest actions suppressed by a power above the law, not thus made more public by the action of the law. As Sir Walter Scott has observed, he wanted darkness, and the British Government gave him light.
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