Years of Victory 1802 - 1812 by Arthur Bryant

assisted by Hawkesbury and Whitworth, who were by now so obsessed with the formula—Malta or war—and harped on it so insistently that they obscured the real issue. Despite Castlereagh's repeated memoranda to the Cabinet, they failed to marshal Bonaparte's breaches of the Treaty and their own undeniable grievances and lost the thread of their argument in vague and partial protests and proposals.
    But though Napoleon and Talleyrand used the shortcomings of the British leaders to make them look foolish, there was one thing they could not do. Nothing would induce the latter to relax their grip on Malta. Though a few infatuated Francophils and appeasers— traitors and intruding rascals, declared Whitworth, who disgraced the name of Englishmen—hinted hopefully in Paris that Downing Street was bluffing, they were soon given the lie. On April 4th, angered by delay and evasions, the British raised their terms.
    1 Sec Gillray's cartoon, "Maniac Ravings or Lit tle Boney in a Strong Fit"; Mal mesbury, IV, 189, 202, 235, 238; Brown ing, 84, 88, 100, 127-8, 133; We llesley, I, 163; Granville, I, 390; Moore, II, 169; Romilly, 78; Auckland, IV, 164; Barante, 53-6.
    Whit worth was instructed to ask not only for perpetual possession of Malta, the Treasury indemnifying the Knights of St. John, but for the withdrawal 6f French troops from Holland and Switzerland. In return Britain would recognise the puppet Kingdom of Etruria and—provided a satisfactory settlement was made for the House of Savoy—the Italian and Ligurian Republics. If the French made counter-proposals affording comparable security and compensation, they would be sympathetically considered. If not, Whitworth was to leave Paris.
    This ultimatum was met by an attitude of bland astonishment. Talleyrand, after reading it with polite attention, asked Whitworth for a list of the points on which it was so unaccountably argued that the French Government had failed to provide satisfaction. In a second interview he stated that First Consul was deeply hurt at the use of the word "satisfaction." It implied superiority, and by requiring it the British were arrogating to themselves a position which no Frenchman could permit. As for Malta, the First Consul with his delicate sense of honour would sooner be cut to pieces than permit the British to retain it in defiance of an international obligation. But when this produced no impression, Talleyrand asked whether some modification of the demands capable of satisfying both parties was not possible. If a Neapolitan garrison would not afford security to England, could not Malta be held by a mixed international force composed of English, French, Italians, Germans? When Whitworth refused to discuss this, the Foreign Minister insisted on a mental tour of Europe in search of some neutral guaranteeing Power and some compensatory Mediterranean island capable of affording an equivalent security—Crete, Corfu or some Turkish trifle in the Aegean Archipelago ? Could nothing be found to satisfy the British? 1
    This belated admission of England's right to compensation induced Whitworth and the Cabinet to make .a last search for a solution. Suggestions were made for substituting a term of years for permanent occupation of Malta and for the purchase of the neighbouring island of Lampedusa from the King of the Two Sicilies as a British naval base. But Bonaparte, though to win time he allowed Joseph and Talleyrand to flirt with the idea, never for a moment intended to give the British a lease long enough to impede his plans for conquest. There was no formula, though Whitworth and Joseph searched for it assiduously, that could reconcile two diametrically opposed forces. The First Consul wanted a world that he could shape to his will; Britain one in which private men could
    1 Browning, 159-60, 162-6, 168-9.
    trade and grow rich as they pleased. So long as the British could bar the sea-passage of. armies eastwards in the Sicilian Narrows and westwards in the