Germany, the South of Europe would soon be indebted to his powerful mediation for the return of peace."

The real cause of this alteration in our courtiers' political jargon, has not yet been known: but, I think it may easily be discovered without any official publication. Buonaparte had the adroitness to cajole the Cabinet of Berlin into his interest, in the first month of his consulate, notwithstanding his own cri-. tical situation, as well as the critical situation of France; and he has ever since taken care both to attach it to his triumphal car, and to inculpate it directly in his outrages and violations.---Convinced, as he thought, of the selfishness which guided all its resolutions, all his attacks and invasions against the law of nations, or independence of states, were either preceded or followed with some offers of aggrandizement, of indemnity, of subsidy, or of alliance. His political intriguers were generally more successful in Prussia than his military heroes in crossing the. Rhine, or the Elbe, in laying the Hanse Towns under contribution, or in occupying Hanover; or rather all these acts of violence and injustice were merely the effects of his ascendancy in Prussia. When it is besides remembered, what provinces Prussia accepted from his bounty, what exchange of presents, of ribands, of private letters passed between Napoleone the First, and Frederick William III. between the Empress of the French and the Queen of Prussia, it is not surprising if the Cabinet of St. Cloud thought itself sure of the submission of the Cabinet of Berlin, and did not esteem it enough to fear it; or to think that it would have spirit enough to resent, or even honour to feel the numerous provocations offered.

Whatever Buonaparte and Talleyrand write or assert to the contrary, their gifts are only wages of their contempt, and they despise more that state they thus reward, than those nations, at whose expense they are liberal, and with whose spoil they delude selfishness or meanness into their snares. The more legiti mate sovereigns descend from their true dignity, and a liberal policy, the nearer they approach the baseness of usurpation, and the Machiavelism of rebellion. Like other upstarts, they never suffer an equal. If you do not keep yourself above them, they will crush you beneath them. If they have no reason to fear you, they will create some quarrel to destroy you.

It is said here, that Duroc's journey to Berlin was merely to demand a passage for the French troops through the Prussian territory in Franconia, and to prevent the Russian troops from passing through the Prussian territory in Poland. This request is such as might have been expected from our Emperor and his minister. Whether, however, the tone in which this curious negotiation with a neutral power was began, or that, at last, the generosity of the Russian monarch, awakened a sense of duty in the Cabinet of Berlin, the arrival of our pacific envoy was immediately followed with warlike preparations. Fortunate, indeed, was it for Prussia to have resorted to her military strength, instead of trusting any longer to our friendly assurances. The disasters that have since befallen the Austrian armies in Suabia, partly occasioned by our forced marches through neutral Prussia, would otherwise soon have been felt in Westphalia, in Brandenburg, and in Pomerania. But should his Prussian Majesty not order his troops to act in conjunction with Russia, Austria, England, and Sweden, and that very soon, all efforts against Buonaparte will be vain; as those troops which have dispersed the Austrians, and repulsed the Russians, will be more than equal to master the Prussians; and one campaign may be sufficient to convince the Prussian ministers of their folly and errors for years, and to punish them for their ignorance or selfishness.

Some preparations made in silence by the Marquis de Lucchesini; his affected absence from some of our late court circles, and the number of spies who now are watching his hotel and his steps, seem to indicate, that Prussia is tired of its impolitic neutrality, and inclined to join the confederacy against France. At the last assembly, at our Prince Cambaceres's, a rumour circulated, that preliminary articles for an offensive alliance with your country, had already been signed by the Prussian minister, Baron Hardenberg, on one side, and by your minister to the Court of Berlin, on the other; according to which, you were to take sixty thousand Prussians, and twelve thousand Hessians into your pay, for five years certain. A courier from Duroc, was said to have brought this news, which at first made some impression, but it wore away by degrees; and our government, to judge from the expressions of persons in its confidence, seems more to court, than to fear, a rupture with Prussia. Indeed, besides all other

reasons to carry on a war in the North of Europe, Buonaparte's numerous new and young generals are impatient to enrich themselves; and Italy, Switzerland, Holland, and the South of Germany, are almost exhausted.

LETTER LXX.

Paris, October, 1805.

MY LORD,

THE provocations of our government must have been extraordinary, indeed, when they were able to awaken the Cabinet of Berlin from its long and incomprehensible infatuation of trusting to the friendly intentions of honest Talleyrand, and to the disinterested policy of our generous Buonaparte. To judge its in-tents from its acts, the favour of the Cabinet of St. Cloud was not only its wish but its want. You must remember, that last year, besides his ordinary ambassador, Lucchesini, his Prussian Majesty was so ill advised as to dispatch a General Knobelsdorff as his extra representative, to assist at Napoleone's coronation; a degradation of lawful sovereignty, to which even the Court of Naples, though surrounded with our troops, refused to subscribe; and so late as last June, the same Knobelsdorff did, in the name of his Prince, the honours at the reviews near Magdeburg, to all the generals of our army in Hanover, who chose to attend there. On this occasion, the King lodged in a farm-house, the Queen in the house of the curate of Koestlith, while our sans-culotte officers, Bernadotte and Co. were quartered and treated in style, at the castle of Putzbull, fitted up for their accommoda-tion. This was certainly very hospitable, and very civil, but it was neither prudent nor polite. Upstarts experiencing such a reception from Princes, are convinced that they are dreaded, be-cause they know that they have not merited to be esteemed.

Do not confound this Knobelsdorff with the late field-marshal of that name, who, in 1796, answered to a request which our then ambassador at Berlin, Abbe Sieyes, had made to be intro-duced to him, NON ET SANS PHRASE, the very words this regicide. used when he sat in judgment on his king, and voted LA MORT ET SANS PHRASE. This Knobelsdorff is a very different charac ter. He pretends to be equally conspicuous in the cabinet as in

the field; in the boudoir, as in the study. A demi-philosopher, a demi-savant, a demi-gallant, and a demi-politician, constitute, { all taken together, nothing, except an insignificant courtier. I do not know whether he was among those Prussian officers who, in 1798, CRIED, when it was inserted in the public prints, that the Grand Buonaparte had been killed in an insurrection at Cairo; but of this I am certain, that were Knobelsdorff to survive Napoleone the First, none of his Imperial Majesty's own dutiful subjects would mourn him more sincerely than this subject of the King of Prussia. He is said to possess a great share of the confidence of his King, who has already employed him in several diplomatic missions. The principal and most requisite qualities in a negotiator are, political information, inviolable fidelity, a penetrating but unbiassed judgment, a dignified firmness, and condescending manners. I have not been often enough in the society of General Knobelsdorff to assert whether nature and education have destined him to illumine, or to cloud the Prussian monarchy.

I have already mentioned, in a former letter, that it was Count de Haugwitz who, in 1792, as Prussian ambassador at Vienna, arranged the treaty which then united the Austrian and Prussian Eagles against the Jacobin Cap of Liberty; it is now said in our diplomatic circle, that his second mission to the same capital has for an object the renewal of these ties, which the treaty of Basle dissolved; and that our government, to impede his success, or to occasion his recall, before he could have time to conclude, had proposed to Prussia an annual subsidy of thirty millions of livres, 1,250,000l. which it intended to exact from Portugal for its neutrality. The present respectable appearance of Prussia shows, however, that whether the mission of Haugwitz had the desired issue or not, his Prussian Majesty confides in his army in preference to our parchments.

Some of our politicians pretend, that the present minister of the foreign department in Prussia, Baron de Hardenberg, is not such a friend of the system of neutrality as his predecessor. All the transactions of his administration seem, nevertheless, to proclaim, that if he wished his country to take an active part in the present conflict, it would not have been against France, had she not began the attack with the invasion of Anspach and Bareuth.

Let it be recollected that, since his ministry, Prussia has acknow. ledged Buonaparte an Emperor of the French, has exchanged orders with him, and has sent an extraordinary ambassador to be present at his coronation-not common compliments even between Princes connected by the nearest ties of friendship and consanguinity. Under his administration, the Rhine has been passed to seize the Duke d'Enghien; and the Elbe, to capture Sir George Rumbold; the Hanse Towns have been pillaged, and even Embden blockaded; and the representations against all these outrages have neither been followed by public reparation, or a becoming resentment: and was it not also Baron de Hardenberg who, on the 5th of April, 1796, concluded at Basle that treaty to which we owe all our conquests, and Germany and Italy all their disasters? It is not probable that the parent of pacification will destroy its own progeny, if self-preservation does not require it. ·

Baron de Hardenberg is both a learned nobleman and an enlightened statesman, and does equal honour both to his own rank and to the choice of his Prince. The late Frederic William II. nominated him a minister of state, and a counsellor of his cabinet. On the 26th of January, 1792, as directorial minister, he took possession, in the name of the King of Prussia, of the Margravates of Anspach and Bareuth, and the inhabitants swore before him, as their governor, their oaths.of allegiance to their new Sovereign. He continued to reside, as a kind of viceroy, in these states, until March, 1795, when he replaced Baron de Goltz as negotiator with our republican plenipotentiary in Switzerland; but after settling all differences between Prussia and France, he returned to his former post at Anspach, where no complaints have been heard against his government.

The ambition of Baron de Hardenberg has always been to obtain the place he now occupies, and the study of his life has been to gain such information as would enable him to fill it with distinction. I have heard it said that in most countries he had for years kept and paid private agents, who regularly corresponded with him, and sent him reports of what they heard or saw of political intrigue or machinations. One of these, his agents, I happened to meet with, in 1796, at Basle, and were I to conclude from what I observed in him, the minister has not been very ju