unless one of the combatants is overcome
or both are exhausted. But neither Great Britain nor France was in
this position. By sea our successes had been as continuous as those of
Napoleon over our allies on land. In January we captured the Cape from
the Dutch: in February the French force at St. Domingo surrendered to
Sir James Duckworth: Admiral Warren in March closed the career of the
adventurous Linois; and early in July a British force seized great
treasure at Buenos Ayres, whence, however, it was soon obliged to
retire. After these successes Fox could not but be firm. He refused to
budge from the standpoint of _uti possidetis_ which our envoy had
stated as the basis of negotiations: and the Earl of Lauderdale, who
was sent to support and finally to supersede the Earl of Yarmouth, at
once took a firm tone which drew forth a truculent rejoinder. If that
was to be the basis, wrote Clarke, the French plenipotentiary, then
France would require Moravia, Styria, the whole of Austria (Proper),
and Hanover, and in that case leave England her few colonial
conquests.

This reply of August 8th nearly severed the negotiations on the spot:
but Talleyrand persistently refused to grant the passports which
Lauderdale demanded--evidently in the hope that the Czar's
ratification of Oubril's treaty would cause us to give up Sicily.[88]
He was in error. On September 3rd the news reached Paris that
Alexander scornfully rejected his envoy's handiwork. Nevertheless,
Napoleon refused to forego his claims to Sicily; and the closing days
of Fox were embittered by the thought that this negotiation, the last
hope of a career fruitful in disappointments, was doomed to failure.
After using his splendid eloquence for fifteen years in defence of the
Revolution and its "heir," he came to the bitter conclusion that
liberty had miscarried in France, and that that land had bent beneath
the yoke in order the more completely to subjugate the Continent. He
died on September 13th.

French historians, following an article in the "Moniteur" of November
26th, have often asserted that the death of Fox and the accession to
power of the warlike faction changed the character of the
negotiations.[89] Nothing can be further from the truth. Not long
before his end, Fox thus expressed to his nephew his despair of peace:

"We can in honour do nothing without the full and _bona fide_
consent of the Queen and Court of Naples; but, even exclusive of
tha