rigid legitimacy of
the Court of St. James. The Maltese affair and the possibility of
reopening the Eastern Question were the two sources of hope to the
promoters of a Franco-Russian alliance; for both these questions
appealed to the chivalrous love of adventure and to the calculating
ambition so curiously blent in Alexander's nature. Such, then, was the
motive which doubtless prompted Bonaparte's proposal concerning
Valetta; such also were the reasons which certainly dictated its
rejection by Great Britain.

In his interview with the First Consul at Paris, and in the subsequent
negotiations at Amiens with Joseph Bonaparte, the question of Tobago
and England's money claim for the support of French prisoners was
found to be no less thorny than that of Malta. The Bonapartes firmly
rejected the proposal for the retention of Tobago by England in lieu
of her pecuniary demand. A Government which neglected to procure the
insertion of its claim to Tobago among the Preliminaries of London
could certainly not hope to regain that island in exchange for a
concession to France that was in any degree disputable. But the two
Bonapartes and Talleyrand now took their stand solely on the
preliminaries, and politely waved on one side the earlier promises of
M. Otto as unauthorized and invalid, They also closely scrutinized the
British claim to an indemnity for the support of French prisoners.
Though theoretically correct, it was open to an objection, which was
urged by Bonaparte and Talleyrand with suave yet incisive irony.
They suggested that the claim must be considered in relation to a
counter-claim, soon to be sent from Paris, for the maintenance of all
prisoners taken by the French from the various forces subsidized by
Great Britain, a charge which "would probably not leave a balance so
much in favour of His [Britannic] Majesty as His Government may have
looked forward to." This retort was not so terrible as it appeared;
for most of the papers necessary for the making up of the French
counterclaim had been lost or destroyed during the Revolution. Yet the
threat told with full effect on Cornwallis, who thereafter referred to
the British claim as a "hopeless debt."[187] The officials of Downing
Street drew a distinction between prisoners from armies merely
subsidized by us and those taken from foreign forces actually under
our control; but it is clear that Cornwallis ceased to press the
claim. In fact, the British case was mismanaged