icion of bad faith. Spain and Holland, smarting
under the conditions of a peace which gave to France all the glory and
to her allies all the loss, delayed sending their respective envoys to
the conferences at Amiens, and finally avowed their determination to
resist the surrender of Trinidad and Ceylon. In fact, pressure had to
be exerted from Paris and London before they yielded to the inevitable.
This difficulty was only one of several: there then remained the
questions whether Portugal and Turkey should be admitted to share in the
treaty, as England demanded; or whether they should sign a separate
peace with France. The First Consul strenuously insisted on the
exclusion of those States, though their interests were vitally affected
by the present negotiations, He saw that a separate treaty with the
Sublime Porte would enable him, not only to extract valuable trading
concessions in the Black Sea trade, but also to cement a good
understanding with Russia on the Eastern Question, which was now being
adroitly reopened by French diplomacy. Against the exclusion of Turkey
from the negotiations at Amiens, Great Britain firmly but vainly
protested. In fact, Talleyrand had bound the Porte to a separate
agreement which promised everything for France and nothing for Turkey,
and seemed to doom the Sublime Porte to certain humiliation and probable
partition.[189]

Then there were the vexed questions of the indemnities claimed by
George III. for the Houses of Orange and of Savoy. In his interview
with Cornwallis, Bonaparte had effusively promised to do his utmost
for the ex-Stadholder, though he refused to consider the case of the
King of Sardinia, who, he averred, had offended him by appealing to
the Czar. The territorial interests of France in Italy doubtless
offered a more potent argument to the First Consul: after practically
annexing Piedmont and dominating the peninsula, he could ill brook
the presence on the mainland of a king whom he had already sacrificed
to his astute and masterful policy. The case of the Prince of Orange
was different. He was a victim to the triumph of French and democratic
influence in the Dutch Netherlands. George III. felt a deep interest
in this unfortunate prince and made a strong appeal to the better
instincts of Bonaparte on his behalf. Indeed, it is probable that
England had acquiesced in the consolidation of French influence at the
Hague, in the hope that her complaisance would lead the First Con