hood, were signed away with a
stroke of the pen. The surrender of the Cape was especially lamentable,
because upon security at that point depended the safety of India and
Australia. But the Addington ministry was weak and temporising, and was
alarmed about the internal condition of England, where dear food,
scarcity of employment and popular discontent, consequent upon prolonged
warfare, made the King's advisers nervously anxious to put an end to the
struggle. The worst feature of the situation was that everybody
thoroughly well understood that it was a mere parchment peace. Cornwallis
called it "an experimental peace." It was also termed "an armistice" and
"a frail and deceptive truce"; and though Addington declared it to be "no
ordinary peace but a genuine reconciliation between the two first nations
of the world," his flash of rhetoric dazzled nobody but himself. He was
the Mr. Perker of politics, an accommodating attorney rubbing his hands
and exclaiming "My dear sir!" while he bartered the interests of his
client for the delusive terms of a brittle expediency.

Decaen was to go to India to take charge of the former French possessions
there, under the terms of the treaty, and from Pondicherry was also to
control Ile-de-France (Mauritius) which the English had not taken during
the war. Napoleon's instructions to him clearly indicated that he did not
expect the peace to endure. Decaen was "to dissimulate the views of the
Government as much as possible"; "the English are the tyrants of India,
they are uneasy and jealous, it is necessary to behave towards them with
suavity, dissimulation and simplicity." He was to regard his mission
primarily as one of observation upon the policy and military dispositions
of the English. But Napoleon informed him in so many words that he
intended some day to strike a blow for "that glory which perpetuates the
memory of men throughout the centuries." For that, however, it was first
necessary "that we should become masters of the sea."* (* Memoires 2
310.)

Decaen sailed from Brest in February, 1803. Lord Whitworth, the British
ambassador to Paris, watched the proceedings with much care, and promptly
directed the attention of his Government to the disproportionate number
of officers the new Captain-General was taking with him. The Government
passed the information on to the Governor-General of India, Lord
Wellesley, who was already determined that, unless absolutely ordered so
to do, he