This game was played by both Powers at Amiens, and with little other result than mutual exasperation.

Yet here, too, the balance of gain naturally accrued to Bonaparte; for he required the British Ministry to recognize existing facts in Etruria and Liguria, while Cornwallis had to champion the cause of exiles and of an order that seemed for ever to have vanished.

To pit the non-existent against the actual was a task far above the powers of British statesmanship; yet that was to be its task for the next decade, while the forces of the living present were to be wielded by its mighty antagonist.

Herein lay the secret of British failures and of Napoleon's extraordinary triumphs.
Leaving, for a space, the negotiations at Amiens, we turn to consider the events which transpired at Lyons in the early weeks of 1802, events which influenced not only the future of Italy, but the fortunes of Bonaparte.
It will be remembered that, after the French victories of Marengo and Hohenlinden, Austria agreed to terms of peace whereby the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Helvetic, and Batavian Republics were formally recognized by her, though a clause expressly stipulated that they were to be independent of France.

A vain hope! They continued to be under French tutelage, and their strongholds in the possession of French troops.
It now remained to legalize French supremacy in the Cisalpine Republic, which comprised the land between the Ticino and the Adige, and the Alps and the Rubicon.