Who could expect, from what was then known of Bonaparte's character, that a peace so fraught with glory and profit would not satisfy French honour and his own ambition?
Peace, then, was an "experiment." The British Government wished to see whether France would turn from revolution and war to agriculture and commerce, whether her young ruler be satisfied with a position of grandeur and solid power such as Louis XIV.

had rarely enjoyed.

Alas! the failure of the experiment was patent to all save the blandest optimists long before the Preliminaries of London took form in the definitive Treaty of Amiens.

Bonaparte's aim now was to keep our Government strictly to the provisional terms of peace which it had imprudently signed.

Even before the negotiations were opened at Amiens, he ordered Joseph Bonaparte to listen to no proposal concerning the King of Sardinia and the ex-Stadholder of Holland, and asserted that the "internal affairs of the Batavian Republic, of Germany, of Helvetia, and of the Italian Republics" were "absolutely alien to the discussions with England." This implied that England was to be shut out from Continental politics, and that France was to regulate the affairs of central and southern Europe.