In their struggles after democracy the French finally reverted to the military type of Government, which accords with many of the cherished instincts of their race: and the military-democratic compromise embodied in Napoleon endowed that people with the twofold force of national pride and of conscious strength springing from their new institutions.
With this was mingled contempt for neighbouring peoples who either could not or would not gain a similar independence and prestige.
Everything helped to feed this self-confidence and contempt for others.

The venerable fabric of the Holy Roman Empire was rocking to and fro amidst the spoliations of its ecclesiastical lands by lay princes, in which its former champions, the Houses of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, were the most exacting of the claimants.

The Czar, in October, 1801, had come to a profitable understanding with France concerning these "secularizations." A little later France and Russia began to draw together on the Eastern Question in a way threatening to Turkey and to British influence in the Levant.[217] In fact, French diplomacy used the partition of the German ecclesiastical lands and the threatened collapse of the Ottoman power as a potent means of busying the Continental States and leaving Great Britain isolated.
Moreover, the great island State was passing through ministerial and financial difficulties which robbed her of all the fruits of her naval triumphs and made her diplomacy at Amiens the laughing-stock of the world.

When monarchical ideas were thus discredited, it was idle to expect peace.

The struggling upwards towards a higher plane had indeed begun; democracy had effected a lodgment in Western Europe; but the old order in its bewildered gropings after some sure basis had not yet touched bottom on that rock of nationality which was to yield a new foundation for monarchy amidst the strifes of the nineteenth century.
Only when the monarchs received the support of their French-hating subjects could an equilibrium of force and of enthusiasms yield the long-sought opportunity for a durable peace.[218] The negotiations at Amiens had amply shown the great difficulty of the readjustment of European affairs.