The agents of the police transformed themselves into numberless disguises, with the view of drawing the British ministers resident at various courts of Germany into some correspondence capable of being misrepresented, so as to suit the purpose of their master.

Mr.Drake, envoy at Munich, and Mr.Spencer Smith, at Stuttgard, were deceived in this fashion; and some letters of theirs, egregiously misinterpreted, furnished Buonaparte with a pretext for complaining, to the sovereigns to whom they were accredited, that they had stained the honour of the diplomatic body by leaguing themselves with the schemes of the Chouan conspirators.

The subservient princes were forced to dismiss these gentlemen from their residences; but the English ministry made such explanations in open Parliament as effectually vindicated the name of their country.

Lord Elgin, British ambassador at Constantinople, had been one of those travellers detained at the out-breaking of the war, and was now resident on his parole in the south of France.

He was, on some frivolous pretext, confined in a solitary castle among the Pyrenees; and there every device was practised to induce him to, at least, receive letters calculated, if discovered in his possession, to compromise him.