Note 3 — WILLIAM PITT. ON HIS REFUSAL TO NEGOTIATE WITH NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 3, 1800.

Note 3, p. 31.—The cause of this incorporating of Savoy was the famous meeting at Mantua in May of 1791. The Count d’Artois, brother of Louis XVI., the Emperor of Austria, the King of Spain, and the King of Sardinia, had secured an agreement from those monarchs to send 100,000 men to the borders of France in the hope that the French, terrified by the alliance and by such an army, would seek peace by submitting to the Bourbon king, and asking for mediation. Though the plan was rejected by Louis, it none the less showed the animus of the allies. The details may be seen in Mignet, 101, and in Alison, tenth ed., ii., 412. On the 27th of November, 1792, the National Convention annexed Savoy and erected it into a department of France in direct opposition to the Constitution of the Republic, which declared that there should be no extension of the territory.