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 on 7 Dec., and six days later his wife was received at St. Cloud. The duchess, whose hauteur was very pronounced, had considerable scruples about calling upon the wife of Talleyrand. As early as 23 Dec. Whitworth mentions in a despatch the rumour that the first consul was meditating a divorce from his wife and the assumption of the imperial title, but during his first two months' sojourn in Paris there seemed a tacit agreement to avoid disagreeable subjects. Napoleon ignored the attacks of the English press, the retention of Malta, and the protracted evacuation of Egypt, while England kept silence as to the recent French aggressions in Holland, Piedmont, Elba, Parma, and Switzerland. The British government were, however, obstinate in their refusal to quit Malta until a guarantee had been signed by the various powers ensuring the possession of the island to the knights of St. John. This difficulty, which constituted the darkest cloud on the diplomatic horizon, was first raised by Talleyrand on 27 Jan. 1803. Three days later was published a report filling eight pages of the ‘Moniteur’ from Colonel Sebastiani, who had been sent by Napoleon upon a special mission of inquiry to Egypt. In this report military information was freely interspersed with remarks disparaging to England, in which country the document was plausibly interpreted as a preface to a second invasion of Egypt by the French. The Addington ministry consequently instructed Whitworth, through the foreign minister Hawkesbury, to stiffen his back against any demand for the prompt evacuation of Malta. On 18 Feb. Napoleon summoned the ambassador, and, after a stormy outburst of rhetoric, concluded with the memorable appeal, ‘Unissons-nous plutôt que de nous combattre, et nous réglerons ensemble les destinées du monde.’ Any significance that this offer might have had was more than neutralised by the first consul's observation, ‘Ce sont des bagatelles’ (much commented upon in England), when, in answer to reproaches about Malta, Whitworth hinted at the augmentation of French power in Piedmont, Switzerland, and elsewhere.

The crisis, of extreme importance in the career of Napoleon (‘il était arrivé,’ says Lanfrey, ‘à l'instant le plus critique de sa carrière’) as well as in the history of England, was arrived at on 13 March 1803, the date of the famous scene between Napoleon and the British ambassador at the Tuileries. At the close of a violent tirade before a full court, interrupted by asides to foreign diplomatists expressive of the bad faith of the British, Napoleon exclaimed loudly to Whitworth, ‘Malheur à ceux qui ne respectent pas les traités. Ils en seront responsables à toute l'Europe.’ ‘He was too agitated,’ says the ambassador, ‘to prolong the conversation; I therefore made no answer, and he retired to his apartment repeating the last phrase.’ Two hundred people heard this conversation (‘if such it can be called’), ‘and I am persuaded,’ adds Whitworth, ‘that there was not a single person who did not feel the extreme impropriety of his conduct and the total want of dignity as well as of decency on the occasion.’ The interview was not, however, a final one (as has often erroneously been stated). Whitworth was received by the first consul once again on 4 April, when the corps diplomatique were kept waiting for an audience for four hours while Napoleon inspected knapsacks. ‘When that ceremony was performed he received us, and I had every reason to be satisfied with his manner towards me’ (Whitworth to Hawkesbury, 4 April 1803). Napoleon wished to temporise until his preparations were a little more advanced, but the pourparlers henceforth had little real significance. On 1 May an indisposition prevented the ambassador from attending the reception at the Tuileries, on 12 May he demanded his passports, and on 18 May Britain declared war against France. Whitworth reached London on 20 May, having encountered the French ambassador, Andréossy, three days earlier at Dover (, Traités de Paix, viii. 100–151). Throughout the trying scenes with the first consul, his demeanour was generally admitted to have been marked by a dignity and an impassibilité worthy of the best traditions of aristocratic diplomacy.

Irritated by his failure to stun him by a display of violence (such as that which had so daunted the Venetian plenipotentiaries before the treaty of Campo Formio), Napoleon did not hesitate to suggest in one of his journals that Whitworth had been privy to the murder of Paul I in Russia. At St. Helena in July 1817 he alluded to him with calmness as ‘habile’ and ‘adroit,’ but he always maintained that the accepted version of the celebrated interview of 13 March was ‘plein des faussetés’ (cf. the account printed in Notes and Queries, 1st ser. v. 313).

After his return, not occupying a seat in either house of parliament, Whitworth sank for ten years into comparative insignificance, but in 1813, owing to his wife's connection with Lord Liverpool, he was made on 2 March a lord of the bedchamber to George III, and on 3 June was appointed lord lieu-