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The answer, of course, is quite simple: by conjuring up the spectre of foreign counter-revolution, Napoleon was in effect giving himself carte blanche to take the initiative and strike as he chose. As he told Thibaudeau:

If our neighbours understand how to keep the peace, I will make peace secure, but, if they oblige me to take up arms again, it will be to our advantage to take them up ourselves before they have been allowed to rust by long disuse . . . Be quite sure that it is not I who will break the peace. No, I have no intention of being the aggressor, but I have too much at stake to leave the initiative to the foreign powers. I know them well. It is they who will either take up arms against us, or will supply me with just motives to declare war.31

Whatever Napoleon’s motives may have been, it is difficult not to conclude that it was thanks to him that all chance of a lasting peace was lost. As Talleyrand admitted, ‘Hardly was the peace of Amiens concluded when moderation began to abandon Bonaparte; this peace had not received its complete execution before he was sowing the seeds of new wars.’32 While there were some French troop withdrawals - specifically from Naples and Switzerland - far from living quietly within the borders allotted to him at Lunéville and Amiens, Napoleon continued actively to intervene in the affairs of the areas bordering upon them. Let us begin with Holland, whose interests, it should be said, had repeatedly been trampled on in the negotiations that had led to the final peace settlement. French troops continued to occupy the Batavian Republic throughout, while considerable pressure was put on the Dutch to cease all trade with Britain. Then there was Switzerland. In 1798 this country had become a unitary state - the Helvetic Republic - but such was the strength of cantonal feeling that there had ever since been great pressure for the adoption of a federal constitution. With the situation worsened by the bitter personal rivalries that divided the revolutionary leadership, the result was chaos: between January 1800 and April 1802 there were no fewer than four coups d’état as the different factions vied with one another for power. For France, however, this situation did not matter as long as she was in de facto control of the area (which was as crucial as ever: without Switzerland’s Alpine passes, the direct route to northern Italy was barred). Indeed, with the peace settlement at Amiens it could be turned to her advantage. If Switzerland, unlike Holland, was evacuated immediately, the reason was simple. In the summer of 1802 a compromise constitution had been imposed on the country by means of a rigged plebiscite, and so unpopular was the result that no sooner had the French pulled out - which they did with suspicious speed - than outright civil war broke out. Needless to say, this was exactly what Napoleon wanted: within a matter of weeks the First Consul had come forward as a mediator, sent 12,000 troops into the country, and summoned a conference of notables in Paris. From this there emerged in January 1803 Switzerland’s fourth constitution in five years. In itself, the so-called Act of Mediation was by no means a bad solution to the political problems thrown up by the Helvetic Republic. Radicals were conciliated by the retention of equality before the law and conservatives by the restoration of the old cantonal system. In much modified form, indeed, it has remained the basis of the Helvetic Confederation to this day. But, as was all too clear, a neutral Switzerland was not on the First Consul’s agenda. By backing the conservatives in the struggle over the form that the Swiss state should take, he had won over a powerful force that would otherwise have had no difficulties in aligning themselves with the ranks of France’s perpetual opponents. There remained, of course, the radicals, but as ‘Jacobins’ they had nowhere else to go and in consequence no option but to be grateful for such sops as Napoleon chose to throw them. To sum up, Switzerland had been established