After the Treaty of Lunéville was signed, Andre Masséna was finally able to enjoy some leisure. He was among the guests attending the canal's groundbreaking ceremony.
Pierre-Francis-Charles Augereau was now commanding the troops in the Netherlands and could not come, but he sent a gift—the original Girl with a Pearl Earring. It now hung on a wall in the Louvre Museum, while Napoleon returned a copy to the Netherlands.
In 1800, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte had been assigned to command the western army corps to prevent British warships from landing. In June, it was discovered that it had merely been a Royalist uprising. The Royalists' headquarters was on an island, and La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt was less suppressing the rebels than persuading them to surrender.
The pound had plummeted in both Spain and Hamburg because of the defeat in the Portuguese war. Neither nobles nor merchants supported raising income taxes, while British gold and silver were both appreciating.
A British magazine had once declared, "Even if that humane and commendable policy of starving the French cannot be achieved, perhaps attempting peace negotiations to prevent our own people from starving would be a wise course."
Without British financial support, the Royalists could not raise an army. Those who remained could only carry out acts of terror.
But what Lucien Bonaparte could not understand was why the British knew that Saint-Cyr was the commander of the War of the Oranges.
Saint-Cyr had already left Paris in February to serve as a diplomat in Madrid. No one knew of the military mission he carried with him.
The French Navy's Eastern Fleet had been destroyed, but other naval forces still existed. Besides, their mission was to put the French Army ashore and launch a surprise attack on Lisbon.
During his time in the Army of the Rhine, Saint-Cyr