ABSTRACT
In the whole history of German disunion and particularism there are few pages more discreditable than that which narrates the protracted negotiations which followed the Peace of Luneville. The spectacle of the Princes of Germany vying with one another in currying favour with Napoleon, of the bribery, the intrigues, the utter selfishness, the want of any appeal to patriotism or national feeling, is one which has few parallels. A series of separate treaties between France and the various Powers of Germany arranged the details of the compensation. Certain slight modifications were made by the Diet in the scheme submitted to it, but on the whole the "Recess" of February 25th, 1803, reproduced the proposals which France and Russia had laid before the Deputation on September 8th, 1802. Austria pushed the claims of the Grand Dukes of Modena and Tuscany; Prussia was urgent for another non-German claimant, the Prince of Orange, who was connected by marriage with the Hohenzollern family.
