ABSTRACT
The Peace of Amiens had been welcomed with profound relief by all the nations of Europe, and nowhere more than in Great Britain. Many hoped that the storms of the revolutionary period were over, and that Europe might enjoy at any rate a space of tranquillity and peaceful development; and yet the Peace of Amiens lasted less than two years, and quickly gave place to a war of greater intensity and longer duration, which did not really cease until the Battle of Waterloo. What were the causes of the new war? Though the rupture of the Peace of Amiens has had many books written about it there are certain points about which there is still real difference of opinion among the best informed historians.
