Austria was resolved to keep all the eastern part of Piedmont and the greater part of the Genoese Republic.

While welcoming the latter half of this demand, George III.'s Ministers protested against the absorption of so great a part of Piedmont as an act of cruel injustice to the King of Sardinia.

Austria was annoyed at the British remonstrances and was indignant at the designs of the Czar on Corsica.

Accordingly no time could have been better chosen by Bonaparte for seeking to dissolve the Coalition, as he certainly hoped to do by these two letters.

Only the staunch support of legitimist claims by England then prevented the Coalition from degenerating into a scramble for Italian territories.[137] And, if we may trust the verdict of contemporaries and his own confession at St.Helena, Bonaparte never expected any other result from these letters than an increase of his popularity in France.