Severer conditions could doubtless have been extorted; but he now merged the soldier in the statesman.

He desired peace for the sake of France and for his own sake.

After this brilliant stroke peace would be doubly grateful to a people that longed for glory but also yearned to heal the wounds of eight years' warfare.

His own position as First Consul was as yet ill-established; and he desired to be back at Paris so as to curb the restive Tribunate, overawe Jacobins and royalists, and rebuild the institutions of France.
Impelled by these motives, he penned to the Emperor Francis an eloquent appeal for peace, renewing his offer of treating with Austria on the basis of the treaty of Campo Formio.[146] But Austria was not as yet so far humbled as to accept such terms; and it needed the master-stroke of Moreau at the great battle of Hohenlinden (December 2nd, 1800), and the turning of her fortresses on the Mincio by the brilliant passage of the Spluegen in the depths of winter by Macdonald--a feat far transcending that of Bonaparte at the St.
Bernard--to compel her to a peace.

A description of these events would be beyond the scope of this work; and we now return to consider the career of Bonaparte as a statesman.
After a brief stay at Milan and Turin, where he was received as the liberator of Italy, the First Consul crossed the Alps by the Mont Cenis pass and was received with rapturous acclaim at Lyons and Paris.
He had been absent from the capital less than two calendar months.
He now sent a letter to the Czar Paul, offering that, if the French garrison of Malta were compelled by famine to evacuate that island, he would place it in the hands of the Czar, as Grand Master of the Knights of St.John.Rarely has a "Greek gift" been more skilfully tendered.