The Treaty of Amiens (French: la paix d'Amiens, lit. 'the peace of Amiens') temporarily ended hostilities between France, the Spanish Empire, and the United Kingdom at the end of the War of the Second Coalition. It marked the end of the French Revolutionary Wars; after a short peace it set the stage for the Napoleonic Wars. Britain gave up most of its recent conquests; France was to evacuate Naples and Egypt. Britain retained Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Trinidad.
It was signed in the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) of Amiens on 25 March 1802 (4 Germinal X in the French Revolutionary calendar) by Joseph Bonaparte and Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace". The consequent peace lasted only one year (18 May 1803) and was the only period of general peace in Europe between 1793 and 1814.
Under the treaty, Britain recognised the French Republic. Together with the Treaty of Lunéville (1801), the Treaty of Amiens marked the end of the Second Coalition, which had waged war against Revolutionary France since its 1798 invasion of Egypt.
The United Kingdom wanted the peace to enable restoration of trade with continental Europe. It also wanted to end its isolation from other powers, and achieved that goal by a rapprochement with Russia that provided the momentum to negotiate the treaty with France. The peace of Amiens also mollified the antiwar Whig opposition in Parliament.
Napoleon used the interlude for major internal reforms such as the promulgation of the new legal system under the Napoleonic Code, making peace with the Vatican by the Concordat, and issuing a new constitution that gave him lifetime control. France made territorial gains in Switzerland and Italy. Napoleon entertained a goal of a North American empire but that dream collapsed with the failure of his army in Haiti. He gave it up and sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States.
The Democratic-Republican administration of President Thomas Jefferson used British banks to fund the Louisiana Purchase, reduced the U.S. military budget, and partly dismantled the Hamiltonian Federalist financial program. As a result of the treaty, the French West Indies no longer needed to use U.S. ships to move products to Europe.
Although the terms of the Treaty did not favour his country, British Prime Minister Henry Addington used the interlude to rebuild British strength, so that when fighting renewed in spring 1803, the Royal Navy quickly gained control of the seas.
The isolationist foreign policy of the United States, which was hostile to both Britain and France, was criticized by the Federalist minority in Congress and from others as well.
The War of the Second Coalition started well for the coalition, with successes in Egypt, Italy and Germany. The success proved to be short-lived, however; after France's victories at the battles of Marengo and Hohenlinden, Austria, Russia and Naples sued for peace, with Austria eventually signing the Treaty of Lunéville. Horatio Nelson's victory at the Battle of Copenhagen on 2 April 1801 halted the creation of the League of Armed Neutrality and led to a negotiated ceasefire.
The French First Consul, Napoleon Bonaparte, first made truce proposals to British foreign secretary Lord Grenville as early as 1799. Because of the hardline stance of Grenville and Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, their distrust of Bonaparte and obvious defects in the proposals, they were rejected out of hand. However, Pitt resigned in February 1801 over domestic issues and was replaced by the more accommodating Henry Addington. At that point Britain was motivated by the danger of a war with Russia.
Addington's foreign secretary, Robert Jenkinson, Lord Hawkesbury, immediately opened communications with Louis Guillaume Otto, the French commissary for prisoners of war in London through whom Bonaparte had made his earlier proposals. Hawkesbury stated that he wanted to open discussions on terms for a peace agreement. Otto, generally under detailed instructions from Bonaparte, engaged in negotiations with Hawkesbury in mid-1801. Unhappy with the dialogue with Otto, Hawkesbury sent diplomat Anthony Merry to Paris, who opened a second line of communications with the French foreign minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. By mid-September, written negotiations had progressed to the point that Hawkesbury and Otto met to draft a preliminary agreement. On 30 September, they signed the preliminary agreement in London, which was published the next day.
The terms of the preliminary agreement required Britain to restore most of the French colonial possessions that it had captured since 1794, to evacuate Malta and to withdraw from other occupied Mediterranean ports. Malta was to be restored to the Order of St. John, whose sovereignty was to be guaranteed by one or more powers, to be determined at the final peace. France was to restore Egypt to Ottoman control, to withdraw from most of the Italian peninsula and to agree to preserve Portuguese sovereignty. Ceylon, previously a Dutch territory, was to remain with the British, and Newfoundland fishery rights were to be restored to their prewar status. Britain was also to recognise the Seven Islands Republic, established by France on the Ionian Islands that are now part of Greece. Both sides were to be allowed access to the outposts on the Cape of Good Hope. In a blow to Spain, the preliminary agreement included a secret clause in which Trinidad was to remain with Britain. Spain would finally recover the island of Menorca.
News of the signing was greeted across Europe with joy. The celebrations of peace, the pamphlets, poems, and odes proliferated in French, English, German, and other languages. Actors happily depicted the treaty at dinner theatres, vaudeville, and the legitimate stage. In Britain there were illuminations and fireworks. Peace, it was thought in Britain, would lead to the withdrawal of the income tax imposed by Pitt, a reduction of grain prices and a revival of markets.
In November 1801, Cornwallis was sent to France with plenipotentiary powers to negotiate a final agreement. The expectation among the British populace that peace was at hand put enormous pressure on Cornwallis, something that Bonaparte realised and capitalised on. The French negotiators, Napoleon's brother Joseph as well as Talleyrand, constantly shifted their positions, leaving Cornwallis to write, "I feel it as the most unpleasant circumstance attending this unpleasant business that, after I have obtained his acquiescence on any point, I can have no confidence that it is finally settled and that he will not recede from it in our next conversation." The Batavian Republic, whose economy depended on trade that had been ruined by the war, appointed Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, its ambassador to France, to represent it in the peace negotiations. He arrived in Amiens on 9 December. The Dutch role in the negotiations was marked by a lack of respect on the part of the French, who thought of them as a "vanquished and conquered" client whose present government "owed them everything".
Schimmelpenninck and Cornwallis negotiated agreements on the status of Ceylon, which was to remain British; the Cape Colony, which was to be returned to the Dutch but to be open to all; and the indemnification of the deposed House of Orange-Nassau for its losses. However, Joseph did not immediately agree to their terms, presumably needing to consult with the First Consul on the matter.
In January 1802, Napoleon travelled to Lyon to accept the presidency of the Italian Republic, a nominally-independent client republic that covered northern Italy and had been established in 1797. That act violated the Treaty of Lunéville, in which Bonaparte agreed to guarantee the independence of the Italian and other client republics. He also continued to support French General Pierre Augereau's reactionary coup d'état of 18 September 1801 in the Batavian Republic and its new constitution that was ratified by a sham election and brought the republic into closer alignment with its dominant partner.