Peace was now at hand. Soon after the Treaty of Lunéville had withdrawn Austria from the war, unofficial negotiations had begun between the Governments of Great Britain and France. The object with which Pitt had entered upon the war, the maintenance of the old European system against the aggression of France, was now seen to be one which England must abandon. England had borne its share in the defence of the Continent. If the Continental Powers could no longer resist the ascendancy of a single State, England could not struggle for the Balance of Power alone. The negotiations of 1801 had little in common with those of 1796. Belgium, which had been the burden of all Pitt's earlier despatches, no longer figured as an object of contention. The frontier of the Rhine, with the virtual possession of Holland and Northern Italy, under the title of the Batavian, Ligurian, and Cisalpine Republics, was tacitly conceded to France. In place of the restoration of the Netherlands, the negotiators of 1801 argued about the disposal of Egypt, of Malta, and of the colonies which Great Britain had conquered from France and its allies. Events decided the fate of Egypt. The restoration of Malta to the Knights of St. John was strenuously demanded by France, and not refused by England. It was in relation to the colonial claims of France that the two Governments found it most difficult to agree. Great Britain, which had lost no territory itself, had conquered nearly all the Asiatic and Atlantic colonies of the French Republic and of its Dutch and Spanish allies. In return for the restoration of Ceylon, the Cape of Good Hope, Guiana, Trinidad, and various East and West Indian settlements, France had nothing to offer to Great Britain but peace. If peace, however, was to be made, the only possible settlement was by means of a compromise; and it was finally agreed that England should retain Ceylon and Trinidad, and restore the rest of the colonies which it had taken from France, Spain, and Holland. Preliminaries of peace embodying these conditions were signed at London on the 1st of October, 1801. Hostilities ceased; but an interval of several months between the preliminary agreement and the conclusion of the final treaty was employed by Bonaparte in new usurpations upon the Continent, to which he forced the British Government to lend a kind of sanction in the continuance of the negotiations. The Government, though discontented, was unwilling to treat these acts as new occasions of war. The conferences were at length brought to a close, and the definitive treaty between France and Great Britain was signed at Amiens on the 27th of March, 1802. [90] [Pitt's retirement. Its cause.] [Union of Ireland and Great Britain, 1800.]