The American commissioners in private resented Alexander’s treatment, but were unable to leave Russia without authority. Gallatin learned, October 19, that the Senate had refused to confirm his appointment, but he remained at St. Petersburg, chiefly in deference to Roumanzoff’s opinion, and probably with ideas of assisting the direct negotiation at London or elsewhere. Meanwhile the campaign was decided, October 18, by Napoleon’s decisive overthrow at Leipzig, which forced him to retreat behind the Rhine. Still the Czar wrote nothing to Roumanzoff, and the American commissioners remained month after month at St. Petersburg. Not until Jan. 25, 1814, did Gallatin and Bayard begin their winter journey to Amsterdam, where they arrived March 4 and remained a month. Then Gallatin received, through Baring, permission to enter England, and crossed the Channel to hasten if he could the direct negotiation which Castlereagh had offered and Madison accepted. The diplomatic outlook had changed since March, 1813, when the President accepted the offer of Russian mediation; but the change was wholly for the worse. England’s triumphs girdled the world, and found no check except where Perry’s squadron blocked the way to Detroit. The allied armies crossed the Rhine in December and entered France on the east. At the same time Wellington after a long campaign drove Joseph from Spain, and entering France from the south pressed against Bordeaux. The government and people of England, in their excitement and exultation at daily conquests, thought as little as they could of the American war. Society rarely mentioned it. Newspapers alone preserved a record of British feelings toward the United States during the year 1813. The expressions of newspapers, like those of orators, could not be accepted without allowance, for they aimed at producing some desired effect, and said either more or less than the truth; as a rule, they represented the cool opinion neither of the person who uttered nor of the audience who heard them; but in the absence of other records, public opinion was given only in the press, and the London newspapers alone furnished evidence of its character. The “Morning Chronicle”--the only friend of the United States in the daily press of England--showed its friendship by silence. Whatever the liberal opposition thought in private, no one but Cobbett ventured in public to oppose the war. Cobbett having become a radical at the time of life when most men become conservative, published in his “Weekly Register” many columns of vigorous criticism on the American war without apparent effect, although in truth he expressed opinions commonly held by intelligent people. Even Lord Castlereagh, Cobbett’s antipathy, shared some of Cobbett’s least popular opinions in the matter of the American war.