On the 18th March, 1806, the secretary of the Dutch Legation at Paris arrived at the Hague bearing a secret commission. The States-General were convoked--the Grand Pensionary was consulted--and, finally, a deputation was sent to Paris, requesting that the Prince Louis Buonaparte should be created hereditary King of Holland. Buonaparte's assent was graciously given, and the transaction was concluded. It is indeed probable, that though the change was in every degree contradictory of their habits and opinions, the Dutch submitted to it as affording a prospect of a desirable relief from the disputes and factions which then divided their government. Louis Buonaparte was of a singularly amiable and gentle disposition. Besides his near relationship to Napoleon, he was married to Hortensia,[204] the daughter of Josephine, step-child of course to the Emperor, and who was supposed to share a great proportion of his favour. The conquered States of Holland, no longer the High and Mighty, as they had been accustomed to style themselves, hoped in adopting a monarch so nearly and intimately connected with Buonaparte, and received from his hand, that they might be permitted to enjoy the protection of France, and be secured against the subaltern oppression exercised over their commerce and their country. The acceptance of Louis as their King, they imagined, must establish for them a powerful protector in the councils of that Autocrat, at whose disposal they were necessarily placed. Louis Buonaparte was therefore received as King of Holland.[205] How far the prince and his subjects experienced fulfilment of the hopes which both naturally entertained, belongs to another page of this history. Germany also was doomed to find more than one appanage for the Buonaparte family. The effect of the campaign of Ulm and Austerlitz had been almost entirely destructive of the influence which the House of Austria had so long possessed in the south-west districts of Germany. Stripped of her dominions in the Vorarlberg and the Tyrol, as she had formerly been of the larger portion of the Netherlands, she was flung far back from that portion of Germany bordering on the right of the Rhine, where she had formerly exercised so much authority, and often, it must be confessed, with no gentle hand. Defeated and humbled, the Emperor of Austria was no longer able to offer any opposition to the projects of aggrandisement which Napoleon meditated in those confines of the empire which lay adjacent to the Rhine and to France, of which that river had been declared the boundary; nor indeed to his scheme of entirely new-modelling the empire itself.