The British government having refused to ratify this convention of Suhlingen, as it was termed, the Hanoverian army were summoned to surrender as prisoners of war;--hard terms, which, upon the determined resistance of Walmoden, were only thus far softened, that these tried and faithful troops were to be disbanded, and deliver up their arms, artillery, horses, and military stores. In a letter to the first consul, Mortier declares that he granted these mitigated terms from respect to the misfortunes of a brave enemy; and mentions, in a tone of creditable feeling, the distress of General Walmoden, and the despair of the fine regiment of Hanoverian guards, when dismounting from their horses to surrender them up to the French. At the same time that they occupied Hanover, the French failed not to make a further use of their invasion of Germany, by laying forced loans on the Hanseatic towns, and by other encroachments. The Prince Royal of Denmark was the only sovereign who showed an honourable sense of these outrages, by assembling in Holstein an army of thirty thousand men; but being unsupported by any other power, he was soon glad to lay aside the attitude which he had assumed. Austria accepted, as current payment, the declaration of France, that by her occupation of Hanover she did not intend any act of conquest, or annexation of territory, but merely proposed to retain the electorate as a pledge for the isle of Malta, which the English, contrary, as was alleged, to the faith of treaties, refused to surrender. Prussia, naturally dissatisfied at seeing the aggressions of France extend to the neighbourhood of her own territories, was nevertheless obliged to rest contented with the same excuse. The French ruler did not confine himself to the occupation of Hanover. Tarentum, and other seaports of the King of Naples's dominions, were seized upon, under the same pretext of their being a pledge for the restoration of Malta. In fact, by thus quartering his troops upon neutral territories, by whom he took care that they should be paid and clothed, Napoleon made the war support itself, and spared France the burden of maintaining a great proportion of his immense army; while large exactions, not only on the commercial towns, but on Spain, Portugal, and Naples, and other neutral countries, in the name of loans, filled his treasury, and enabled him to carry on the expensive plans which he meditated.