In the time of Napoleon, Charles James Fox, an admirer and friend of the First Consul, found himself, all unconsciously, caught in the vast woof of the Fouché-Talleyrand system of intelligence, thus becoming an unwitting agent in communicating to the French Government certain of the designs of the British Government for the destruction of Bonaparte's Continental policy. The fact that Fox was a desperate gambler, and ever in debt, was not of course allowed to escape the notice of his few, but bitter, enemies, who in this case were obviously moved by malice rather than by anything they really knew. The cleverness of Canning in procuring private information regarding the secret clauses of the Treaty of Tilsit between Alexander of Russia and Napoleon is commonly regarded as among the greatest achievements of diplomacy in all time. How the British foreign minister obtained this information will probably remain a secret for ever; but the momentous results of his cleverness are indisputable, since they led to the seizure of the Danish fleet and broke up the northern confederation of powers by which Napoleon still hoped to invade England, and some analogy to which is found at our own time in the occupation of Belgium by the Germans, England having been the main objective in both cases. Conjecture is, of course, not wanting as to the means which placed this intelligence in the hands of Canning. According to one writer, a certain Lady Sarah Spencer, in a letter addressed to her father at Althorp, declared at the time that "Lord G. L. Gower had got possession, for £20,000, of the original treaty of Tilsit and that one of the secret articles stipulated that the Danish fleet should be employed against us, which induced Ministers to adopt such measures." It is declared by a member of the Mackenzie clan that one Colin Mackenzie, who perfectly understood and spoke French, disguised himself as a Cossack and was one of the attendants chosen to accompany the Russian Emperor to the raft on which the interview with Napoleon was held—a story which does not, it must be said, meet with very cordial acceptance. Again it is asserted that the famous Launay, Count d'Antraigues, obtained the treaty from a friend in Russia, a version which seems disproved by the fact that the Count was at that time in disgrace in England. On Sir Robert Wilson has also been conferred the distinction of discovering the secret understandings of Tilsit, while the tradition of the Foreign Office is that the information came indirectly from the Emperor Alexander and was given publicity through some blunder on the part of the Russian Ambassador in London—most probably the correct facts.