With ostentatious simplicity, Bonaparte wrote both to George III and to Francis II, as man to man, announcing his accession to power, and pleading, in the interest of commerce, of national well-being, and of domestic happiness, for a cessation of hostilities after eight years of warfare. The French people, who looked upon the First Consul as a ruler made by themselves, were delighted with this simple straightforwardness, and gratified by the notion of their representative treating on equal terms with the divine-right monarchs of Europe. Pitt mistakenly thought that Bonaparte still personified Jacobinism, and labored under the delusion that France was completely exhausted. An English army was ready and about to disembark on the west coast of France. Kléber in Egypt, having maintained himself superbly thus far, was about to yield to pitiless fate, and accept humiliating terms for evacuating the country. Could the flames of the civil war which was once more raging in France be further fanned, and the control of the Levant secured in English hands, the great English premier would be able in a few months to make terms far more advantageous than any he could hope for at the moment. Lord Grenville therefore wrote a brusque letter to Talleyrand, refusing negotiation with a government the stability of which was not assured, and suggesting in a weak, impolitic way that while the French had a right to choose their own government, the return of the Bourbons would be the best guarantee of a permanent and settled administration. This clause afforded the opportunity for a smart reply by Bonaparte, denouncing England as the author of the war which had raged through 1799 and was about to be renewed, and reminding the King that he himself ruled by consent of his people.