The National Register.
London, England, 1815-10-15 00:00:00

THE NATIONAL REGISTER.

" I shall be happy to present to his Majesty the results of your
teal awl of your labortrs, it wil be a pleasing duty for me to fulfil ;
• but if i perceive in your aduiinistra►ion slowness or indolence, if
von do not exert in it your whole energies, I shall lay your couduct
brtore the King, no consideration will prevent me.
" Accept, M. Prefect, 6:e.
es Minister, Secretary of State for tlic Interior,
(Signed) VAUBLANC'

DUTCH MAIL.
TILL DUKE OF WELLINGTON TO LORD CASTLE.
REAGH.

PARIS. SEPI. 23.

MY Loin.—There has been a good deal of discussion
lately respecting the measures I have been obliged to
adopt in order to obtain for the King of the Netherlands
his Paintings and other things out of the Museum, and as
these reports may reach the .ears of the Prince Regent, I
communicate to you the following account of the whole
affair, for his Royal Highness's information :
Shortly after the arrival of the Sovereigns at Paris the
Minister of the King of the Netherlands demanded the
Pictures, &c. &c. belonging to his Sovereign, as did the
Ministers of the other Sovereigns, and as I was informed
could not obtain a satisfactory answer from the French
Government. After several conversations with me upon
the subject, he sent to your Lordship an official note,
Ivhich was laid before the Ministers of the Allied Powers,
assembled at a conference upon which the business was
several times taken into consideration, in order to dis-
cover a means of doing justice to the claimants of the ob-
jects of Art in the Aluseum, without hurting the feelings
of the King of France.
In the mean time the Prussians had obtained from his
Majesty, not only all . the pictures belonging to erussia
Proper, but also those which belouged to the Prussian
territory on the left bank of the. Rhine, and all those
that were the property of his Prussian Majesty ; the
affair now became urgent, and your Lordship wrote a
rote of the --, in which the matter was fully treated.
The Minister of the Xing of the Netherlands still hav-
ing no satisfactory answer front the Frencl► Government
applied to me as Commander in Chief of the Army of the
King of the Netherlands, end asked whether I had any
objection to employ his Majesty's troops to obtain pos-
ses•ion of what was indubitably his Majesty's property.
I laid this question also before the Ministers of the Allied
?Aonarelis ; and as no objection abras found, J. thought it
Illy -duty W take the necessary step to obtain what was

spoke in consequence to Prince Talleyrand, upon
this subject, communicated to him what Lai pissed at
-the conference, and the reasons I had for thinking that
the King of the Netherlands had a right to the paintings,
and requested him to lay the matter before the King, and
to beg his Majesty to do me the favour to determine the
ii inner is which I might .obtain the object of the King
of the Netherlands in a way the !cast offensive to his Ala-

jesty.
Prince Talleyrand promised me an answer by the
next evening; but as I did not receive it, I repaired to
him in the night, had a second conference with him, in
which he gave me to understaiul that the King would
give no orders upon the subject, that I Inight do as I
thought proper and negociate will* Mr. Denon, the Direc,.
Lw of the Museum.
In the =snips 1 iiiy 41d-ticaC,tinp) Lickat,Acol.

OCT. 15.

Freentantle, to Mr. Denon, who told him that he had no
orders to give up any paintings out of th© Gallery, and
that he should suffer none to be taken away but by
force.

I then sent Colonel Freemantle to Prince Talleyrand,
to acquaint him with this answer, and to inform him that
the troops would go the next morning at o'clock, to
take possession of the paintings belonging to the King a
the Netherlands, and to declare, that if any thing un-
pleasant should arise from this measure, the King
and not I were answerable fur it. Colonel Freemantle
likewise informed Mr. Denon of the measure that iSa6 to
be taken.

It was, however, not necessary to send any troops,
because a Prussian Guard constantly occupied the Gal..
lcry, and the pictures were taken away without any as-.
sistance being required from any of the troops under my
command, except a few, who assisted as labourers in the
taking down and packing up.
It has been alledged, that by having been the instill-
ment of carrying away from the Gallery, the pictures
of the King of the Netherlands, I had been guilty of a
breach of a treaty which I had myself made; and as there
is no mention made of the Museum in the Treaty of
the 25th of March, and as it seems now the Treaty
spoken of is the Military convention of Paris, it is neces-
sary to show how this Convention is connected with the
Museum.
It is not now necessary to discuss the question, whether
the Allies were or not at war with France; there is no
doubt that their armies entered Paris under a Military
Convention concluded with an officer of the Government,
the Prefect of the Department of the Seine, and an Officer
of the Army, who represented both Authorities at that
moment present at Paris, and empowered by these 4utho,
rities to negociate and conclude tier them.
The article of thf Convention which is alledged to have
been broken, is the 11th, which relates to the public
property. I positively deny that this article has any
reference whatever to the Gallery of Paintings.
The French Commissioners introduced in the original
project, an article to provide for the security of this spe-
cies of property ; but Prince Blachev could not consent,
saying that there were in the Gallery paintings w hick
had been Wien from Prussia, and which Louis XVIII.
had promised to restore ; whieh, however, had never
been done. 1 repeated this circumstance to the Froth
I Commissioners, and they proposed to accept the article,
with the exception of the Prussian picturcg, and to this
proposal I answered, that I was there as the representa-
tive of the other nations in Europe, and that I must claim
for other nations all that was corceded to the Prussiaoi.
; I added, that I had no instructions concerning the Mu-
seum, nor any grounds to form an opinion how the Sore.
reigns would act ; that they would certainly urge that
the King should fulfil his obligations and that I advised
•
the omission of the article entirely, and the reserving
this affair for the decis,ipn of the Sovereigns when they
should arrive.
Thus stands the affair of the Museum in reference to
the Treaty, The Convention of Paris is silent upon it,
and a negotiation took place, which left the business to
the decision of the Sovereigns,
Supposing that the silence of the Treaty of Paris, of
May, 18141 reSpecting ,thc Museum, had given the
~Fxach co-Terme* au jp4isput,thig claim tc) the pick.