360 DIPLOMACY 



the door of the King's bedroom and commenced his salutation. The 

 Prussian rushed after him, pulled him back by the skirts, and com- 

 menced his harangue. The memoirs of diplomatists and the his- 

 tories of Europe are full of the exalted and absurd contentions of 

 envoys, but the foregoing are sufficient to illustrate their extreme 

 and often farcical pretensions. 



None of the monarchs of Europe was more insistent upon his 

 rank than the " Little Corporal" when he made himself Emperor of 

 France. On inviting the Pope to attend, his coronation, it was 

 stipulated that the same ceremonies should be observed as at the 

 coronation of the ancient Kings of France; but on the arrival of the 

 Holy Father, the latter was astonished to see Napoleon take pre- 

 cedence over him, as if there were no question about it. In 1808 he 

 caused the edition of the Almanack de Gotha to be seized, because, as 

 was its custom, it arranged the reigning houses alphabetically and 

 did not place Napoleon first. 



The question of the precedence of nations extends into the nego- 

 tiation and framing of treaties. In former times the more powerful 

 or more ancient of nations claimed the right to be first named in 

 conventions and other diplomatic instruments, and not until the 

 nineteenth century has it been yielded. As one of the younger 

 nations, the experience of the United States illustrates the progress 

 made toward equality of treatment. In all of its treaties made in 

 the eighteenth century it was named last. France first recognized 

 with the United States in its treaty of 1803 (the Louisiana Purchase) 

 the practice of the alternat, that is, the right of each chief of state 

 to have his name and the name of his plenipotentiary appear first 

 in the original copy of the treaty or other instrument which he 

 retains. Great Britain refused to concede this right to the United 

 States in the treaty of peace of 1814 and in anterior conventions, but, 

 upon the insistence of the latter, yielded it in the treaty of 1815 and 

 thenceforward. It was first conceded by Spain in the treaty of 

 1819. The Spanish negotiator in consenting intimated that on 

 signing he might deliver a protocol against its use being made a 

 precedent for the future; whereupon the stout John Quincy Adams 

 informed him that the United States would never make a treaty 

 with Spain without it. 



The contest as to the rank of the states, which had been waged for 

 centuries, was sought to be settled at the Congress of Vienna of 

 1815. A committee was appointed with instructions to fix the 

 principles which should regulate the rank of reigning monarchs and 

 all questions connected therewith. The committee submitted a 

 report to that end; but after a long discussion, the powers abandoned 

 the project as one too difficult to realize, and confined their action to 

 prescribing the composition and rank of the diplomatic corps only 



