Pozzo di Borgo remained eighteen months in London, where he received great attention from the English ministry, who considered him to have displayed great method and ability during his short administration. Having become intimate with some old French families, he then began his career of diplomacy and secret negotiations; which, at a late period, led him into a more extended sphere of action. He was at Vienna in 1798, at the time of the campaign of Suwarof, when foreign courts were agitated by so many various projects. Tremendous shocks had been experienced in France. On emerging from the reign of terror, and the formidable system of unity proclaimed by the Convention, a strong and deeply rooted reaction towards the restoration of the royal family had taken place; the royalist colours were worn in good society, and the most extreme detestation was felt for the revolution, because it had not as yet given birth to any regular system of government. At this time Buonaparte was in Egypt, with the greater part of the brave legions who had conquered Italy and the Rhine; all our foreign conquests were lost to us; on the Alps we were hardly able to retain a few posts, and they were closely pressed; and, as a climax, Suwarof appeared with victory in his train--Suwarof, the hero and saint of the Russian army--Suwarof, around whom rallied all the hopes of the coalition! Pozzo di Borgo was engaged in all the diplomatic arrangements that accompanied the military proceedings.
The antipathy that existed between the Austrians and Russians, far more than the battle of Zurich, put a stop to the progress of the coalition, and Pozzo di Borgo remained some time at Vienna, receiving a pension there as a French emigrant of noble birth. It was at the time when one of that family of Buonapartes, proscribed by the Assembly of Corsica, was elevated to the Consulate, and being now in the position of a powerful dictator, he had established an efficient government in France, and was engaged in repairing the wrecks of the administration by means of his steady energy. The power of the laws once more became manifest; the executive administration was lodged in the hands of a few, and was active and advantageous to the people; and, by a singular chance, which the caprices of fortune can alone explain, the old friends of the Buonapartes, the Arenas of Ajaccio, were proscribed by the young Corsican, and delivered over to military law, or driven into exile. Other destinies, besides those of a city, or a population of about 100,000 souls, claimed the attention of Napoleon Buonaparte, now completely detached from his native country; but, in spite of all these commotions, his thoughts more than once turned upon his old personal enemy, Pozzo di Borgo, then on his journey from London to Vienna, and who must have shed some tears of vexation when he saw the power of the young consul extend so far as to prescribe to Europe the peace of Amiens. The shade of Paoli arose to protest against this immense advancement of the Buonapartes.[18]