The Russian envoy not arriving, however, Joseph Bonaparte was instructed to bring matters to a conclusion; and on the 9th of February the Austrian minister at Lunéville, after a stubborn fight over the terms, signed a treaty of peace. The principal conditions were: 1. The definitive surrender of all German possessions west of the Rhine, so that the river became the frontier of France from Switzerland to Holland. 2. The cession of Belgium made at Campo Formio was confirmed. 3. In Italy, Austria herself was confined to the east bank of the Adige, and the princes of that house having principalities west of the river were dispossessed; their territories going to the Cisalpine Republic and to an infante of Spain, who was established in Tuscany with the title of King of Etruria. The Cisalpine and Etruria being dependent for their political existence upon France, the latter, through its control of their territory, interposed between Austria and Naples and shut off the British from access to Leghorn. 4. The eleventh article of the treaty guaranteed the independence of the Dutch, Swiss, Cisalpine and Ligurian republics. In its influence upon the future course of events this was the most important of all the stipulations. It gave to the political status of the Continent a definition, upon which Great Britain reckoned in her own treaty with France a few months later; and its virtual violation by Bonaparte became ultimately both the reason and the excuse for her refusal to fulfil the engagements about Malta, which led to the renewal of the war and so finally to the downfall of Napoleon. 5. The German Empire was pledged to give to the princes dispossessed on the west of the Rhine, and in Italy, an indemnity within the empire itself. By this Prussia, which was among the losers, reaped through Bonaparte's influence an abundant recompense for the support already given to his policy in the North. This success induced her to continue the same time-serving opportunism, until, when no longer necessary to France, she was thrown over with a rudeness that roused her to an isolated, and therefore speedily crushed resistance.