At the beginning of October Wellington duly sounded out the French government on whether it would be prepared to go to war over Saxony, and received a positive reply.17 The approach did not come as a surprise. On 17 October, the eve of the festival of peace in the Prater, Talleyrand warned Louis XVIII that France must be prepared to fight, and his letter crossed one from the King stating that he was putting the army on a war footing. Within a month the possibility of war had turned into likelihood. ‘All the appearances announce a great war,’ Cardinal Consalvi warned his deputy in Rome on 18
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