On October 14 the sixty-three-year-old Lord Cornwallis, the British general who had surrendered to Washington at Yorktown in 1781, was welcomed to Calais with a salute of cannon and a guard of honour and conducted first to Paris, where there were celebrations and public illuminations,* and then to Amiens to conduct the detailed negotiations of the treaty with Joseph and Talleyrand.45 (Amiens was chosen for its good omens; Henry VIII and François I had signed a peace treaty there in 1527.)
