CHAPTER XIX.
The Emperor’s decision was made known to the American government by a letter[313] from Bassano to Russell, dated May 4, 1811, almost as curt as a declaration of war:—
“I hasten to announce to you that his Majesty the Emperor has ordered his Minister of Finance to authorize the admission of the American cargoes which had been provisionally placed in deposit on their arrival in France. I have the honor to send you a list of the vessels to which these cargoes belong; they will have to export their value in national merchandise, of which two thirds will be in silks. I have not lost a moment in communicating to you a measure perfectly in accord with the sentiments of union and of friendship which exist between the two Powers.”
This was all. No imperial decree of repeal was issued or suggested. President Madison cared little for the released ships; he cared only for the principle involved in the continued existence of the decrees, and Bassano’s letter announced by silence, as distinctly as it could have said in words, that the principle of the decrees was not abandoned. Such were Napoleon’s orders; and in executing them Bassano did not, like Cadore or Talleyrand, allow himself the license of softening their bluntness. Russell knew the letter to be fatal to any claim that the French decrees were withdrawn, but he could do nothing else than send it to London as offering, perhaps, evidence of the “actual relations growing out of the revocation of the Berlin and Milan Decrees.”[314] He wrote to Bassano a letter asking the release of the American vessels captured and brought into French ports as prizes since November 1, but he obtained no answer.[315] A month afterward he wrote again, remonstrating against the excessive tariff duties and the requirement that American vessels should take two thirds of their return cargoes in French silks; but this letter received as little notice as the other. Russell had the mortification of knowing, almost as well as Bassano himself, the motives that guided the Emperor; and July 13 he recited them to the President in language as strong as propriety allowed:[316]—
“The temper here toward us is professedly friendly, but unfortunately it is not well proved to be so in practice. It is my conviction, as I before wrote you, that the great object of the actual policy is to entangle us in a war with England. They abstain therefore from doing anything which would furnish clear and unequivocal testimony of the revocation of their decrees, lest it should induce the extinction of the British orders and thereby appease our irritation against their enemy. Hence, of all the captured vessels since November 1, the three which were liberated are precisely those which had not violated the decrees. On the other hand, they take care, by not executing these decrees against us, to divert our resentment from themselves. I have very frankly told the Duke of Bassano that we are not sufficiently dull to be deceived by this kind of management. He indeed pretends that they are influenced by no such motive; and whenever I speak to him on the subject, he reiterates the professions of friendship, and promises to endeavor to obtain the release of the remainder of our vessels captured since November 1. I fear, however, that he will not succeed.”
Even in case of war with England, Russell warned the President to look for no better treatment from Napoleon, who might then consider America as “chained to the imperial car, and obliged to follow whithersoever it leads.” He pointed out that concessions had never produced any return from the Emperor except new exactions and new pretensions. If war with England became inevitable, care must be taken to guard against the danger that France should profit by it. French trade was not worth pursuing. The tariff on imports, reinforced by the restrictions on exports, created a practical non-intercourse.
Napoleon’s writings furnish evidence that the Emperor’s chief object was not so much to entangle America in war with England as to maintain the decrees which he literally overturned the world to enforce. When he suspended their enforcement against American ships in his own ports, he did so only because his new customs’ regulations had been invented to attain by other means the object of the decrees. When he affirmed and reaffirmed that these decrees were the fundamental law of his empire, he told a truth which neither England nor America believed, but to which he clung with energy that cost him his empire.
Russell made no more efforts, but waited impatiently for the arrival of Joel Barlow, while Napoleon bethought himself only of his favorite means for quieting Madison’s anger. August 23 the Emperor ordered[317] Bassano to give his minister at Washington instructions calculated to sharpen the cupidity of the United States. Serurier was to be active in effecting the independence of Spanish America, was to concert measures for that purpose with the President, promise arms and supplies, employ the American government and American agents for his objects, and in all respects give careful attention to what passed in the colonies; yet in regard to Florida, the only Spanish colony in which Madison took personal interest, Napoleon hinted other views to Bassano in a message[318] too curious for omission.
“You spoke to me this morning,” he wrote August 28, “of instructions received by the American chargé on the affair of Florida. You might insinuate the following idea,—that in consideration of some millions of piastres, Spain in her present condition of penury would cede the Floridas. Insinuate this, while adding that though I do not take it ill that America should seize the Floridas, I can in no way interfere, since these countries do not belong to me.”
With this touch of character, the great Emperor turned from American affairs to devote all his energies to matters about the Baltic. Yet so deeply were American interests founded in the affairs of Europe that even in the Baltic they were the rock on which Napoleon’s destiny split; for the quarrels which in the summer of 1811 became violent between France and the two independent Baltic Powers—Russia and Sweden—were chiefly due to those omnipresent American ships, which throve under pillage and challenged confiscation. Madison’s wisdom in sending a minister to St. Petersburg was proved more quickly than he could have expected. Between March 1 and Nov. 1, 1811, at one of the most critical moments in the world’s history, President Madison had no other full minister accredited in Europe than his envoy to Russia; but whatever mortifications he suffered from Napoleon, were more than repaid by means of this Russian mission.
The new minister to Russia, J. Q. Adams, sailed from Boston August 5, 1809, and on arriving at Christiansand in Norway, September 20, he found upward of thirty masters of American vessels whose ships had been seized by Danish privateers between April and August, and were suffering trial and condemnation in Danish prize courts. He reported that the entire number of American ships detained in Norway and Denmark was more than fifty, and their value little less than five million dollars.[319] The Danes, ground in the dust by England and France, had taken to piracy as their support; and the Danish prize-courts, under the pressure of Davout, the French general commanding at Hamburg, condemned their captures without law or reason. Adams made what remonstrance he could to the Danish government, and passed on to Cronstadt, where he arrived Oct. 21, 1809. He found a condition of affairs in Russia that seemed hopeless for the success of his mission. The alliance between Russia and France had reached its closest point. Russia had aided Napoleon to subdue Austria; Napoleon had aided Russia to secure Finland. At his first interview with the Russian Foreign Minister, Adams received official information of these events; and when he called attention to the conduct of the Danish privateers, Count Roumanzoff, while expressing strong disapprobation of their proceedings, added that a more liberal system was a dream.[320]
The Foreign Minister of Russia, Count Roumanzoff, officially known as Chancellor of the Empire, and its most powerful subject, favored the French alliance. From him Adams could expect little assistance in any case, and nothing but opposition wherever French interests were involved. Friendly and even affectionate to America as far as America was a rival of England, Roumanzoff could do nothing for American interests where they clashed with those of France; and Adams soon found that at St. Petersburg he was regarded by France as an agent of England. He became conscious that French influence was unceasingly at work to counteract his efforts in behalf of American interests.
Adams’s surprise was the greater when, with the discovery of this immense obstacle, he discovered also an equally covert influence at work in his favor, and felt that the protection was stronger than the enmity. Before many months had passed, he found himself winning successes that could be explained only by the direct interposition of the Czar against the resistance of Roumanzoff and the ambassador of France. In the mysterious atmosphere of the Russian court, the effect of wielding this astounding power might well have turned his head; but Adams hardly realized his position. At the outset, obliged to ask the Czar’s interference on behalf of the plundered American merchants in Denmark, he could regard himself only as performing an official duty without hope of more than a civil answer. This was in fact the first result of the request; for when, Dec. 26, 1809, he opened the subject to Roumanzoff, the chancellor gave him no encouragement. The Danes, he said, had been forced by France to do what they were doing. France viewed all these American ships as British; and “as this was a measure emanating from the personal disposition of the Emperor of France, he was apprehensive there existed no influence in the world of sufficient efficacy to shake his determination.”[321] Adams resigned himself to this friendly refusal of a request made without instructions, and implying the personal interference of the Czar with the most sensitive part of Napoleon’s system.
Three days afterward, December 29, Adams saw Roumanzoff again, who told him, with undisguised astonishment, that he had reported to the Czar the American minister’s request for interference in Denmark and his own refusal; and that the Czar had thought differently, and had “ordered him immediately to represent to the Danish government his wish that the examination might be expedited, and the American property restored as soon as possible; which order he had already executed.”[322]
If Adams had consciously intrigued for a rupture between France and Russia, he could have invented no means so effective as to cause the Czar’s interference with Napoleon’s control of Denmark; but Adams’s favor was far from ending there. The winter of 1809–1810 passed without serious incident, but when spring came and the Baltic opened, the struggle between France and the United States at St. Petersburg began in earnest. Adams found himself a person of much consequence. The French ambassador, Caulaincourt, possessed every advantage that Napoleon and Nature could give him. Handsome, winning, and in all ways personally agreeable to the Czar, master of an establishment more splendid in its display than had been before known even at the splendid court of St. Petersburg, he enjoyed the privilege, always attached to ambassadors, of transacting business directly with the Czar; while the American minister, of a lower diplomatic grade, far too poor to enter upon the most modest social rivalry, labored under the diplomatic inferiority of having to transact business only through the worse than neutral medium of Roumanzoff. Caulaincourt made his demands and urged his arguments in the secrecy that surrounded the personal relation of the two Emperors, while Adams could not even learn, except indirectly after much time, what Caulaincourt was doing or what arguments he used.
Already in April, 1810, Adams reported[323] to his Government that the commercial dispute threatened a rupture between France and Russia. On one hand, Napoleon’s measures would prove ineffectual if Russia admitted neutral vessels, carrying as they would cargoes more or less to the advantage of England; on the other, Russia must become avowedly bankrupt if denied exports and restricted to imports of French luxuries, such as silks and champagnes, to be paid in specie. Russia, at war with Turkey and compelled to maintain an immense army with a depreciated currency, must have foreign trade or perish.
Napoleon wanted nothing better than to cripple Russia as well as England, and was not disposed to relax his system for the benefit of Russian military strength. During the summer of 1810 he redoubled his vigilance on the Baltic. Large numbers of vessels, either neutral or pretending to be neutral, entered the Baltic under the protection of the British fleet. Napoleon sent orders that no such vessels should be admitted. June 15 Denmark issued an ordinance prohibiting its ports to all American vessels of every description, and August 3 another to the same effect for the Duchy of Holstein. July 19 a similar ordinance was published by Prussia, and July 29 Mecklenburg followed the example. The same demand came from Caulaincourt to the Czar, and the French ambassador pressed it without intermission and without disguising the dangers which it involved to the peace of Europe. Alexander’s reply never varied.
“I want to run no more risks,” he told Caulaincourt.[324] “To draw nearer England I must separate from France and risk a new war with her, which I regard as the most dangerous of all wars. And for what object? To serve England; to support her maritime theories which are not mine? It would be madness on my part!... I will remain faithful to this policy. I will remain at war with England. I will keep my ports closed to her,—to the extent, however, which I have made known, and from which I cannot depart. In fact I cannot, as I have already told you, prohibit all commerce to my subjects, or forbid them to deal with the Americans.... We must keep to these terms, for I declare to you, were war at our doors, in regard to commercial matters I cannot go further.”
Thus the American trade became the apparent point of irritation between Alexander and Napoleon. The Russians were amused by Cadore’s letter to Armstrong of August 5, saying that the decrees were revoked, and that Napoleon loved the Americans; for they knew what Napoleon had done and was trying to do on the Baltic. The Czar was embarrassed and harassed by the struggle; for the American ships, finding themselves safe in Russian ports, flocked to Archangel and Riga, clamoring for special permission to dispose of their cargoes and to depart before navigation closed, while Napoleon insisted on their seizure, and left no means untried of effecting it. He took even the extravagant step of publicly repudiating the very licenses he was then engaged in forcing American ships to carry. July 10, 1810, the “Moniteur” published an official notice that the certificates of French consuls in the United States carried by American vessels in the Baltic were false, “and that the possessors of them must be considered as forgers,” inasmuch as the French consuls in America had some time before ceased to deliver any such certificates; and not satisfied with this ministerial act, Napoleon wrote with his own hand to the Czar that no true American trade existed, and that not a single American ship, even though guaranteed by his own licenses, could be received as neutral.
In the heat of this controversy Adams was obliged to ask, as a favor to the United States, that special orders might be given on behalf of the American vessels at Archangel. As before, Roumanzoff refused; and once more the Czar directed that the special orders should be given.[325] This repeated success of the American minister in overriding the established rules of the government, backed by the whole personal influence of Napoleon, made Roumanzoff uneasy. Friendly and even confidential with Adams, he did not disguise his anxiety; and while he warned the American minister that Cadore’s letter of August 5 had made no real change in Napoleon’s methods or objects, he added that the Americans had only one support, and this was the Czar himself, but that as yet the Czar’s friendship was unshaken. “Our attachment to the United States is obstinate,—more obstinate than you are aware of.”[326]
Adams then saw the full bearing of the struggle in which he was engaged; his sources of information were extended, his social relations were more intimate, and he watched with keen interest the effect of his remonstrances and efforts. He had every reason to be anxious, for Napoleon used diplomatic weapons as energetically as he used his army corps. Only ten days after Roumanzoff made his significant remark about the Czar’s obstinacy, Napoleon sent orders to Prussia, under threat of military occupation, to stop all British and colonial merchandise; and the following week, October 23, he wrote with his own hand to the Czar a letter of the gravest import:[327]—
“Six hundred English merchant-vessels which were wandering in the Baltic have been refused admission into Mecklenburg and Prussia, and have turned toward your Majesty’s States.... All this merchandise is on English account. It depends on your Majesty to obtain peace [with England] or to continue the war. Peace is and must be your desire. Your Majesty is certain to obtain it by confiscating these six hundred ships or their cargoes. Whatever papers they may have, under whatever names they may be masked,—French, German, Spanish, Danish, Russian, Swedish,—your Majesty may be sure that they are English.”
If Napoleon aimed at crippling Russia by forcing her into the alternative of bankruptcy for want of commerce or invasion as the penalty of trade, he followed a clear and skilful plan. Roumanzoff answered his appeal by pleading that Russia could not seize neutral property, and would not harm England even by doing so. November 4, two days after President Madison proclaimed the revocation of the French Decrees, Napoleon dictated his reply to Roumanzoff’s argument:[328]—
“As for the principle advanced,—that though wishing war on England we do not wish to wage it on neutrals,—this principle arises from an error. The English want no neutrals and suffer none; they allow the Americans to navigate, so far as they carry English merchandise and sail on English account; all the certificates of French consuls and all other papers with which they are furnished are false papers. In short, there is to-day no neutral, because the English want none, and stop every vessel not freighted on their account. Not a single vessel has entered the ports of Russia with so-called American papers which has not come really from England.”[329]
Armstrong, quitting Paris Sept. 10, 1810, wrote to Madison in his last despatch a few significant words on the subject,[330] suggesting that Napoleon’s true motive in reviving the energy of his restrictions on commerce was, among others, the assistance it lent to his views and influence on the Baltic. No other explanation was reasonable. Napoleon intended to force Russia into a dilemma, and he succeeded. The Czar, pressed beyond endurance, at last turned upon Napoleon with an act of defiance that startled and delighted Russia. December 1 Roumanzoff communicated to Caulaincourt the Czar’s refusal to seize, confiscate, or shut his ports against colonial produce.[331] At about the same time the merchants of St. Petersburg framed a memorial to the Imperial council, asking for a general prohibition of French luxuries as the only means of preventing the drain of specie and the further depreciation of the paper currency. On this memorial a hot debate occurred in the Imperial council. Roumanzoff opposed the measure as tending to a quarrel with France; and when overruled, he insisted on entering his formal protest on the journal.[332] The Czar acquiesced in the majority’s decision, and December 19 the Imperial ukase appeared, admitting American produce on terms remarkably liberal, but striking a violent blow at the industries of France.
Napoleon replied by recalling Caulaincourt and by sending a new ambassador, Count Lauriston, to St. Petersburg, carrying with his credentials an autograph letter to the Czar.[333]
“Your Majesty’s last ukase,” said this letter, “in substance, but particularly in form, is directed specially against France. In other times, before taking such a measure against my commerce, your Majesty would have let me know it, and perhaps I might have suggested means which, while accomplishing your chief object, might still have prevented it from appearing a change of system in the eyes of France. All Europe has so regarded it; and already, in the opinion of England and of Europe, our alliance exists no longer. If it were as entire in your Majesty’s heart as in mine, this general impression would be none the less a great evil.... For myself, I am always the same; but I am struck by the evidence of these facts, and by the thought that your Majesty is wholly disposed, as soon as circumstances permit it, to make an arrangement with England, which is the same thing as to kindle a war between the two empires.”
Adams’s diplomatic victory was Napoleonic in its magnitude and completeness. Even Caulaincourt, whom he overthrew, good-naturedly congratulated him after he had succeeded, against Caulaincourt’s utmost efforts, in saving all the American ships. “It seems you are great favorites here; you have found powerful protection,” said the defeated ambassador.[334] The American minister felt but one drawback,—he could not wholly believe that his victory was sure. Anxious by temperament, with little confidence in his own good fortune,—fighting his battles with energy, but rather with that of despair than of hope,—the younger Adams never allowed himself to enjoy the full relish of a triumph before it staled, while he never failed to taste with its fullest flavor, as though it were a precious wine, every drop in the bitter cup of his defeats. In this, the most brilliant success of his diplomatic career, he could not be blamed for doubting whether such fortune could last. That the Czar of Russia should persist in braving almost sure destruction in order to defend American rights which America herself proclaimed to be unassailed, passed the bounds of fiction.
Yet of all the facts with which Monroe, April 1, 1811, had to deal, this was the most important,—that Russia expected to fight France in order to protect neutral commerce. Already, Dec. 27, 1810, Adams notified his Government that Russia had determined to resist to the last, and that France had shown a spirit of hostility that proved an intention to make war. A few weeks later he wrote that military movements on both sides had begun on such a scale that the rumor of war was universal.[335] Napoleon’s harangue of March 24, 1811, to the Paris Chamber of Commerce was accepted in Russia as the announcement of a coming declaration, and the Russians waited uneasily for the blow to be struck which the Czar would not himself strike.
They waited, but Napoleon did not move. Hampered by the Spanish war and by the immense scale on which a campaign in Russia must be organized, he consumed time in diplomatic remonstrances which he knew to be useless. April 1, 1811, a week after his tirade to the Paris merchants, he dictated another lecture to the Czar, through Count Lauriston:[336] “Doubtless the smugglers will try every means of forming connections with the Continent; but that connection I will cut, if necessary, with the sword. Until now I have been indulgent; but this year I am determined to use rigor toward those who are concerned in contraband.” A great convoy, he said, was at that moment collecting in English ports for the Baltic; but the goods thus introduced would be everywhere seized, “even in Russia, whatever might be said to the contrary, because the Emperor Alexander has declared his wish to remain at war with the English as the only means of maintaining the peace of the Continent.” A few days afterward, April 5, Cadore was ordered to write again:[337] “It is probable that the least appearance of a peace with England will be the signal of war unless unforeseen circumstances lead the Emperor to prefer to gain time.” Alexander wished the moral advantage of appearing to be attacked, and he allowed Napoleon to gain time in these pretended remonstrances. Roumanzoff replied to them as seriously as though they were seriously meant. Once he quoted the American minister as authority for the genuine character of the admitted vessels. Napoleon treated the appeal with contempt:[338] “Let him know that there are no American ships; that all pretended American ships are English, or freighted on English account; that the English stop American vessels and do not let them navigate; that if the American minister sustains the contrary, he does not know what he is talking about.”
The American minister no longer needed to sustain the contrary; he had passed that stage, and had to struggle only with the completeness of his success. Although a large British squadron kept the Baltic open to commerce, few British merchantmen visited those waters in 1811. Their timidity was due to the violence with which Napoleon had seized and destroyed British property in 1810 wherever he found it, without respecting his own licenses. In consequence of British abstention, American vessels swarmed in Russian ports. In July, 1811, Adams wrote that two hundred American ships had already arrived,[339] and that Russia was glutted with colonial goods until the cargoes were unsalable at any price, while the great demand for return cargoes of Russian produce had raised the cost of such articles to extravagance. America enjoyed a monopoly of the Baltic trade; and Adams’s chief difficulty, like that of Napoleon, was only to resist the universal venality which made of the American flag a cover for British smuggling. Adams seemed unable to ask a favor which the Czar did not seem eager to grant; for in truth the result of admitting American ships pleased the friendly Czar and his people, who obtained their sugar and coffee at half cost, and sold their hemp and naval stores at double prices.
The Russians knew well the price they were to pay in the end, but in the mean time Napoleon became more and more pacific. If war was to come in 1811, every one supposed it would be announced in the French Emperor’s usual address to his legislative body, which opened its session June 16. The Address was brought in hot haste by special courier to St. Petersburg; but to the surprise of every one it contained no allusion to Russia. As usual, Napoleon pointed in the direction he meant not to take, and instead of denouncing Russia, he prophesied disaster to the victorious English in Spain:—
“When England shall be exhausted; when she shall have felt at last the evils that she has for twenty years poured with so much cruelty over the Continent; when half of her families shall be covered by the funeral veil,—then a thunder-stroke will end the peninsula troubles and the destinies of her armies, and will avenge Europe and Asia by closing this second Punic war.”
This Olympian prophecy meant only that Napoleon, for military reasons, preferred not to invade Russia until 1812. As the question of neutral trade was but one of the pretexts on which he forced Russia into war, and as it had served its purpose, he laid it aside. He closed the chapter August 25 by directing his ambassador, Lauriston, to cease further remonstrance.[340] One hundred and fifty ships, he said, under false American colors had arrived in Russia; the projects of Russia were unmasked; she wanted to renew her commerce with England; she no longer preserved appearances, but favored in every way the English trade; further remonstrance would be ridiculous and diplomatic notes useless.
War for the spring of 1812 was certain. So much harm, at least, the Americans helped to inflict on Napoleon in return for the millions he cost them; but even this was not their whole revenge.
The example of Russia found imitation in Sweden, where Napoleon was most vulnerable. Owing to a series of chances, Bernadotte, who happened to command the French army corps at Hamburg, was made Prince of Sweden in October, 1810, and immediately assumed the government of the kingdom. Bernadotte as an old republican, like Lucien Bonaparte, never forgave Napoleon for betraying his party, and would long since have been exiled like Moreau had he not been the brother-in-law of Joseph and a reasonably submissive member of the Imperial family. Napoleon treated him as he treated Louis, Lucien, Joseph, Jerome, Eugene, and Joachim Murat,—loading them with dignities, but exacting blind obedience; and instantly on the new king’s accession, the French minister informed him that he must within five days declare war on England. Bernadotte obeyed. Napoleon next required the confiscation of English merchandise and the total stoppage of relations between Sweden and England.[341] As in the case of Holland and the Baltic Powers, this demand included all American ships and cargoes, which amounted to one half of the property to be seized. Bernadotte either could not or would not drag his new subjects into such misery as Denmark and Holland were suffering; and within five months after his accession, he already found himself threatened with war. “Tell the Swedish minister,” said Napoleon to Cadore,[342] “that if any ship loaded with colonial produce—be it American or Danish or Swedish or Spanish or Russian—is admitted into the ports of Swedish Pomerania, my troops and my customs officers shall immediately enter the province.” Swedish Pomerania was the old province still held by Sweden on the south shore of the Baltic, next to Mecklenburg; and Stralsund, its capital, was a nest of smugglers who defied the Emperor’s decrees.
In March, 1811, Davout, who commanded at Hamburg, received orders[343] to prepare for seizing Stralsund at the least contravention of the commercial laws. Bernadotte’s steps were evidently taken to accord with those of the Czar Alexander; and at last Napoleon found himself in face of a Swedish as well as a Russian, Spanish, and English war. In the case of Russia, American commerce was but one though a chief cause of rupture; but in the case of Sweden it seemed to be the only cause. In August, Napoleon notified the Czar of his intentions against Stralsund; in November, he gave the last warning to Sweden,—and in both cases he founded his complaints on the toleration shown to American commerce by Bernadotte. Nov. 3, 1811, he wrote to Bassano: “If the Swedish government does not renounce the system of escorting by its armed ships the vessels which English commerce covers with the American flag, you will order the chargé d’affaires to quit Stockholm with all the legation.” He returned again and again to the grievance: “If Sweden does not desist from this right of escorting American ships which are violating the Decrees of Berlin and Milan, and maintains the pretension to attack my privateers with her ships-of-war, the chargé d’affaires will quit Stockholm. I want to preserve peace with Sweden,—this wish is palpable,—but I prefer war to such a state of peace.”[344]
Once more the accent of truth sounded in these words of Napoleon. He could not want war with Sweden, but he made it because he could not otherwise enforce his Berlin and Milan Decrees against American commerce. Although a part of that commerce was fraudulent, Napoleon, in charging fraud, wished to condemn not so much the fraudulent as the genuine. In order to enforce his Berlin and Milan Decrees against American commerce, he was, as Cadore had threatened, about to overturn the world.
This was the situation when Joel Barlow, the new American minister to France, arrived at Paris Sept. 19, 1811, bringing instructions dated July 26, the essence of which was contained in a few lines.[345]
“It is understood,” said the President, “that the blockade of the British Isles is revoked. The revocation having been officially declared, and no vessel trading to them having been condemned or taken on the high seas that we know of, it is fair to conclude that the measure is relinquished. It appears, too, that no American vessel has been condemned in France for having been visited at sea by an English ship, or for having been searched or carried into England, or subjected to impositions there. On the sea, therefore, France is understood to have changed her system.”
Of all the caprices of politics, this was the most improbable,—that at the moment when the Czar of Russia and the King of Sweden were about to risk their thrones and to face the certain death and ruin of vast numbers of their people in order to protect American ships from the Berlin and Milan Decrees, the new minister of the United States appeared in Paris authorized to declare that the President considered those decrees to be revoked and their system no longer in force!
END OF VOL. V.