If this debt was due chiefly to the negroes, it was also in a degree due to Godoy and to Spain. In the new shifting of scenes, Godoy suddenly found himself, like Toussaint eighteen months before, face to face with Bonaparte bent on revenge. No one knew better than Godoy the dangers that hung over him and his country. Aware of his perils, he tried, as in 1795, to conciliate the United States by a course offensive to France. Not only did he restore the entrepôt at New Orleans, but he also admitted the claims for damages sustained by American citizens from Spanish subjects in the late war, and through Don Pedro Cevallos negotiated with Pinckney a convention which provided for a settlement of these claims.[21] Although he refused to recognize in this convention the spoliations made by Frenchmen within Spanish jurisdiction, and insisted that these were in their nature claims against France which Spain was not morally bound to admit, he consented to insert an article copied from the expunged Article II. of the treaty of Morfontaine, reserving to the United States the right to press these demands at a future time.
So well pleased was Jefferson with the conduct of Spain and the Spanish ministers, that not a complaint was made of ill treatment; and even the conduct of Morales did not shake the President’s faith in the friendliness of King Charles. No doubt he mistook the motives of this friendliness, for Spain had no other object than to protect her colonies and commerce on the Gulf of Mexico, and hoped to prevent attack by conciliation; while Madison imagined that Spain might be induced by money to part with her colonies and admit the United States to the Gulf. In this hope he instructed Pinckney,[22] in case he should find that Louisiana had not been retroceded to France, to offer a guaranty of Spanish territory west of the Mississippi as part of the consideration for New Orleans and the Floridas. The offer was made with a degree of cordiality very unlike the similar offer to France, and was pressed by Pinckney so zealously that at last Cevallos evaded his earnestness by a civil equivocation.
“The system adopted by his Majesty,” said he,[23] “not to dispossess himself of any portion of his States, deprives him of the pleasure of assenting to the cessions which the United States wish to obtain by purchase.... The United States can address themselves to the French government to negotiate the acquisition of territories which may suit their interest.”
Cevallos knew that Bonaparte had bound himself formally never to alienate Louisiana, and in referring Pinckney to France he supposed himself safe. Pinckney, on the other hand, prided himself on having helped to prevent France from gaining Florida as well as Louisiana, and was anxious to secure West Florida for his own credit; while he had no idea that Louisiana could be obtained at all.
Yet nearly a week before this note was written Louisiana had become American property. So completely was Godoy deceived, that when April arrived and he saw Spain again about to be dragged into unknown perils, he never divined that he was to be struck in America; his anxieties rose from fear that Spain might be dragged into a new war in Europe, in subservience to France. He could expect to escape such a war only by a quarrel with Napoleon, and he knew that a war with Napoleon was a desperate resource.
In London statesmanship had an easier game, and played it at first simply and coolly. Rufus King watched it with anxious eyes. He wished to escape from the duty of expressing a diplomatic policy which he might not approve, to a Government which had other and heavier tasks than that of listening to his advice or warnings. The British Ministry behaved well to America; for their advices from Thornton led them to hope that the United States would, if properly supported, seize Louisiana and accept war with Bonaparte. “If you can obtain Louisiana,—well!” said Addington to Rufus King;[24] “if not, we ought to prevent its going into the hands of France.”
CHAPTER II.
Monroe arrived in sight of the French coast April 7, 1803; but while he was still on the ocean, Bonaparte without reference to him or his mission, opened his mind to Talleyrand in regard to ceding Louisiana to the United States. The First Consul a few days afterward repeated to his Finance Minister, Barbé Marbois,[25] a part of the conversation with Talleyrand; and his words implied that Talleyrand opposed Bonaparte’s scheme, less because it sacrificed Louisiana than because its true object was not a war with England, but conquest of Germany. “He alone knows my intentions,” said Bonaparte to Marbois. “If I attended to his advice, France would confine her ambition to the left bank of the Rhine, and would make war only to protect the weak States and to prevent any dismemberment of her possessions; but he also admits that the cession of Louisiana is not a dismemberment of France.” In reality, the cession of Louisiana meant the overthrow of Talleyrand’s influence and the failure of those hopes which had led to the coalition of the 18th Brumaire.
Easter Sunday, April 10, 1803, arrived, and Monroe was leaving Havre for Paris, when Bonaparte, after the religious ceremonies of the day at St. Cloud, called to him two of his ministers, of whom Barbé Marbois was one.[26] He wished to explain his intention of selling Louisiana to the United States; and he did so in his peculiar way. He began by expressing the fear that England would seize Louisiana as her first act of war. “I think of ceding it to the United States. I can scarcely say that I cede it to them, for it is not yet in our possession. If, however, I leave the least time to our enemies, I shall only transmit an empty title to those republicans whose friendship I seek. They ask of me only one town in Louisiana; but I already consider the colony as entirely lost; and it appears to me that in the hands of this growing Power it will be more useful to the policy, and even to the commerce, of France than if I should attempt to keep it.”
To this appeal the two ministers replied by giving two opposite opinions. Marbois favored the cession, as the First Consul probably expected him to do; for Marbois was a republican who had learned republicanism in the United States, and whose attachment to that country was secured by marriage to an American wife. His colleague, with equal decision, opposed the scheme. Their arguments were waste of breath. The First Consul said no more, and dismissed them; but the next morning, Monday, April 11, at daybreak, summoning Marbois, he made a short oration of the kind for which he was so famous:[27]—