“Referred to the Minister of Finance to make me a report on this question: (1) How is it conceivable that American ships come from America in spite of the embargo? (2) How distinguish between ships coming from America and those coming from London?”
Armstrong obtained immediate and accurate knowledge of this struggle in council. Only a week after the Emperor wrote his note on the margin of Montalivet’s report, Armstrong sent home a despatch on the subject:[168]—
“The veil which for some weeks past has covered the proceedings of the Cabinet with regard to neutral commerce is now so far withdrawn as to enable us to see with sufficient distinctness both the actors and the acting. The Ministers of Police and of the Interior (Fouché and Montalivet) have come out openly and vigorously against the present anti-commercial system, and have denounced it as ‘one originating in error and productive only of evil, and particularly calculated to impoverish France and enrich her enemy.’ While they have held this language in the Cabinet they have held one of nearly the same tenor out of it, and have added (we may suppose on sufficient authority) the most solemn assurances that the Emperor ‘never meant to do more than to prevent the commerce of the United States from becoming tributary to Great Britain; that a new decision would soon be taken by him on this subject, and that from this the happiest results were to be expected.’”
As though to prevent President Madison from showing undue elation at this announcement for the fiftieth time that the happiest results were to be expected from the future, Armstrong wrote another letter, four days afterward,[169] on the new confiscations and their cause. Frenchmen he said would reason thus: “There is a deficit of fifty millions in the receipts of last year. This must be supplied. Why not then put our hands into the pockets of your citizens once more, since, as you continue to be embroiled with Great Britain, we may do it with impunity.” Armstrong was angry, and could not analyze to the bottom the Emperor’s methods or motives. Thiers, in later years having the advantage of studying Napoleon’s papers, understood better the nature of his genius. “To admit false neutrals in order to confiscate them afterward, greatly pleased his astute (rusé) mind,” wrote the French historian and statesman,[170] “little scrupulous in the choice of means, especially in regard to shameless smugglers who violated at once the laws of their own country and those of the country that consented to admit them.” This description could not properly be applied to Americans, since they violated neither their own law nor that of France by coming to Amsterdam, San Sebastian, and Naples; but Thiers explained that the Emperor considered all Americans as smugglers, and that he wrote to the Prussian government: “Let the American ships enter your ports! Seize them afterward. You shall deliver the cargoes to me, and I will take them in part payment of the Prussian war-debt.”[171] Meanwhile the confiscation of American ships helped in no way the objects promised by Napoleon to Montalivet and Fouché. At a loss to invent a theory on which neutrals could be at the same time plundered and encouraged, the Emperor referred the subject to Champagny, January 10, in an interesting letter.[172] He called for a complete history of his relations with the United States since the treaty of Morfontaine. He ordered the recall of Turreau, in whom he said he had little confidence, and who should be replaced by a more adroit agent:—
“Have several conferences, if necessary, with the American minister as well as with the Secretary of Legation who has just come from London; in short, let me know your opinion on the measures proper to be taken to get out of the position we are in (pour sortir de la position où nous nous trouvons).”
“All the measures I have taken, as I have said several times, are only measures of reprisal.... It was only to the new extension given to the right of blockade that I opposed the Decree of Berlin; and even the Decree of Berlin ought to be considered as a Continental, not as a maritime blockade, for it has been carried out in that form. I regard it, in some sort, only as a protest, and a violence opposed to a violence.... Down to this point there was little harm. Neutrals still entered our ports; but the British Orders in Council necessitated my Milan Decree, and from that time there were no neutrals.... I am now assured that the English have given way; that they no longer levy taxes on ships. Let me know if there is an authentic act which announces it, and if there is none, let me know if the fact is true; for once I shall be assured that a tax on navigation will not be established by England, I shall be able to give way on many points.”
All Napoleon’s ministers must have known that these assertions of his commercial policy were invented for a momentary purpose. He had himself often declared, and caused them to declare, that his Continental system, established by the Berlin Decree and enforced before the Orders in Council were issued, had a broad military purpose quite independent of retaliation,—that it was aimed at the destruction of England’s commerce and resources. As for his profession of ignorance that England had abandoned her transit duties on neutral merchandise, every minister was equally well aware that only six months before, the Emperor had discussed with them the measures to be taken in consequence of that abandonment; had sent them the draft of a new decree founded upon it, and had finally decided to do nothing only because England had again quarrelled with America over Erskine’s arrangement. The pretexts alleged by Napoleon were such as his ministers could not have believed; but they were satisfied to obtain on any grounds the concessions they desired, and Champagny—or as he was thenceforward called, the Due de Cadore—sent to Armstrong for the information the Emperor professed to want.
January 18, M. Petry, at the order of Cadore, called on the American minister, and requested from him a written memorandum expressing the demands of his Government. Armstrong drew up a short minute of the provisions to be made the material of a treaty.[173] The first Article required the restoration of sequestered property; the next stipulated that any ship which had paid tribute to a foreign Power should be liable to confiscation, but that with this exception commerce should be free. Cadore sent this paper to the Emperor, and within a few hours received a characteristic reply.
“You must see the American minister,” wrote Napoleon.[174] “It is quite too ridiculous (par trop ridicule) that he should write things that no one can comprehend. I prefer him to write in English, but fully and in a manner that we can understand. [It is absurd] that in affairs so important he should content himself with writing letters of four lines.... Send by special courier a cipher despatch to America to let it be understood that that government is not represented here; that its minister does not know French; is a morose man with whom one cannot treat; that all obstacles would be raised if they had here an envoy to be talked with. Write in detail on this point.”
Petry returned to Armstrong with the condemned paper, and received another, somewhat more elaborate, but hardly more agreeable to the Emperor. January 25, Cadore himself sent for the American minister, and discussed the subject. The Emperor, he said, would not commit himself to the admission of colonial produce; he wished to restrict American commerce to articles the growth or manufacture of the two countries; he would not permit his neighbors to carry on a commerce with America which he denied to himself; but the “only condition required for the revocation by his Majesty of the Decree of Berlin will be a previous revocation by the British government of her blockade of France, or part of France (such as the coast from the Elbe to Brest, etc.), of a date anterior to that of the aforesaid decree; and if the British government would then recall the Orders in Council which had occasioned the Decree of Milan, that decree should also be annulled.” This pledge purported to come directly from the Emperor, and at Armstrong’s request was repeated in the Emperor’s exact words.[175]