Yet Russell’s position was not quite so desperate as it seemed. Certainly the decrees were not revoked; but he had a fair hope of obtaining some formal act warranting him in claiming their revocation. Although Napoleon’s motives often seemed mysterious except to men familiar with his mind, yet one may venture to guess, since guess one must, that he had looked for little success from the manœuvre of announcing the revocation of his decrees as concerned the United States. Perhaps he dictated Cadore’s letter of August 5 rather in order to prevent America from declaring war against himself than in the faith that a trick, that to his eye would have been transparent, could effect what all his efforts for ten years past had failed to bring about,—a war between the United States and Great Britain. The Emperor showed certainly almost as lively surprise as pleasure, when December 12 he received the President’s proclamation of November 2, reviving the non-intercourse against England. His pleasure was the greater when he learned that President Madison had adopted his suggestion not only in this instance, but also in requiring of England the withdrawal of Fox’s blockade of 1806 as a sine qua non of any future renewal of commerce. Delighted with his success, not only did the Emperor take no offence at the President’s almost simultaneous proclamation for the seizure of West Florida, but rather his first impulse was to lose not a moment in fixing Madison in his new attitude. He wrote a hurried letter[297] on the instant to Cadore, ordering him if possible to send fresh instructions to Serurier, who was already on his way to succeed Turreau as French minister at Washington:—
“Send me the draft of a despatch for M. Serurier, if he is still at Bayonne.... You will show in this letter the satisfaction I have felt in reading the last letters from America. You will give the assurance that if the American government is decided to maintain the independence of its flag, it will find every kind of aid and privileges in this country. Your letter will of course be in cipher. In it you will make known that I am in no way opposed to the Floridas as becoming an American possession; that I desire, in general, whatever can favor the independence of Spanish America. You will make the same communication to the American chargé d’affaires, who will write in cipher to his Government that I am favorable to the cause of American independence; and that as we do not found our commerce on exclusive pretensions, I shall see with pleasure the independence of a great nation, provided it be not under the influence of England.”
This hasty note still throws out flashes of the fire that consumed the world. Silent as to the single question that America wanted him to answer, the Emperor not only resumed his old habit of dangling the Floridas before the President’s eyes, but as though he were glad to escape from every Spanish tie, he pressed on Madison the whole of Spanish America. Once more one is reduced to guess at the motive of this astonishing change. No one knew better than Napoleon that the independence of Spanish America could benefit England alone; that England had fought, intrigued, and traded for centuries to bring this result about, and that the United States were altogether unable to contest English influence at any point in Central and South America. He knew, too, that the permanent interests of France could only be injured by betraying again the Spanish empire, and that nothing could exceed the extravagance of intriguing for the revolt of Mexico and Peru while his armies were exhausting themselves in the effort to make his own brother King of Spain. Such sudden inconsistencies were no new thing in Napoleon’s career. The story of the Floridas repeated the story of Louisiana. As in 1803 Napoleon, disgusted with his failure at St. Domingo, threw Louisiana to Jefferson, so in 1810, disgusted with his failure at Madrid, he threw Spanish America in a mass to Madison. What was more serious still, as in 1803 Germany could foresee that she must pay on the Rhine for the losses of France at St. Domingo and New Orleans, so in 1810 the Czar Alexander already could divine that the compensation which Napoleon would require for Mexico and Peru would lie somewhere in the neighborhood of Poland. Thus much at least had been gained for the United States and England. Napoleon took no more interest in the roads to Lisbon and Cadiz, and studied only those that led to Wilna, Moscow, and St. Petersburg.
Read in this sense, Napoleon’s instructions to Cadore and Serurier told most interesting news; but on the point likely to prove a matter of life and death to Madison, the Emperor spoke so evasively as to show that he meant to yield nothing he could retain. He ordered Cadore to talk with Jonathan Russell about commercial matters:—
“Have a conference with this chargé d’affaires in order to understand thoroughly what the American government wants. You will tell him that I have subjected ships coming from America to certain formalities; that these formalities consist of a letter in cipher, joined with licenses, which prove that the ship comes from America and has been loaded there, but that I cannot admit American ships coming from London, since this would upset my system; that there is no way of knowing the fact [of their American character], and that there are shipowners who for mercantile objects foil the measures of the American government; in short, that I have made a step; that I will wait till February 2 to see what America will do, and that in the mean time I will conduct myself according to circumstances, but so as to do no harm to ships really coming from America; that the question is difficult, but that he should give the positive assurance to his Government of my wish to favor it in everything; that he knows, moreover, that several ships coming from America since the last measures were known have obtained permission to discharge their cargoes in France; finally, that we cannot consider as American the ships convoyed to the Baltic, which have double papers, etc. It would be well if you could engage this chargé to answer you by a note, and to agree that he disowns the American ships which navigate the Baltic. This would be sent to Russia, and would be useful. In general, employ all possible means of convincing this chargé d’affaires, who I suppose speaks French, of the particularly favorable disposition I feel toward the Americans; that the real embarrassment is to recognize true Americans from those who serve the English; and that I consider the step taken by the American government as a first step taken toward a good result.”
When Napoleon used many words and became apologetic, he was least interesting, because his motives became most evident. In regard to America, he wished to elude an inconvenient inquiry whether the Berlin and Milan Decrees were or were not revoked. Consequently he did not mention those decrees, although credulity itself could not have reconciled his pledge to wait until February 2, with his official assertion of August 5 that the decrees would be withdrawn on November 1. Such a course was fatal to Madison, for it forced him to appear as accepting the Berlin and Milan Decrees after so long protesting against them. So justly anxious was the President to protect himself from this risk, that in sending to Russell the Non-intercourse Proclamation of November 2 he warned the chargé against the doctrine of a condition precedent involved in Cadore’s “bien entendu.” The Emperor was to understand that the United States acted on the ground that “bien entendu” did not mean “condition precedent.”[298] “It is to be remarked, moreover, that in issuing the Proclamation, it has been presumed that the requisition ... on the subject of the sequestered property will have been satisfied.”
December 13, at the moment when Napoleon was writing his instructions to Cadore, Jonathan Russell was reading the instructions of President Madison. No diplomatist could have found common ground on which to reconcile the two documents. Madison’s knowledge of the Napoleonic idiom was certainly incomplete. Whatever “bien entendu” meant in the dictionaries, it meant in Napoleon’s mouth the words “on condition,”—and something more. In further assuming that the sequestered property had been restored, President Madison might with equal propriety have assumed that it had never been seized. Russell did what he could to satisfy Madison’s wishes, but he could not hope to succeed.
Bound by these instructions to communicate the President’s proclamation in language far from according with Napoleon’s ideas, Russell wrote to Cadore, December 17, a note,[299], in which he not only repeated the President’s assumptions in regard to the revocation of the decrees, but also ventured beyond the scope of his instructions: he demanded an explanation of the language used by Cadore himself in his report to the Emperor, and by Semonville in the Senate. As though such a demand under such circumstances were not indiscreet enough, Russell strengthened the formal and perfunctory protests of the President by adding an assurance of his own that the United States, after cutting off their own intercourse with England, would not consent to “any commercial intercourse whatever, under licenses or otherwise, between France and her enemy.”
Russell’s note of December 17 was never answered by the French government, and, as was equally natural, it was never published by the President or made known to Congress. Fortunately for Russell, the Emperor was in good humor, and Cadore was in haste to convey his master’s wishes to the American chargé d’affaires. December 22 Russell was summoned to the minister, and a very interesting interview took place. Cadore gently complained of the tone in which Russell’s note had been written, but put into his hands, as its result and answer, the two letters written by the ministers of Justice and Finance,—which allowed American vessels to enter French ports, subject only to provisional sequestration, until February 2, at which time all vessels sequestered since November 1 would be restored. “When I had read these letters,” reported Russell,[300] “I returned them to the Duke of Cadore, and expressed to him my regret that the general release of American vessels detained under the Berlin and Milan Decrees should be deferred until the 2d of February, as this delay might throw some doubt on the revocation of those decrees.” Cadore replied that the time thus taken was intended to afford an opportunity for forming some general rule by which the character of the property could be decided. Russell then complained that by assigning the second day of February,—the very day on which the non-intercourse with England would be revived,—this event was made to appear as a condition precedent to the abrogation of the French edicts; and thereby the order in which the measures of the two governments ought to stand was reversed. In reply Cadore repeated the general assurances of the friendly disposition of the Emperor, and that he was determined to favor the trade of the United States so far as it did not cover or promote the commerce of England. He said the Berlin and Milan Decrees, “inasmuch as they related to the United States,” were at an end; that the Emperor was pleased with what the United States had already done, but that he could not “throw himself into their arms” until they had accomplished their undertaking.
Nothing could be more gentle than this manner of saying that the revocation of November 1 was and was not founded on a condition precedent; that the decrees themselves were and were not revoked; but when Russell still pressed for a categorical answer, Cadore declared at last, “with some vivacity, that the Emperor was determined to persevere in his system against England; that he had overturned the world in adopting this system, and that he would overturn it again to give it effect.” On the third point Cadore was equally unyielding. Not a word could Russell wring from him in regard to the confiscated property of American merchants. “His omission to notice the last is more to be lamented, as I have reason to believe that this conversation was meant to form the only answer I am to receive to the communications which I have addressed to him.”