of 1803, another war-cloud of portentous magnitude was hanging over
Europe. The treaty of Amiens had proved only a truce. Awkwardly
constructed, misconstrued and violated by both parties, it was
about to be formally broken. Neither of the plenipotentiaries who
signed the treaty was skilled in diplomacy. Joseph Bonaparte acted
for his brother; England was represented by Lord Cornwallis, who
twenty years before had surrendered the British army at Yorktown.
The wits of London described him afterwards as a general who could
neither conduct a war nor conclude a peace.

Fearing that, in the threatened conflict, England, by her superior
naval force, would deprive him of his newly acquired colonial
empire, and greatly enhance her own prestige by securing all the
American possessions which France had owned prior to 1763, Bonaparte,
by a dash in diplomacy as quick and as brilliant as his tactics on
the field of battle, placed Louisiana beyond the reach of British
power. After returning to St. Cloud from the religious services
of Easter Sunday, April 10, 1803, he called two of his most trusted
advisers, and, in a tone of vehemence and passion, said,--

"I know the full value of Louisiana, and have been desirous of
repairing the fault of the French negotiators who lost it in 1763.
A few lines of a treaty have restored it to me, and now I must
expect to lose it. . . . The English wish to take possession of
it, and it is thus they will begin the war. . . . They have already
twenty ships of the line in the Gulf of Mexico. . . . The conquest
of Louisiana would be easy. I have not a moment to lose in putting
it out of their reach. . . . The English have successively taken
from France the Canadas, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia,
and the richest portions of Asia. But they shall not have the
Mississippi, which they covet."

The discussion went far into the night. The two ministers differed
widely in the advice which they gave the First Consul; one was in
favor of holding Louisiana at all hazards; the other urged its
prudent cession rather than its inevitable loss by war. They both
remained at St. Cloud for the night. At daybreak the minister who
had advised the cession was summoned by Bonaparte to read dispatches
from London, that moment received, which certainly foreshadowed
war, as the English were making military and naval preparations
with extraordinary rapidity. After reading the dispatches, the
First Consul sa