statesman in the West, as his kindred spirit, Dupleix, in the
East, had fallen on the evil days of Louis XV., when valour and merit
in the French colonies were sacrificed to the pleasures and parasites
of Versailles. The natural result followed. Louisiana was yielded up
to Spain in 1763, in order to reconcile the Court of Madrid to
cessions required by that same Peace of Paris. Twenty years later
Spain recovered from England the provinces of eastern and western
Florida; and thus, at the dawn of the nineteenth century, the red and
yellow flag waved over all the lands between California, New Orleans,
and the southern tip of Florida.[198]

Many efforts were made by France to regain her old Mississippi
province; and in 1795, at the break up of the First Coalition, the
victorious Republic pressed Spain to yield up this territory, where
the settlers were still French at heart. Doubtless the weak King of
Spain would have yielded; but his chief Minister, Godoy, clung
tenaciously to Louisiana, and consented to cede only the Spanish part
of St. Domingo--a diplomatic success which helped to earn him the
title of the Prince of the Peace. So matters remained until
Talleyrand, as Foreign Minister, sought to gain Louisiana from Spain
before it slipped into the horny fists of the Anglo-Saxons.

That there was every prospect of this last event was the conviction
not only of the politicians at Washington, but also of every
iron-worker on the Ohio and of every planter on the Tennessee. Those
young but growing settlements chafed against the restraints imposed by
Spain on the river trade of the lower Mississippi--the sole means
available for their exports in times when the Alleghanies were crossed
by only two tracks worthy the name of roads. In 1795 they gained free
egress to the Gulf of Mexico and the right of bonding their
merchandise in a special warehouse at New Orleans. Thereafter the
United States calmly awaited the time when racial vigour and the
exigencies of commerce should yield to them the possession of the
western prairies and the little townships of Arkansas and New Orleans.
They reckoned without taking count of the eager longing of the French
for their former colony and the determination of Napoleon to give
effect to this honourable sentiment.

In July, 1800, when his negotiations with the United

States were in good train, the First Consul sent to Madrid
instructions empowering the French Minister there to arrange a t