A Wilderness So Immense (43 page)

After writing to Pinckney Madison also met with the French charge d’affaires, Louis André Pichón. It was anyone’s guess, he warned Pichón, what the five or six thousand Americans who were at that moment floating their harvest downriver might do when they reached New Orleans and found the port closed to their exports. “We have rumours flying through the woods from Pensacola to St. Louis,” General James Wilkinson informed Kentucky senator John Brown, “that inflame our latent combustibility.” Unless the port is quickly reopened, “our citizens will
kick up a dust,”
James Morrison wrote from Lexington to Virginia senator Wilson Cary Nicholas. “They already
talk of war.”
Kentucky was “all in a Hubbub,” Robert Barr advised Kentucky senator John Breckinridge, “all ready and waiting to step on board and sail down and take possession of New Orleans.”
³³

With French troops expected to arrive in New Orleans at any moment, the timing of the Spanish intendant’s action was especially alarming. Many Americans jumped to the conclusion that Bonaparte had pressured Spain to close the port. Northern Federalists began clamoring for war—less because they cared about Louisiana than because their enemy would be France. Congressman John Stratton, of Northampton County on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, reflected the exasperation of southern Federalists when he decried “the timidity of our executive in meeting this flagrant violation of our Treaty with Spain.” New Orleans could be taken by “the Kentucky Militia alone,” Stratton exclaimed. “No better opportunity ever can occur for furnishing … a pretext for seizing the East Bank of the Mississippi.” Stratton and other southern Federalists believed that “Securing perminantly the free Navigation of that River” was “all important to America.” Angry westerners were in full agreement. They were ready to oust “the reptile Spaniards” from New Orleans before Bonaparte took possession.
³⁴

With demands for war coming from either side, the Jefferson administration upheld the convenient fiction that Juan Ventura Morales’s revocation of the American right of deposit and closing of the port of New Orleans was simply a colossal blunder by one overzealous, avaricious, bigoted, and probably stupid colonial official. A colossal but perhaps reversible blunder.

Withdrawing the American right of deposit may have been shortsighted, but it was not the work of a maverick local official. On July 14, 1802, the order to close the port had been issued by Carlos IV himself, as
Daniel Clark and other New Orleanians suspected that autumn. Earlier that spring Intendant Morales and other colonial officials had complained to the ministers of the Spanish treasury that Americans were abusing the right of deposit and heavily engaged in smuggling. Upon the advice of his chief minister, Pedro Cevallos (Manuel Godoy’s successor and cousin by marriage), Carlos IV had secretly directed the intendant of Louisiana to prohibit the deposit of American goods in New Orleans—and Carlos had specifically instructed Morales not to justify his action as “the order of the king.” Instead, he was to pretend that he had reviewed the terms of Pinckney’s Treaty on his own initiative “and found that the limit of three years fixed by article XXII bound his hands so that he could not allow the introduction and deposit of American goods without the express permission of the king.” By following his secret instructions to the letter, Juan Morales deflected responsibility from the king to himself so effectively that a full century passed before historian Edward Channing discovered and published the direct order from Carlos IV that precipitated the Mississippi crisis of 1802.
³⁵

Bonaparte was delighted when the news of Morales’s proclamation arrived in a letter from his American envoy early in January 1803. By closing the port, Talleyrand wrote to his ambassador in Madrid, “Spain had taken a step equally in accordance with its rights and with the interests of France.” The American right of deposit was incompatible with Bonaparte’s plans to nurture trade between Louisiana and the French West Indies, “replace” the Americans, and “concentrate [Louisiana’s] commerce into the national commerce.” The first consul and his foreign minister welcomed Morales’s proclamation as a measure that would curb American competitors and encourage French commerce. The closing of the port, however, was the only bit of good news from the New World that reached Bonaparte that winter.
³⁶

During the first week of January 1803, as troops assigned to reinforce General Charles Leclerc in St. Domingue waited in the cold at Hellevoetsluis, news of General Leclerc’s death on November 2—and of the catastrophic losses and dismal failure of the Caribbean expedition—reached the first consul. Bonaparte’s dream of reviving the French sugar empire in the West Indies died with his brother-in-law. His anger burst forth after a dinner party on Wednesday, January 12—just two days after Pierre Clement Laussat and the
Surveillant
cleared the harbor at La Rochelle for New Orleans. “Damn sugar, damn coffee, damn colonies!” Bonaparte exclaimed. (These were the “exact words of the First Consul,”
Pierre Louis Roederer, director general of public education, noted in his diary.)
³⁷

At the end of January the government newspaper in Paris,
Le Moniteur,
published a story hinting that the first consul was turning his attention to the east and thinking about reconquering Egypt. Great Britain reacted promptly to this threatened breach of the year-old Treaty of Amiens, by which Great Britain had promised to surrender the island of Malta to France and Bonaparte had agreed to return Egypt to the Ottoman Turks. On March 2, George III informed Parliament of Bonaparte’s “very considerable military preparations … in the ports of France and Holland.” The king advocated “additional measures of precaution” against the possibility, which Bonaparte was in fact entertaining, that the French troops and vessels assembled for Louisiana and St. Domingue might be redirected toward an invasion of England. As the ice melted in the harbor of Hellevoetsluis, British warships moved into the English Channel, trapping General Victor’s forces in their harbors as they made ready for war.
³⁸

On Sunday afternoon, March 12, Chancellor Livingston and the foreign diplomatic corps attended a salon held by Josephine Bonaparte. “After going the usual round of Ladies in one room,” her husband exchanged a few polite words with Livingston, a few more with the Danish ambassador, “and then went to the other end of the room … and went up to Lord Whitworth,” the British ambassador. Bonaparte told Whitworth “that they would probably have a storm.” Whitworth replied that he “hoped not.”

“I find, my Lord, your nation wants war again,” said Bonaparte.

“No, sir,” Whitworth replied, “we are very desirous of peace.”

“You have just finished a war of fifteen years,” Bonaparte said.

“It is true, sir, and that was fifteen years too long,” Whitworth replied.

“But you want another war of fifteen years,” Bonaparte asserted.

“Pardon me, sir,” Whitworth replied, “we are very desirous of peace.”

Bonaparte then expressed “a few more very strong terms evoking the vengeance of heaven upon those who broke the treaty.”

“I must either have Malta or war,” he declared. Then, being told that “Madame B[onaparte] and the ladies in the next room expected him,” Bonaparte departed.
³⁹

The United States had recoiled in republican indignation at Talleyrand’s insistence upon substantial bribes in the XYZ Affair, so when Robert Livingston tempted the first consul’s elder brother with the idea of giving the
Bonaparte family land in Louisiana in exchange for American sovereignty, the scheme was as close to outright venality as any American official could come. Great Britain, on the other hand, had fewer qualms about bribery as an instrument of foreign policy.

Napoleon Bonaparte, about 1802
—
a character study of genius and hubris. Jefferson regarded Bonaparte as “a great man” until the coup d’état of 18—19 Brumaire, and thereafter “set him down as a great scoundrel only.” Talleyrand, who initially opposed the Louisiana Purchase in the hope of diverting him from another war in Europe, wrote that “I served Bonaparte while he was emperor as I had served him when he was Consul… so long as I could believe that he himself was devoted to the interests of France. But as soon as I saw him beginning to undertake those radical enterprises which were to lead him to his doom, I resigned my ministry. For this, he never forgave me.” Exiled on the island of St. Helena, where he died on May ¡, 1821, Napoleon described Talleyrand as
“merde
in a silk stocking.”
(Courtesy Library of Virginia)

Within days of the first consul’s confrontation with Lord Whitworth at Josephine Bonaparte’s salon, Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte sent an intermediary
(a Swiss-born acquaintance named Bartholomew Huber who was familiar with officials in London and Paris) to suggest that in return for “a valuable consideration” the Bonapartes might be able to persuade their brother to relax his insistence on Malta or war. Whitworth immediately reported the proposal to the British foreign secretary, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Lord Hawkesbury. “I lose no time in informing you,” Hawkesbury replied three days later, “that if an arrangement could be concluded which should be satisfactory to His Majesty, and by which His Majesty should retain the Island of Malta, the Sum of one Hundred thousand Pounds might be distributed as Secret Service.”
⁴⁰

The sum of £100,000—worth about $16 million today—was indeed a valuable consideration, but with so many men around Bonaparte “partaking in the Pillage of this country,” Whitworth determined that more money was required, especially if the British hoped to enlist Talleyrand’s support. “I have no fixed Idea of what Sum may be necessary,” Whitworth wrote on March 24, “but on calculating what we may expend in one month of War, the sacrifice of a Million, or even two Millions, would be economy.” By the middle of April, the British were secretly negotiating with Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte, Talleyrand, and even Napoleon’s fearsome chief of secret police, Joseph Fouché.
⁴¹

In the end, the war was not averted and no money changed hands. Nevertheless, the British attempt to bribe Napoleon’s brothers and ministers, which probably came to the first consul’s attention through Fouché, underscored Talleyrand’s and the Bonapartes’ opposition to Napoleon’s decision to sell Louisiana. Talleyrand, of course, had been advocating colonization since his lectures at the National Institute in 1797. He and Napoleon’s brothers hoped that the first consul’s projects in St. Domingue and Louisiana might divert his interest in Malta and Egypt. The attempted bribery also helps to explain both the famous bathroom encounter between Napoleon and his brothers as well as the first consul’s eventual decision to negotiate with the Americans through his incorruptible finance minister, François Barbé-Marbois, rather than Foreign Minister Talleyrand.

The bathroom episode began one evening when Lucien Bonaparte came home to change clothes for the theater. Joseph was waiting for him. “Here you are at last,” Joseph said, “I was afraid you might not come. This is no time for theater-going; I have news for you that will give you no fancy for amusement. The General wants to sell Louisiana.”
⁴²

“Come now,” Lucien replied, “if he were capable of wishing it, the Chambers would never consent.”

“He means to do without their consent,” Joseph answered. “What is more,” he continued, “this sale would supply him the first funds for the war. Do you know that I am beginning to think he is much too fond of war?”—an opinion that Talleyrand shared. The brothers resolved to talk with Napoleon the next morning.

Lucien reached the Tuileries first, where he found the first consul soaking in a bath of rosewater. They exchanged pleasantries until Joseph arrived, whereupon Napoleon asked their opinion of his determination to sell Louisiana.

“I flatter myself,” Lucien warned, “that the Chambers will not give their consent.”

“You flatter yourself,” Napoleon answered sarcastically. “That is precious, in truth!”

“And I flatter myself,” Joseph interjected, “as I have already told the First Consul.”

“And what did I answer?” Napoleon growled.

“That you would do without the Chambers,” said Joseph.

“Precisely!” said Napoleon. “And now, gentlemen, think of it what you will; but both of you go into mourning about this affair—you, Lucien, for the sale itself; you, Joseph, because I shall do it without the consent of any one whatsoever. Do you understand?”

“You will do well,” Joseph snarled as he stepped toward the tub, “not to expose your project to parliamentary discussion; for … I will put myself first at the head of the opposition.”

Napoleon laughed scornfully. “You will have no need to lead the opposition, for I repeat that there will be no debate.”

Months of relentless advocacy by Chancellor Livingston now paid off, as the first consul claimed the New Yorker’s arguments as his own. “It is my idea,” Napoleon declared as he rose from the tub. “I conceived it, and I shall go through with it, the negotiation, ratification, and execution, by myself. Do you understand? by me who scoffs at your opposition.”