By the month of June, 1802, all circumstances seemed to smile on Napoleon’s enterprise:  England had ratified the Peace of Amiens, Toussaint had delivered himself up to Leclerc:  France had her troops strongly posted in Tuscany and Parma, and could, if necessary, forcibly end the remaining scruples felt at Madrid; while the United States, with a feeble army and a rotting navy, were controlled by the most peaceable and Franco-phil of their presidents, Thomas Jefferson.  The First Consul accordingly ordered an expedition to be prepared, as if for the reinforcement of Leclerc in St. Domingo, though it was really destined for New Orleans; and he instructed Talleyrand to soothe or coerce the Court of Madrid into the final act of transfer.  The offer was therefore made by the latter (June 19th) in the name of the First Consul that in no case would Louisiana ever be alienated to a Third Power.  When further delays supervened, Bonaparte, true to his policy of continually raising his demands, required that Eastern and Western Florida should also be ceded to him by Spain, on condition that the young King of Etruria (for so Tuscany was now to be styled) should regain his father’s duchy of Parma.[200]

A word of explanation must here find place as to this singular proposal.  Parma had long been under French control; and, in March, 1801, by the secret Treaty of Madrid, the ruler of that duchy, whose death seemed imminent, was to resign his claims thereto, provided that his son should gain Etruria—­as had been already provided for at St. Ildefonso and Luneville.  The duke was, however, allowed to keep his duchy until his death, which occurred on October 9th, 1802; and it is stated by our envoy in Paris to have been hastened by news of that odious bargain.[201] His death now furnished Bonaparte with a good occasion for seeking to win an immense area in the New World at the expense of a small Italian duchy, which his troops could at any time easily overrun.  This consideration seems to have occurred even to Charles IV.; he refused to barter the Floridas against Parma.  The re-establishment of his son-in-law in his paternal domains was doubtless desirable, but not at the cost of so exacting a heriot as East and West Florida.

From out this maze of sordid intrigues two or three facts challenge our attention.  Both Bonaparte and Charles IV. regarded the most fertile waste lands then calling for the plough as fairly exchanged against half a million of Tuscans; but the former feared the resentment of the United States, and sought to postpone a rupture until he could coerce them by overwhelming force.  It is equally clear that, had he succeeded in this enterprise, France might have gained a great colonial empire in North America protected from St. Domingo as a naval and military base, while that island would have doubly prospered from the vast supplies poured down the Mississippi; but this success he would have bought at the expense of a rapprochement between the United States and their motherland, such as a bitter destiny was to postpone to the end of the century.