The Events With Which This Book Is Mainly Concerned Occurred Within The
Four Years 1800 To 1804, During Which Europe
Saw Bonaparte leap from the
position of First Consul of the French Republic to the Imperial throne.
After great French
Victories at Marengo, Hochstadt, and Hohenlinden
(1800), and a brilliant naval triumph for the British at Copenhagen
(1801), came the fragile Peace of Amiens (1802) - an "experimental peace,"
as Cornwallis neatly described it. Fourteen months later (May 1803) war
broke out again; and this time there was almost incessant fighting on a
titanic scale, by land and sea, until the great Corsican was humbled and
broken at Waterloo.
The reader will be aided in forming an opinion upon the events discussed
hereafter, by a glance at the colonial situation during the period in
question. The extent of the dependencies of France and England in 1800
and the later years will be gathered from the following summary.
In America France regained Louisiana, covering the mouth of the
Mississippi. It had been in Spanish hands since 1763; but Talleyrand,
Bonaparte's foreign minister, put pressure upon Spain, and Louisiana
became French once more under the secret treaty of San Ildefonso (October
1800). The news of the retrocession, however, aroused intense feeling in
the United States, inasmuch as the establishment of a strong foreign
power at the mouth of the principal water-way in the country jeopardised
the whole trade of the Mississippi valley. President Jefferson,
recognising that the perpetuation of the new situation "would have put us
at war with France immediately," sent James Monroe to Paris to negotiate.
As Bonaparte plainly saw at the beginning of 1803 that another war with
Great Britain was inevitable, he did not wish to embroil himself with the
Americans also, and agreed to sell the possession to the Republic for
eighty million francs.
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