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. Indeed, he completed arrangements for the sale
even before Monroe arrived.
Some efforts had also been made, at Bonaparte's instance, to induce Spain
to give up the Floridas, East and West, but European complications
prevented the exertion of pressure in this direction; and the whole of
Florida became part of the United States by treaty signed in 1819. The
sale of Louisiana lowered the French flag on the only remaining portion
of American territory that acknowledged the tricolour, except the
pestilential fragment of French Guiana, on the north-east of South
America, where France has had a footing since the beginning of the
seventeenth century, save for a short interval (1809 to 1815) when it was
taken by the British and Portuguese. But the possession has never been a
profitable one, and a contemporary writer, quoting an official
publication, describes it as enjoying "neither agriculture, commerce, nor
industry."* (* Fallot, L'Avenir Colonial de la France (1903) page 237.)
In the West Indies, France had lost Martinique and Guadeloupe during the
naval wars prior to Bonaparte's ascension to supreme authority. These
islands were restored to her under the Treaty of Amiens; were once more
captured by the British in 1809 to 1810; and were finally handed back to
France under the Treaty of Paris in 1814.
