Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 4.djvu/125

1807. one which even Talleyrand attempted in vain. From the first, Florida had been used by Napoleon as a means of controlling President Jefferson. "To enlarge the circumference of his bubble" was a phrase keen and terse enough to have come from Talleyrand himself; but this was not the purpose for which Florida had hitherto been used in Napoleon's diplomacy, and in ordering that the negotiation should be stopped, the Emperor might well have other motives, which he preferred keeping to himself.

An observer far less intelligent than Armstrong might have seen that in face of the great changes which his despatch announced for Italy, Portugal, and Spain, the time when Napoleon would need support from the United States had not yet come. The critical moment was still in the future. Perhaps America might be forced into war by the "Chesapeake" outrage; at all events, she was further than ever from alliance with England, and the Emperor could safely wait for her adhesion to the continental system until his plans for consolidating his empire were more mature. For the present, Don Carlos IV. and the Prince of Peace were the chief objects of French diplomacy.

The story of Toussaint and St. Domingo was about to be repeated in Spain. Even while Armstrong wrote these despatches, the throne of Don Carlos IV. crumbled, almost without need of a touch from without. France had drawn from Spain everything she once possessed,—her navy, sacrificed at Trafalgar to