d alone nursed this plan, it would have
had little significance in history; but it was eagerly taken up by a
group of Frenchmen who believed that France, having set her house
in order and secured peace in Europe, should now strive for orderly
commercial development. The road to prosperity, they believed, lay
through the acquisition of colonial possessions. The recovery of the
province of Louisiana was an integral part of their programme.

While the Directory was still in power and Bonaparte was pursuing his
ill-fated expedition in Egypt, Talleyrand had tried to persuade the
Spanish Court to cede Louisiana and the Floridas. The only way for
Spain to put a limit to the ambitions of the Americans, he had argued
speciously, was to shut them up within their natural limits. Only so
could Spain preserve the rest of her immense domain. But since Spain
was confessedly unequal to the task, why not let France shoulder the
responsibility? "The French Republic, mistress of these two provinces,
will be a wall of brass forever impenetrable to the combined efforts
of England and America," he assured the Spaniards. But the time was not
ripe.

Such, then, was the policy which Bonaparte inherited when he became
First Consul and master of the destinies of his adopted country. A
dazzling future opened before him. Within a year he had pacified Europe,
crushing the armies of Austria by a succession of brilliant victories,
and laying prostrate the petty states of the Italian peninsula. Peace
with England was also in sight. Six weeks after his victory at Marengo,
Bonaparte sent a special courier to Spain to demand--the word is hardly
too strong--the retrocession of Louisiana.

It was an odd whim of Fate that left the destiny of half the American
continent to Don Carlos IV, whom Henry Adams calls "a kind of Spanish
George III "--virtuous, to be sure, but heavy, obtuse, inconsequential,
and incompetent. With incredible fatuousness the King gave his consent
to a bargain by which he was to yield Louisiana in return for Tuscany
or other Italian provinces which Bonaparte had just overrun with his
armies. "Congratulate me," cried Don Carlos to his Prime Minister, his
eyes sparkling, "on this brilliant beginning of Bonaparte's relations
with Spain. The Prince-presumptive of Parma, my son-in-law and nephew,
a Bourbon, is invited by France to reign, on the delightful banks of
the Arno, over a people who once spread their commerce through the known
wor