While Yrujo was actively engaged in bringing upon Madison the anger of Spain and France, Merry endeavored to draw his Government into a system of open and secret reprisals upon the President.
That the new French minister was little better disposed than Merry and Yrujo has been already shown; but his causes for ill-will were of a different and less personal nature. Before Turreau's arrival at Washington in November, 1804, Pichon in one of his last despatches declared that Jefferson had already alienated every foreign Power whose enmity could be dangerous to the United States.
- "The state of foreign relations offers a perspective which must put Mr. Jefferson's character to proof," Pichon wrote to Talleyrand in September, 1804.[1] "The United States find themselves compromised and at odds with France, England, and Spain at the same time. This state of things is in great part due to the indecision of the President, and to the policy which leads him to sacrifice everything for the sake of his popularity."
The complaint was common to all French ministers in the United States, and meant little more than that all Presidents and policies displeased them by stopping short of war on England, which was the object of French diplomacy; but this letter also showed that in Pichon's eyes the President had no friends. When Turreau arrived, a few weeks afterward, he quickly intimated that the President need expect from him
- ↑ Pichon to Talleyrand, 16 Fructidor, An xii. (Sept. 3, 1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
