But Napoleon's soldiers were dying at San Domingo, the men with whom he would have colonised Louisiana. At that moment the flint and steel of France and England struck, and the spark meant—war. England stood ready to seize the mouth of the Mississippi.
After the solemnities of Easter Sunday at St. Cloud, April 10, 1803, Napoleon summoned two of his ministers.
"I know the full value of Louisiana!" he began with vehement passion, walking up and down the marble parlour. "A few lines of treaty have restored it to me, and I have scarcely recovered it when I must expect to lose it. But if it escapes from me," the First Consul shook his finger menacingly, "it shall one day cost dearer to those who oblige me to strip myself of it, than to those to whom I wish to deliver it. The English have successively taken from France, Canada, Cape Breton, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the richest portions of Asia. They shall not have the Mississippi which they covet. They have twenty ships of war in the Gulf of Mexico, they sail over those seas as sovereigns. The conquest of Louisiana would be easy. I have not a moment to lose in putting it out of their reach. I know not whether they are not already there. I think of ceding it to the United States. They only ask one town of me in Louisiana but I already consider the colony as entirely lost, and it appears to me that in the hands of this growing power it will be more useful to the policy and even to the commerce of France, than if I should attempt to keep it."
He turned to Barbé-Marbois, who had served as Secretary of the French Legation at Philadelphia during the whole war of the American Revolution.
"We should not hesitate to make a sacrifice of that which is about slipping from us," said Barbé-Marbois. "War with England is inevitable; shall we be able to defend Louisiana? Can we restore fortifications that are in ruins? If, Citizen Consul, you, who have by one of the first acts of your government made sufficiently apparent your intention of giving this country to France,
