HOW NAPOLEON PERSISTED IN SELLING LOUISIANA

By Lucien Bonaparte.

LUCIEN BONAPARTE was a younger brother of Napoleon and Joseph, who participated in this account in his Memoirs, published in Paris in 1882. As ambassador to Spain Lucien had negotiated the secret treaty of 1800 by which Spain retroceded Louisiana to France.

Spain had possessed Louisiana since the treaty of 1763, which concluded the French and Indian War. In 1803 President Jefferson sent James Monroe to join Robert R. Livingston in Paris and negotiate with Napoleon for the island of New Orleans and the Floridas. To their astonishment Napoleon offered to sell the entire province.

$20,000,000 was asked, and $16,000,000 finally was accepted for the territory of over a million square miles, including $4,000,000 for the debts which the United States was to assume. Napoleon hastened the sale because he doubted his ability to hold Louisiana against England, with whom he was at war.

HERE you are at last!" exclaimed my brother, I was afraid you were not coming. It is a fine time to go to the theater; I come to tell you a piece of news which will not make you feel like amusing yourself."

Continuing in the same tone, Joseph, replying to my question : "Do make haste and tell me what is up" said to me:

"No ; you will not believe it, and yet it is true. I give you a thousand guesses; the general (we still called Napoleon in that way), the general wishes to alienate Louisiana."

"Bah! who will buy it from him?"

"The Americans."

I was thunderstruck for a moment.

"The idea! if he could wish, the Chambers would not consent to it."

"And therefore he expects to do without their consent. That is what he replied to me when I said to him, as you do now, that the Chambers would not consent to it."

"What, he really said that to you? That is a little too much! But no, it is impossible. It is a bit of brag at your expense, as the other day on the subject of Bernadotte."

"No, no," insisted Joseph, "he spoke very seriously, and, what is more, he added to me that this sale would furnish him the first funds for war."

We talked together for a considerable time about the little coup d'etat which seemed to us to exceed in arbitrariness everything that had been accomplished under the Convention and the Directory.

It had become late. The plan of going to the theater was given up, and we separated, not without having agreed that I first should go the next morning to pay a visit to the First Consul.

It was decided that Joseph should follow me pretty closely, without our seeming to have come to a mutual understanding, that I was not to take the initiative in regard to the sale in question, but wait until the Consul himself should mention it to me. In case he should ask me whether Joseph had spoken to me about it, I was authorized to say that he had done so, and even that he seemed to me alarmed about it. Up to that point, everything that I should deem fitting to add or to object, according to what the Consul should say to me, was left to my judgment.

I went over, decided upon, and modified one after the other my most convincing reasons to make the Consul renounce if not his plan of alienating the colony, at least that of not consulting the Chambers about it, more and more persuaded as I was by reflection that the discussion would end in the way that I desired.

I still believe firmly to-day that if the plan of the Consul had been submitted to the Chambers, it would have been rejected by a very large majority; for after all what worse thing could happen to us, in case of sacrifices necessary to obtain peace, if we were at war with the English, or with any other government, than to cede one of our finest colonies for eighteen millions?

It was on this way of considering the renunciation projected that I founded the greatest probability of the success of our opposition. These eighteen millions seemed to me besides, as I still think them to-day, after so many years, a miserable and pitiable compensation.

The next morning I betook myself to the Tuileries, where I was immediately shown up to my brother, who had just got into his bath. I found him in excellent humor. He began by speaking to me of the first night at which he had been present, astonished and sorry that we had not gone to join him.

It was almost time to leave the bath, and we had not discussed Louisiana any more than we had the year forty. I was vexed at it, but the nearer the last moment of speaking of it approached, the more I put off doing so. The body-servant was already holding the sheet and prepared to wrap his master in: I was about to leave the place, when Rustan scratched at the door like a cat.

"Let him come in," said the First Consul, "I will stay in the water a quarter of an hour longer."

It is known that he liked very much to stay there a long time, when there was no pressing business. I had time to make a sign to the newcomer that I had not yet spoken of anything, and I saw that he was himself embarrassed as to when and how he was to broach the subject, if our brother did not give him some pretext for it.

His irresolution and my suppositions did not last long, for all at once the Consul said to Joseph :

"Well, brother, so you have not spoken to Lucien?"

"About what?" said Joseph.

"About our plan in regard to Louisiana, you know?"

"About yours, my dear brother, you mean? You can not have forgotten that far from being mine"-

"Come, come, preacher But I have no need of discussing that with you: you are so obstinate With Lucien I speak more willingly of serious matters ; for though he sometimes takes it into his head to oppose me, he knows how to give in to my opinion, Lucien does, when I see fit to try to make him change his."

Joseph was showing annoyance at our conversation, the tone of which was more friendly than anything else, when finally he said to the Consul, rather brusquely:

"Well, you still say nothing of your plan?"

"Oh! yes," said the Consul, "but it is late, and if Lucien will wait for me in my study with you, mister grumbler, I will join you soon: do me the favor to recall my body-servant, it is absolutely necessary for me to leave the bath. Know merely, Lucien, that I have decided to sell Louisiana to the Americans."

I thought I ought to show very moderate astonishment at this piece of news supposed to be unknown to me. Knowing very well that an opportunity would be given me to show more, I mean at his intention to dispose of it by his own will, without speaking of it to the Chambers, I contented myself with saying: "Ah! ah!" in that tone of curiosity which shows the desire to know the rest of what has been begun rather than it signifies approbation or even the contrary.

This apparent indifference made the first Consul say: "Well, Joseph, you see! Lucien does not make an outcry about that as you do. Yet he would almost have a right to do so, for his part; for after all Louisiana is his conquest."

"As for me, I assure you," replied Joseph, "that if Lucien says nothing, he thinks none the less."

"Truly? And why should he play the diplomat with me?"

Brought into prominence in a way that I did not expect, and as they say, at a standstill, I could not delay explaining myself, and, to tell the truth, I was not sorry for it. But, as the Consul did not ask my opinion upon the heart of the question, which was not the greater or less fitness of the sale, I contented myself with saying . . . that it was true that on this subject I thought as Joseph. "I flatter myself," I added in a tone which I tried to make the least hostile possible, "I flatter myself that the Chambers will not give their consent to it."

"You flatter yourself?" (This was said in a significant tone and air of surprise.) "That is fine, in truth," murmured the Consul lower, at the same time that Joseph was exclaiming with an air of triumph:

"And I too flatter myself so, and that is what I told the first Consul."