Talleyrand, who held that Bonaparte had made a mistake in selling Louisiana to the United States, and who looked upon himself as having no responsibility for the transaction, was glad to restrict what he thought the evil that had been done. Taking the complaints of Spain to the Emperor, he received permission to do what Spain requested; and during the month of August he sent from the Foreign Office a series of documents that disposed for the time of any hopes still nourished by Jefferson's diplomacy.
These three papers were too important to be forgotten. French diplomatic writings were models of concise, impassive clearness, contrasting with the diffuse and argumentative, if not disputatious, style which sometimes characterized American and Spanish official correspondence. These three short letters offered examples of French methods. The first was addressed to Gerneral Turreau at Washington, and concerned the boundaries of Louisiana towards the west:[1]—
- "If the Mississippi and the Iberville trace with precision the eastern boundary of that colony, it has less precise limits to the westward. No river, no chain of mountains, separates it from the Spanish possessions; and between the last settlements of Louisiana and the first of those in the Spanish colonies are frequently to be found intervals so great as to make a line of demarcation difficult to agree upon. So Spain already appears to fear that the United States, who show an intention of
- ↑ Talleyrand to Turreau (No. 99), 20 Thermidor, An xii. (Aug. 8, 1804); Archives des Aff. Étr., MSS.
