"
"There are," he said, "no other means of putting an end to the ambition of
the Americans than that of shutting them up within the limits which nature
seems to have traced for them; but Spain is not in a condition to do this
great work alone. She cannot, therefore, hasten too quickly to engage the
aid of a preponderating power, yielding to it a small part of her immense
domains in order to preserve the rest."
"Let the court of Madrid cede these districts to France and from that
moment the power of America is bounded by the limit which it may suit the
interests and the tranquillity of France and Spain to assign her. The
French Republic ... will be a wall of brass forever impenetrable to the
combined efforts of England and America." [Footnote: Quoted in Henry
Adams's "History of the United States," 1:357.]
If in Napoleon's mind the dream was as sinister, as regards the United
States, it was not so for long. It contemplated at first the occupation of
Santo Domingo, the quelling of the insurrection there, then the seizure of
Louisiana, already promised to France by Spain, then the acquisition of
Florida, the conversion of the Gulf of Mexico into a French lake, and
ultimately the extension of the province of Louisiana to the Alleghanies
and, perhaps, even to the old borders of New France along the Great Lakes
and the St.
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