A Wilderness So Immense

by Jon Kukla

  The next day—Tuesday, April 12—Livingston met again with Talleyrand, and then added a postscript at the bottom of his letter to Madison before sealing it and entrusting it to the secretary of the French legation for delivery to America:

  Orders are gone this day to stop the sailing of vessels from the French ports. War [with Great Britain] is inevitable. My conjecture as to their determination to sell [Louisiana] is well founded. Mr. Monroe is just arrived here.32

  Tuesday evening Monroe called upon Livingston at his house on the Right Bank at rue Trudon (a street that disappeared in the nineteenth century with the opening of rue Auber and the opera at the Palais Garnier, home of the Phantom). They agreed to spend the next day reviewing their joint instructions from Jefferson and their files of official correspondence.

  It is not easy to sort out exactly who said what to whom and when during the second week of April. Events were moving quickly. Monroe had just arrived and his credentials had not yet been formally presented to, or accepted by, the first consul. This fact troubled Monroe and Livingston. If their negotiations failed, they did not want to be criticized for any lapse in diplomatic protocol. Bonaparte, who could be a stickler for protocol when it suited his purposes, knew that these negotiations were not likely to fail and was less concerned with procedural formalities.

  Although eager to reach an agreement, Bonaparte added another layer of complexity to the discussions by working through at least two independent intermediaries, Talleyrand and Barbé-Marbois, who spoke sometimes to one American and not the other. And if this were not confusing enough, Monroe injured his back in the middle of April—the pain was “very excruciating” and he was bedridden for several days.33 Not surprisingly, then, these complex negotiations left some ambiguities in the documentary record.

  Livingston’s and Monroe’s contemporary notes and correspondence about the Louisiana Purchase are replete with vague or inaccurate dates, loose ends, dead ends, and occasional misinformation. No one observer witnessed everything at the time, and documents could be misdated in haste or fatigue. Monroe and Livingston wrote several joint reports to Madison, but each man also wrote private letters to Madison or Rufus King, the American minister in London, that reflected his individual perception of his personal role in the negotiations. Retrospective accounts such as Monroe’s Autobiography and Barbé-Marbois’s History of Louisiana were susceptible to the usual frailties of human memory—further compounded by differences between the Julian and the French revolutionary calendars. April 12 on the Julian calendar, for example, was 22 Germinal an XI on French correspondence and documents.

  All this said, however, the final unpleasant truth is that after the success of the Louisiana Purchase, Livingston and Monroe each tried to play up his claim to glory for an achievement that ultimately belonged, more than to any others, to Jefferson and Bonaparte. Goaded by admirers or detractors, nudged by ambition and pride, both American ministers tampered with their files (Livingston to a much greater extent than Monroe) and adjusted their memories of the negotiations.34

  Chancellor Livingston’s terse postscript of April 12 confirming to Madison that his conjecture about the French intention to sell Louisiana was “well founded” was based on his second meeting with Talleyrand, hours before Monroe’s arrival in Paris. “On the 12th,” Livingston explained in his next letter—written after midnight on April 14—“I called upon [Talleyrand] to press this matter further.”35

  The foreign minister was evasive. He again thought it proper “to declare that his proposition was only personal,” Livingston reported, “but still requested me to make an offer” for Louisiana. When the Chancellor declined because Monroe was soon to arrive with fresh instructions from the American government, Talleyrand “shrugged up his shoulders” and tried to change the subject. Livingston, however, had prepared himself for Talleyrand’s ploys. Stating that he “wished merely to have the negotiation opened by any proposition,” the Chancellor presented Talleyrand with “a note which contained that request.”

  Talleyrand responded that “he would answer my note, but that he must do it evasively because Louisiana was not theirs.” Livingston “smiled at this assertion and told him that I had seen the Treaty … [and] knew the Consul had appointed officers to govern the country, and that [Bonaparte] had himself told me that Gen[era]l Victor was to take possession.”

  When Talleyrand “still persisted that they had it in contemplation but had it not,” Livingston responded firmly. “If so,” he said, “we should negotiate no further on the subject but advise our Government to take possession.”

  Talleyrand “seemed alarmed … and told me he would answer my note but that it would be evasively.”

  “We were not disposed to triffle,” the Chancellor warned. “The times were critical and though I did not know what instructions Mr. Munroe might bring, I was perfectly satisfied that they would require a precise and prompt notice.” Livingston then joked that he was “fearful from the little progress I had made that my Government would consider me a very indolent negociator.” Talleyrand “laughed and told me that he would give me a certificate that I was the most importunate he had yet met with.”

  As Livingston ended his conversation with Talleyrand on January 12, he sensed that something bigger was going on, but he could not yet put his finger on it. “There was,” he wrote Madison a day and a half later, “something so extraordinary in all this that I did not detail it to you till I found some clue to the labyrinth.”36 The clue surfaced Wednesday evening after he and Monroe had dinner at Livingston’s house.

  Livingston and Monroe spent Wednesday, April 13, reviewing their papers and then shared dinner with their assistants. From the table that evening the Chancellor “observed the Minister of the Treasury walking in my garden.” Livingston sent his son-in-law to greet François Barbé-Marbois, who “told him he would return when we had dined.” An hour later, while the group was “taking coffee,” Barbé-Marbois “came in, and after being some time in the room,” he and Livingston “strolled into the next room” where they could speak privately.37

  Barbé-Marbois said that upon returning to Paris from St. Cloud (where Bonaparte had dramatically renounced his interest in Louisiana), “he heard that [Livingston] had been at his house two days before”—on the nth—“when he was at St. Cloud.” Thinking that the Chancellor “might have something particular to say to him,” Barbé-Marbois “had taken the first opportunity to call.” Chancellor Livingston “saw that this was meant as an opening to one of those free conversations which [he] frequently had with him,” so he mentioned that he had twice spoken with Talleyrand. He also mentioned “the extraordinary conduct of the Minister” at their second meeting.38

  Despite their mutual affection, Livingston noticed that Barbé-Marbois was choosing his words very carefully—waiting, it seemed, to hear more about Livingston’s conversations with the former bishop of Autun before saying more about his own reasons for meandering into the ambassador’s garden at rue Trudon. There were two reasons for Barbé-Marbois’s caution. One was that although Bonaparte had directed Barbé-Marbois to open negotiations immediately, men who worked closely with the first consul knew that he sometimes acted impulsively. Perhaps he had had second thoughts about supplanting Talleyrand entirely from the negotiations—we can be certain that Talleyrand had such thoughts.

  The other reason for caution was more obvious at the time, but easily forgotten two centuries later. All the participants in these negotiations had firsthand experience with the tumults of revolution. How many regimes had risen and fallen since the storming of the Bastille? How many people had been exiled? How many heads had rolled? By April 1803 Bonaparte and the consulate government had survived for three years, but who could be certain of its future? The Bourbon monarchy had lasted for decades, and the Directory had lasted for five years—and in both cases, at critical moments, the former bishop of Autun had helped bring them down. Talleyrand’s conversion to the idea of selling Louisiana was only a f
ew days old, but his political cunning, his prescience barométrique, was legendary—as was his capacity for betrayal. Barbé-Marbois had every reason for caution until Livingston’s account of his odd conversation with Talleyrand signaled that it really was safe to be involved in the sale of Louisiana.

  Further conversation, Barbé-Marbois whispered, would “lead to something important that had been cursorily mentioned to him at St. Cloud.” But since the “house was full of Company,” the treasury minister invited Livingston to come to his office “any time before Eleven that night.” After Barbé-Marbois left, Monroe recalled five months later, Livingston rejoined his colleagues “appearing much agitated.” Barbé-Marbois, as Monroe remembered it, had confirmed their suspicions that Bonaparte had in fact informed him “at St. Cloud on Sunday … of his decision to cede [Louisiana] to the U[nited] States.”39

  Monroe and Livingston then conferred about the wisdom of further conversation with Barbé-Marbois that evening. “I hesitated on the idea of his going alone,” Monroe confided to Madison, “before I was presented” and they had “adopted any plan.” Monroe also worried that “too much zeal might do harm, that a little reserve might have a better effect.” Livingston, however, “could not see the weight of these objections.” He urged the “necessity of dispatch” and the impossibility of bringing Monroe with him before he had been formally presented to the foreign minister and first consul. Monroe reluctantly agreed (“ceased to oppose his going,” is how he described it to Madison), but advised Livingston to be “reserved in the conference … in short to hear and not to speak.”40

  After Monroe and the others went home, Livingston “followed” Barbé-Marbois to his office. Once there, the treasury minister “wished me to repeat what I had said relative to Mr. Talleyrand requesting a proposition from me as to the purchase of Louisiana,” Livingston reported. “I did so and concluded with the extreme absurdity of [Talleyrand’s] evasions.” Livingston then reminded Barbé-Marbois that “delay … would enable Britain to take possession” of Louisiana.41

  Barbé-Marbois challenged Livingston’s assumption that Britain would be “so successful [in] a war as to be enabled to retain her conquests.” But the Chancellor responded that the Americans might well determine that it was in “their interest to render [Britain] successful.” Was it prudent, Livingston asked, for France to “throw us into her scale”?

  After a long digression about possible outcomes in the event of war—“discussions” that Livingston dismissed to Madison in the wee hours of the next morning as “of no moment to repeat”—“we returned to the point.” Livingston’s account of his conversations with Talleyrand, Barbé-Marbois said, “led him to think that what the Consul had said to him on Sunday at St Cloud … had more of earnest than he thought at the time.”

  Now it was Barbé-Marbois’s turn to recount his Easter Sunday conversation about Louisiana. “The Consul had asked him what news from England?” Barbé-Marbois began. He had replied “that he had seen in the London papers the proposition for raising 50,000 men to take New-Orleans”—Ross’s resolutions. “The Consul said he had seen it too,” Barbé-Marbois said, “and he had also seen that something was said about 2,000,000 of D[ollar]s being disposed among the people about him to bribe them.”

  A little later, Barbé-Marbois continued, while he was “walking in the Garden, the Consul came again to him, and spoke to him about the troubles that were excited in America.” Barbé-Marbois said that he was sorry “that any cause of difference should exist between our countries.”

  “Well you have the charge of the treasury,” Barbé-Marbois said that Bonaparte replied. “Let them give you one hundred millions and pay their own claims, and take the whole country.” (At St. Cloud, Bonaparte had actually told Barbé-Marbois that he wanted fifty million francs—in the end the treasury minister’s exaggeration to Livingston got them an extra ten.)42

  Although not quite on this scale, Chancellor Livingston was no novice at haggling for a good price. “Seeing by my looks that I was surprised at so extravagant a demand,” Livingston assured Madison, Barbé-Marbois quickly added that he, too, “considered the demand as exorbitant, and had told the First Consul that [the United States] had not the means of raising it.” Bonaparte’s response was that they “might borrow it.”

  At last, Livingston told Madison, the cryptic hints of the past few days added up. “I now plainly saw the whole business.”

  First the Consul was disposed to Sell. [But] he distrusted Talleyrand on account of the business of the supposed intention to bribe and [therefore] meant to put the negotiation into the hands of Marbois whose character for integrity is established.

  In light of Barbé-Marbois’s revelations, Livingston pled poverty and found fault with the merchandise. Because the United States “would be perfectly satisfied with New Orleans and the Floridas and had no disposition to extend across the River,” he told the treasury minister, “of course we would not give any great sum for the purchase.” Certainly not 100 million francs. Barbé-Marbois “was right in his Idea of the extreme exorbitancy of the demand,” the Chancellor said, “however we would be ready to purchase [Louisiana] provided the sum was reduced to a reasonable limit.”

  At this point in the evening, near midnight, both men knew their conversation had turned a significant corner. They were no longer discussing whether France might sell Louisiana or whether the United States might buy it. Livingston and Barbé-Marbois had begun to negotiate a price.

  Barbé-Marbois “then pressed me to name the sum,” Livingston told Madison. “This was not worth while,” he had replied, for “any declaration of mine would have no effect.” If, on the other hand, “a negotiation was to be opened,” the Chancellor had said, “we should, Mr. Munro and myself, make the offer after mature reflection.” This response “compelled” Barbé-Marbois to admit “that tho’ he was not authorized expressly to make the inquiry … yet if I could mention any sum that came near the mark that could be accepted he would communicate it to the First Consul.”

  Regardless of his assurances to Monroe after dinner, the opportunity was too good to pass up. “I told him that we had no sort of authority to go to a sum that bore any proportion to what he mentionned,” Livingston reassured Madison, “but that as he considered [Bonaparte’s] demand as too high he would oblige me by telling me what he thought to be reasonable.” Barbé-Marbois had “replied that if we should name sixty million and take upon us the American claims to the amount of twenty more he would try how far it would be accepted.” Two weeks later, Livingston and Monroe would sign a treaty for this exact price—but for the moment the Chancellor maintained that it was too much, invoking once again “the ardour of the Americans to take [Louisiana] by force.”

  Barbé-Marbois was now ready to clinch the deal, in words that Livingston quoted directly in his report to Madison:

  Says he, you know the temper of a youthful conqueror—every thing he does is rapid as lightening[.] We have only to speak to him as an opportunity presents itself, perhaps in a crowd when he bears no contradiction. When I am alone with him I can speak more freely and he attends but this opportunity seldom happens and is always accidental.

  “Try then if you can not come up to my mark,” Barbé-Marbois had urged. “Consider the extent of the country, the exclusive navigation of the River, and the importance of having no neighbour to dispute with you, no war to dread.”

  The hour was late, but the two men had made remarkable progress. They had reached a preliminary understanding about the sale of Louisiana and the approximate price, so the Chancellor pushed on to the next issue. “I asked him,” Livingston reported to Madison, “in case of a purchase whether they could stipulate that France would never possess the Floridas … and relinquish all right that she might have to them. He told me that she would go thus far!”

  Now it was Livingston’s turn to consolidate the evening’s progress by opening formal negotiations in which everything they had discussed could be made official. “
I could now say nothing more on the subject,” Livingston told Barbé-Marbois, “but that I would converse with Mr. Munroe, and that I was sure I would find him disposed to do every thing that was reasonable.”

  And now it was Livingston’s turn to be wary of Talleyrand by making an observation intended, as the Chancellor explained to Madison, “to see whether my conjectures relative to [Talleyrand] were well founded.” If formal negotiations were to begin, Livingston suggested to Barbé-Marbois, “I could wish that the First Consul would depute some body to treat with us who had more leisure than the Minister for foreign affairs.” Barbé-Marbois replied “that as the First Consul knew our personal friendship … there would be no difficulty when the negotiation was somewhat advanced to have the management of it put into his hands.”

  “Thus, Sir,” Livingston informed Madison, “you see a negotiation is fairly opened.”

  The field opened to us is infinitely larger than our instructions contemplated. … I speak now without reflection and without having seen Mr. Munroe, as it was midnight when I left the treasury office [and] it is now three O’clock…. We shall do all we can to cheapen the purchase but my present sentiment is that we shall buy….

  Mr. Munroe will be presented to the Minister to morrow when we shall press for as early an audience as possible from the First Consul.