I sold Louisiana because I had no way to defend it and every reason to want the money and the goodwill.
The facts: by the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso (1800) Spain had returned the vast territory to France, but by 1803 the peace of Amiens was already fragile and a war with England was coming. A French garrison in Louisiana could be cut off by the Royal Navy in a week. The colony was a hostage I could not keep. So in April 1803 I sold it to the United States for about fifteen million dollars, roughly sixty million francs, of which some of the sum went to settle claims.
What did I do with it? I put it where the state most needed it: the treasury, the army, and the preparations for the war that I now considered inevitable. It was, in my own terms, a calculation of means. The money helped pay for the camps on the Channel coast that would have carried an invasion to England had the war not turned elsewhere. And the sale bought something worth more than the francs: the friendship of the United States, and a rival removed from my flank.
I did not sell it because I loved the Americans. I sold it because I could not hold it, and because the cash was better in my hands than a colony in theirs by force.
5 fragments · Latest 05.05.1821
