Cevallos made other requests. After narrating the history of Pinckney’s claims convention, he touched briefly on the claim for French spoliations which the Americans so warmly urged against Spain, and he asserted that Lucien Bonaparte had given an assurance that these claims were covered by the Franco-American treaty of 1800, and therefore could not be pressed against Spain. He complained that Pinckney had used “language the most gross, the most insulting, and, so to speak, the most audacious and menacing.” He called attention to the dangers which would result from allowing the boundary of Louisiana to be extended toward either Florida or Mexico; and he begged “that orders might be sent to the French commissioner Laussat in Louisiana, enjoining him to restrain the pretensions of the Americans regarding the limits of that province, and not to show himself favorable to the wishes of the Americans, as there is reason to suspect him of doing, according to his correspondence with the Spanish commissioner.” Laussat’s offence consisted in telling the American commissioners that his instructions fixed the Rio Bravo as the western boundary of Louisiana. Cevallos made no protest to Talleyrand against the truth of Laussat’s statement. He tacitly admitted that Laussat was right; but he invited Talleyrand to join in depriving the United States of Texas, which the United States had bought, and the price of which they had paid to France. That Godoy should conspire for this purpose was natural, for he had no reason to respect the Louisiana cession, and he had pledged his honor in no way to the United States; but that he should ask Napoleon to deprive the United States of property which Napoleon himself had bought from Spain and sold to the United States, and for which he had received some millions of coin for his personal objects and ambitions, showed that the Prince of Peace understood the characters of Bonaparte and Talleyrand. 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 General Turreau at Washington, and concerned the boundaries of Louisiana toward the west:[210]--