The real reasons which induced Bonaparte to alienate the territory from France remained hidden in the mysterious processes of his mind. Perhaps he could not himself have given the true explanation of his act. Anger with Spain and Godoy had a share in it, as he avowed through Talleyrand’s letter of June 22; disgust for the sacrifices he had made, and impatience to begin his new campaigns on the Rhine,--possibly a wish to show Talleyrand that his policy could never be revived, and that he had no choice but to follow into Germany,--had still more to do with the act. Yet it is also reasonable to believe that the depths of his nature concealed a wish to hide forever the monument of a defeat. As he would have liked to blot Corsica, Egypt, and St. Domingo from the map, and wipe from human memory the record of his failures, he may have taken pleasure in flinging Louisiana far off, and burying it forever from the sight of France in the bosom of the only government which could absorb and conceal it. For reasons of his own, which belonged rather to military and European than to American history, Bonaparte preferred to deal with Germany before crossing the Pyrenees; and he knew that meanwhile Spain could not escape. Godoy on his side could neither drag King Charles into a war with France, nor could he provide the means of carrying on such a war with success. Where strong nations like Austria, Russia, and Prussia were forced to crouch before Bonaparte, and even England would have been glad to accept tolerable terms, Spain could not challenge attack. The violent anger that followed the sale of Louisiana and the rupture of the peace of Amiens soon subsided. Bonaparte, aware that he had outraged the rights of Spain, became moderate. Anxious to prevent her from committing any act of desperation, he did not require her to take part in the war, but even allowed her stipulated subsidies to run in arrears; and although he might not perhaps regret his sale of Louisiana to the United States, he felt that he had gone too far in shaking the colonial system. At the moment when Cevallos made his bitterest complaints, Bonaparte was least disposed to resent them by war. Both parties knew that so far as Louisiana was concerned, the act was done and could not be undone; that France was bound to carry out her pledge, or the United States would take possession of Louisiana without her aid. Bonaparte was willing to go far in the way of conciliation, if Spain would consent to withdraw her protest.