Such was the result of the President’s diplomacy in respect to Spain. War was its only natural outcome,--war with Spain; war with Napoleon, who must make common cause with King Charles; coalition with England; general recurrence to the ideas and precedents of the last Administration. Jefferson had exasperated Spain and irritated France. He must next decide whether this policy should be pursued to its natural result. Meanwhile Monroe returned to Paris, where he passed six weeks with Armstrong and with his French acquaintances in conference on the proper course to be pursued. Talleyrand was absent in Italy with the Emperor, who May 26 received at Milan the iron crown of the Lombard kings. That Napoleon was the real element of danger was clear to both envoys. A policy which should force France to interfere on behalf of the United States was their object; and on this, as on many points, Armstrong’s ideas were more definite than those of Monroe, Madison, or Jefferson. Even before Monroe left Madrid, he received a letter from Armstrong in which the outline of a decisive plan was sketched:-- “It is simply to take a strong and prompt possession of the northern bank of the Rio Bravo, leaving the eastern limit _in statu quo_. A stroke of this kind would at once bring Spain to reason, and France to her rescue, and without giving either room to quarrel. You might then negotiate, and shape the bargain pretty much as you pleased.”[30] Evidently the seizure of Texas, leaving West Florida untouched, was the only step which the President could properly take; for Texas had been bought and paid for, whereas West Florida beyond doubt had never been bought at all. Armstrong saw the weak point of Napoleon’s position, and wished to attack it. He had no trouble in bringing Monroe to the same conclusion, although in yielding to his arguments Monroe tacitly abandoned the ground he had been persuaded by Livingston to take two years before, that West Florida belonged to Louisiana. “There is no shade of difference in our opinions,” wrote Armstrong to Madison after Monroe’s arrival at Paris,[31] “and so little in the course to be pursued with regard to Spain that it is scarcely worth noticing. The whole may be reduced to this: that instead of assailing the Spanish posts in West Florida, or even indicating an intention to do so, I would (from motives growing more particularly out of the character of the Emperor) restrict the operations to such as may have been established in Louisiana. This, with some degree of demonstration that we meditate an embargo on our commercial intercourse with Spain and her colonies, would compel this government to interpose promptly and efficiently, and with dispositions to prevent the quarrel from going further.”