For once Armstrong was too charitable. He might safely have assumed that Napoleon was also continuing the same coarse game he had played since April, 1803,--snatching away the lure he loved to dangle before Jefferson’s eyes, punishing the Americans for refusing his offer of alliance, and making them feel the constant pressure of his will. They were fortunate if he did not at once confiscate the property he had sequestered. Indeed, not only did his seizures of American property continue even more rigorously than before,[255] but such French frigates as could keep at sea actually burned and sunk American ships that came in their way. The Bayonne Decree was enforced like a declaration of war. The Emperor tolerated no remonstrance. At Bayonne, July 6, he had an interview with one of the Livingstons, who was on his way to America as bearer of despatches. “We are obliged to embargo your ships,” said the Emperor;[256] “they keep up a trade with England; they come to Holland and elsewhere with English goods; England has made them tributary to her. This I will not suffer. Tell the President from me when you see him in America that if he can make a treaty with England, preserving his maritime rights, it will be agreeable to me; but that I will make war upon the universe, should it support her unjust pretensions. I will not abate any part of my system.” Yet in one respect he made a concession. He no longer required a declaration of war from the United States. The embargo seemed to him, as to Jefferson, an act of hostility to England which answered the immediate wants of France. In the report on foreign relations, dated Sept. 1, 1808, Napoleon expressed publicly his approval of the embargo:-- “The Americans,--this people who placed their fortune, their prosperity, and almost their existence in commerce,--have given the example of a great and courageous sacrifice. By a general embargo they have interdicted all commerce, all exchange, rather than shamefully submit to that tribute which the English pretend to impose on the shipping of all nations.” Armstrong, finding that his advice was not even considered at home, withdrew from affairs. After obeying his instructions of May 2, and recording the conventional protest against Napoleon’s uncivil tone,[257] he secluded himself, early in August, at the baths of Bourbon l’Archambault, one hundred and fifty miles from Paris, and nursed his rheumatism till autumn. Thither followed him instructions from Madison, dated July 21,[258] directing him to present the case of the burned vessels “in terms which may awaken the French government to the nature of the injury and the demands of justice;” but the limit of Armstrong’s patience was reached, and he flatly refused to obey. Any new experiment made at that moment, he said, would certainly be useless and perhaps injurious:--