[102] Napoleon to General Clarke, Dec. 6, 1807; Correspondance, xvi. 183. [103] Napoleon to Joseph, Dec. 17, 1807; Correspondance, xvi. 198. [104] Lucien Bonaparte, Th. Jung. iii. 83, 113. [105] Correspondance de Napoleon, xvi. 192; American State Papers, iii. 90. CHAPTER VI. Oct. 29, 1807, Monroe left London; and November 14, the day when the Orders in Council were first published in the official “Gazette,” he sailed from Plymouth for home. Nearly five years had passed since Monroe received the summons from Jefferson which drew him from his retirement in Virginia to stand forward as the diplomatic champion of the United States in contest with the diplomatists of Europe; and these five years had been full of unpleasant experience. Since signing the Louisiana treaty, in May, 1803, he had met only with defeat and disaster. Insulted by every successive Foreign Secretary in France, Spain, and England; driven from Madrid to Paris and from Paris to London; set impossible tasks, often contrary to his own judgment,--he had ended by yielding to the policy of the British government, and by meeting with disapproval and disavowal from his own. As he looked back on the receding shores of England, he could hardly fail to recall the circumstances of his return from France ten years before. In many respects Monroe’s career was unparalleled, but he was singular above all in the experience of being disowned by two Presidents as strongly opposed to each other as Washington and Jefferson, and of being sacrificed by two secretaries as widely different as Timothy Pickering and James Madison. In America only two men of much note were prepared to uphold his course, and of these the President was not one; yet Jefferson exerted himself to disguise and soften Monroe’s discredit. He kept the treaty a secret when its publication would have destroyed Monroe’s popularity and strengthened Madison. When at length, after eight months’ delay, the British note appended to the treaty was revealed, Monroe’s friend Macon, though anxious to make him President, privately admitted that “the extract of the treaty which has been published has injured Monroe more than the return of it by the President.”[106] John Randolph alone held up Monroe and his treaty as models of statesmanship; and although Randolph was the only Republican who cared to go this length, Monroe found one other friend and apologist in a person who rivalled Randolph in his usual economy of praise. Timothy Pickering held that Merry and Erskine were no good Englishmen, but he was satisfied with Monroe.