For many reasons the annexation of Holland met with little favor in the Emperor’s family and among his Council. Chief among its opponents was Fouché, who sacrificed himself in his efforts to prevent it. Driven to the conviction that nothing but peace with England could put an end to the Emperor’s experiments on the welfare of France, Fouché resolved that peace should be made, and invented a scheme for bringing it about. As Minister of Police he controlled secret means of intrigue, and probably he acted without concert with his colleagues; but the motives which guided him were common to almost all Napoleon’s Cabinet. The only difference between ministers was, that while Cadore, Montalivet, Mollien, and Decrès stopped their opposition when it became dangerous, Fouché undertook to act. Something of this came to Armstrong’s ears. As early as January 10[184] he reported a remark which he could not understand. “‘Do not believe,’ said a minister to me the other day, ‘that peace between us and England is impossible. If we offer to her the commerce of the world, can she resist it?’” Unknown to Armstrong, Napoleon had already made an advance to England. For this purpose he employed Labouchere, the chief banker of Holland, whose association with the Barings of London fitted him to act as an intermediary. The message sent by the Emperor through Labouchere could hardly be called an offer of terms; it amounted only to a threat that unless England made peace Holland should be annexed to France, and every avenue of illicit commerce in northern Europe should be stopped. In itself this message could hardly serve as ground for a treaty; but Fouché, without the Emperor’s knowledge, sent to London at the same time, about January 18, a secret agent named Fagan, to suggest that if Great Britain would abandon Spain, France would join in creating from the Spanish-American colonies a monarchy for Ferdinand VII., and from Louisiana, at the expense of the United States, a kingdom for the French Bourbons.[185] This last idea bore on its face the marks of its origin. Fouché had listened to Aaron Burr, who after years of effort reached Paris, and presented to the government a memoir showing that with ten thousand regular troops, and a combined attack from Canada and Louisiana, the destruction of the United States was certain.[186] The scheme for placing the Spanish Bourbons on a Spanish-American throne probably came from the same Ouvrard whom Napoleon imprisoned at Vincennes, and whom Fouché took into favor.