“When I issued my Decrees of Berlin and Milan, England laughed; you made fun of me; yet I know my business. I had maturely weighed my situation with England; but people pretended that I did not know what I was about,--that I was ill-advised. Yet see where England stands to-day!... Within ten years I shall subject England. I want only a maritime force. Is not the French empire brilliant enough for me? I have taken Holland, Hamburg, etc., only to make my flag respected. I consider the flag of a nation as a part of herself; she must be able to carry it everywhere, or she is not free. That nation which does not make her flag respected is not a nation in my eyes. The Americans--we are going to see what they will do. No Power in Europe shall trade with England. Six months sooner or later I shall catch up with it (_je l’attendrai_),--my sword is long enough for that. I made peace at Tilsit only because Russia undertook to make war on England. I was then victorious. I might have gone to Wilna; nothing could stop me but this engagement of Russia.... At present I am only moderately desirous of peace with England. I have the means of making a navy; I have all the products of the Rhine; I have timber, dock-yards, etc.; I have already said that I have sailors. The English stop everything on the ocean; I will stop everything I find of theirs on the Continent. Their Miladies, their Milords,--we shall be quit! (_Leurs Miladies, leurs Milords--nous serons à deux de jeu!_)” This hurried talk, which was rather a conversation than a speech, lasted until the Emperor’s voice began to fail him. He flung defiance in the face of every nation in the Christian world, and announced in no veiled terms the coming fate of Russia. His loquacity astounded his hearers, and within a few days several reports of what he said, differing in details, but agreeing in the main, were handed privately about Paris, and were on their way to St. Petersburg, London, and New York[309]. One account varied in regard to the words used about America:-- “The Decrees of Berlin and Milan are the fundamental laws of my empire,” began the second report. “As for neutral navigation, I regard the flag as an extension of territory; the Power which lets it be violated cannot be considered neutral. The lot of American commerce will be soon decided. I will favor it if the United States conform to those decrees; in the contrary case, their ships will be excluded from the ports of my empire.”