“I want to run no more risks,” he told Caulaincourt.[324] “To draw nearer England I must separate from France and risk a new war with her, which I regard as the most dangerous of all wars. And for what object? To serve England; to support her maritime theories which are not mine? It would be madness on my part!... I will remain faithful to this policy. I will remain at war with England. I will keep my ports closed to her,--to the extent, however, which I have made known, and from which I cannot depart. In fact I cannot, as I have already told you, prohibit all commerce to my subjects, or forbid them to deal with the Americans.... We must keep to these terms, for I declare to you, were war at our doors, in regard to commercial matters I cannot go further.” Thus the American trade became the apparent point of irritation between Alexander and Napoleon. The Russians were amused by Cadore’s letter to Armstrong of August 5, saying that the decrees were revoked, and that Napoleon loved the Americans; for they knew what Napoleon had done and was trying to do on the Baltic. The Czar was embarrassed and harassed by the struggle; for the American ships, finding themselves safe in Russian ports, flocked to Archangel and Riga, clamoring for special permission to dispose of their cargoes and to depart before navigation closed, while Napoleon insisted on their seizure, and left no means untried of effecting it. He took even the extravagant step of publicly repudiating the very licenses he was then engaged in forcing American ships to carry. July 10, 1810, the “Moniteur” published an official notice that the certificates of French consuls in the United States carried by American vessels in the Baltic were false, “and that the possessors of them must be considered as forgers,” inasmuch as the French consuls in America had some time before ceased to deliver any such certificates; and not satisfied with this ministerial act, Napoleon wrote with his own hand to the Czar that no true American trade existed, and that not a single American ship, even though guaranteed by his own licenses, could be received as neutral.