Travelling day and night from Spain in January, 1809, with the same haste and with something of the same motive as when four years afterward he posted back to Paris from his Russian disaster, Napoleon appeared unexpectedly at his capital January 24. The moment was one of crisis, but a crisis of his own making. He had suffered a political check in Spain, which he had but partially disguised by a useless campaign. The same spirit of universal dominion which grasped at Spain and required the conquest of England, roused resistance elsewhere almost as desperate as that of the Spaniards and English. Even the American Congress repealed its embargo and poured its commerce through so-called neutral ports into the lap of England, while at the same moment Austria, driven to desperation, prepared to fight for a fourth time. Napoleon had strong reasons for choosing that moment to force Austria wholly into his system. Germany stood at his control. Russia alone could have made the result doubtful; but the Czar was wholly French. “M. Romanzoff,” wrote Armstrong to the State Department,[99] “with the fatalism of the Turk, shakes his head at Austria, and asks what has hitherto been got by opposition; calls to mind the fate of Prussia, and closes by a pious admonition not to resist the will of God.” Toward Austria the Emperor directed all his attention, and rapidly drove her government into an attitude of resistance the most spirited and the most desperate taken by any people of Europe except Spain. Although Austria never wearied of fighting Napoleon, and rarely fought without credit, her effort to face, in 1809, a Power controlling the military resources of France, Italy, and Germany, with the moral support of Russia behind them, had an heroic quality higher than was shown at any time by any other government in Europe. April 9 the Austrian army crossed the Inn, and began the war. April 13 Napoleon left Paris for the Danube, and during the next three months his hands were full. Austria fought with an energy which put Germany and Russia to shame. Such a moment was ill suited for inviting negotiation on American affairs; but Armstrong received instructions a few days after Napoleon left Paris, and with these instructions came a copy of the Non-intercourse Act of March 1, which, while apparently forbidding intercourse with England and France, notified Napoleon that the United States would no longer obey his wishes, or keep their industries from seeking a British market through indirect channels. Armstrong communicated this Act to the French government in the terms of his instructions:[100]--