With such comfort as Armstrong could draw from the knowledge that Napoleon’s brothers were as hostile as President Madison to the imperial system, he returned to Paris, September 6, to wait the further development of the Emperor’s plans. He found on his arrival two notes from Champagny at Vienna. One of these despatches expressed a civil hope, hardly felt by the Emperor,[114] that Armstrong would not for the present carry out his project of returning to America. The other, dated August 22, was nothing less than a revised and permanent form of the Emperor’s essay on the _jus gentium_, which Champagny since May 18 had kept in his portfolio.[115] In Champagny’s hands Napoleon’s views lost freshness without gaining legality. The “village steeple” disappeared, but with some modification the “floating colony” remained, and the principle of free seas was carried to its extreme results:-- “A merchant-vessel sailing with all the necessary papers (_avec les expéditions_) from its government is a floating colony. To do violence to such a vessel by visits, by searches, and by other acts of an arbitrary authority is to violate the territory of a colony; this is to infringe on the independence of its government.... The right, or rather the pretension, of blockading by a proclamation rivers and coasts, is as monstrous (_révoltante_) as it is absurd. A right cannot be derived from the will or the caprice of one of the interested parties, but ought to be derived from the nature of things themselves. A place is not truly blockaded until it is invested by land and sea.” Every one could understand that to assert such principles was an impossibility for neutrals, and was so meant by Napoleon. He had no thought of making demands which England could accept. The destruction of her naval power was his favorite object after the year 1805. The battle of Wagram confirmed him in his plan, and Louis’ opposition counted for even less than Armstrong’s diplomacy in checking the energy of his will. As he ordered Louis, so he ordered Madison, to obey; and thanks to the obstinacy of Spencer Perceval, both had no choice but to assist his scheme. As an answer to the American offer expressed in the Non-intercourse Act, Champagny’s despatch of August 22 was final; but to preclude a doubt, it closed by saying that the ports of Holland, of the Elbe and the Weser, of Italy and of Spain, would not be allowed to enjoy privileges of which French ports were deprived, and that whenever England should revoke her blockades and Orders in Council, France would revoke her retaliatory decrees.