From the pacific theories of 1801 to the military methods of 1812 was a vast stride. When Congress rose, July 6, 1812, the whole national frontier and coast from Prairie du Chien to Eastport, from Eastport to St. Mary’s, from St. Mary’s to New Orleans,--three thousand miles, incapable of defence,--was open to the attacks of powerful enemies; while the Government at Washington had taken measures for the military occupation of the vast foreign territories northward of the Lakes and southward to the Gulf of Mexico. CHAPTER XII. WHILE the Twelfth Congress at Washington from November, 1811, until July, 1812, struggled with the declaration which was to spread war westward to the Mississippi River, Napoleon at Paris prepared the numberless details of the coming campaign that was to ravage Europe eastward as far as Moscow; and in this fury for destruction, no part remained for argument or diplomacy. Yet Joel Barlow, full of hope that he should succeed in solving the problem which had thus far baffled his Government, reached Paris, Sept. 19, 1811, and began a new experience, ended a year later at Zarnovitch in Poland by a tragedy in keeping with the military campaign to which Barlow was in a fashion attached. Joel Barlow felt himself at home in Paris. In 1788, at the age of thirty-four, he had first come abroad, and during seventeen exciting years had been rather French than American. In 1792 the National Convention conferred on him the privileges of French citizenship,--an honor then shared only by Washington and Hamilton among Americans. He felt himself to be best understood and appreciated by Frenchmen. His return to France in 1812 was, he said, attended by a reception much more cordial and friendly than that which he had received in America, in 1805, on his return to his native country after seventeen years of absence. He settled with delight into his old society, even into his old house in the Rue Vaugirard, and relished the pleasure of recovering, with the highest dignity of office, the atmosphere of refinement which he always keenly enjoyed. Yet when these associations lost their freshness, and he turned to his diplomatic task, he found that few lots in life were harder than that of the man who bound himself to the destinies of Napoleon.