“Mr. Monroe showed himself less satisfied than I had hoped, either because the President had so directed, in order to reserve the right of raising new pretensions, or because, already advised by Mr. Russell, he had been at the same time informed that the prizes made since November by our privateers were not restored; and these restrictions had been represented in an unfavorable light by the _chargé d’affaires_. He confined himself to telling me that certainly there were things agreeable to the American government in the Emperor’s arrangements, but that there were others wholly contrary to expectation, and that before his departure he would send me a list of the complaints left unsatisfied.. .. As the President is to start to-morrow for his estate in Virginia, I called this morning to bid him good-by. I had on this occasion with Mr. Madison an interview which put the last stroke to my suspicions. When I told him that I was glad to see him a last time under auspices so happy as the news I had officially given him the evening before, he answered me that he had learned with pleasure, though without surprise, the release of the sequestered ships and the Emperor’s decision to admit American products; but that one thing pained him profoundly. This was that the American ships captured since last November, under pretext of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, had not been released with those which voluntarily entered French ports; and he pretended that this failure to execute the chief of our engagements destroyed the effect of all the rest.”[56] The opinion scarcely admitted dispute. Reversing Madison’s theory, Napoleon had relieved American vessels from the “municipal operation” of his decrees in France, while he enforced that international operation on the high seas which alone Madison declared himself bound by the law of nations to resist. The blockade thus enforced by Napoleon against England was more extravagant than any blockade England had ever declared. Of his acts in Denmark and on the Baltic Madison took no notice at all, though these, more than the detention of American prizes in France, “destroyed the effect of all the rest.” If, then, the decrees were still enforced on the ocean,--as Madison insisted they were,--they could not have been repealed; and Madison, by submitting to their enforcement on the ocean, not only recognized their legality, but also required England to make the same submission, under penalty of a declaration of war from the United States. This dilemma threatened to overthrow Madison’s Administration, or even to break up the Union. Serurier saw its dangers, and did his utmost to influence Napoleon toward concessions: