The arrival of the “Bramble” with news of the battle of Leipzig, and with Castlereagh’s offer to negotiate, left Serurier helpless. “In this state of things,” he wrote,[485] January 14, “it would have been difficult for the Executive to refuse to negotiate; and I cannot but think that he accedes to it only with regret and without illusions.” In deference to Serurier’s opinion, the President appointed Henry Clay as commissioner to treat for peace rather than Crawford, then American envoy to Napoleon; but in the last week of March news arrived from Bordeaux to February 10, announcing that the allies had reached Troyes and were advancing on Paris, while Napoleon had accepted their conditions of negotiation. “For the moment the public believed everything to be lost,” reported Serurier, April 15.[486] “I ought in justice to say that the President and his Cabinet showed more coolness and did not share the universal alarm, and that they continued to show me great confidence in the Emperor’s genius. I did not find them excessively disturbed by the march of the allies, or doubtful of our power to repulse them; but I know that his Majesty’s adhesion to the preliminary conditions of the allies, and yet more the Congress of Chatillon, and the irresistible influence necessarily acquired for the British minister, greatly (_vivement_) alarmed Mr. Madison. He thought he saw, in the announcement of our adoption of those conditions, our renunciation of every kind of power and control over Spain and Germany, where England was to rule. He believed that a peace, dictated by Lord Castlereagh, must already have been signed, and that the United States were to remain alone on the field of battle. It was then that Mr. Madison, abruptly and without having in any way prepared the public for it, addressed to Congress the Message recommending an immediate repeal of the embargo and a partial repeal of the non-importation.”