[37] "Your ministers made a great outcry about the English travellers that I detained in France; although they themselves had set the example, by seizing upon all the French vessels and persons on board of them, upon whom they could lay their hands, before the declaration of war, and before I had detained the English in France. I said then, if you detain my travellers at sea, where you can do what you like, I will detain yours at land, where I am equally powerful. But after this I offered to release all the English I had seized in France before the declaration of war, provided you would in like manner release the French and their property which you had seized on board of the ships. Your ministers would not."--NAPOLEON, _Voice_, &c., vol. i., p. 326. [38] Annual Register, vol. xlv., p. 283. [39] "On what trifles does the fate of empires depend! How petty and insignificant are our revolutions in the grand organization of the earth! If, instead of entering upon the Egyptian expedition, I had invaded Ireland; if some slight derangement of my plans had not thrown obstacles in the way of my Boulogne enterprise, what would England have been to-day? What would have been the situation of the Continent, and the whole political world?"--NAPOLEON, _Las Cases_, tom. iii., p. 330. [40] See Montholon, tom. ii., p. 224. "The invasion of England," adds Napoleon, "was always regarded as practicable; and, if once the descent had been effected, London must infallibly have been taken. The French being in possession of that capital, a very powerful party would have arisen against the oligarchy. Did Hannibal look behind him when he passed the Alps? or Cæsar when he landed in Epirus, or Africa? London is situated only a few marches from Calais; and the English army, scattered for the purpose of defending the coasts, could not have joined in time to have covered that capital after once the descent had been actually made." [41] Las Cases, tom. ii., p. 263. [42] Las Cases, tom. iii., p. 330. [43] Las Cases, tom. ii., p. 263. [44] "I commanded a brigade of the army of the coasts, united at this period against England, and I remember that, when called upon to give my opinion upon this expedition, I replied, that 'a maritime expedition, unless it had the superiority at sea, appeared to me to be a contradiction.' Nevertheless, let any one imagine a French army of 200,000 men, landing upon the English territory, and seizing upon the immense city of London--would he deny that, even if the liberty of the country had not been lost, England would have suffered an immense and perhaps irreparable injury? It cannot be denied that the plan was well conceived; that the combined fleets of France and Spain were sufficient to sweep the Channel, and to command there during the time necessary to seize upon London, and even to have conveyed the whole army back to France."--LOUIS BUONAPARTE, p. 40. CHAPTER XXVIII.