that more than half the specific charges against him will not sustain examination. To complete the picture of the extraordinary activity of Napoleon and Talleyrand at this time we must notice its range beyond Europe. Treaties were concluded with Turkey, Algeria and Tunis. Napoleon’s mind found time to interest itself in Australia, India, America and the West Indies. After the peace of Amiens he took up the idea of colonies as “safety valves” for the over-strained and over-populated nation which Talleyrand had put forward under the Directory. But Talleyrand seems to have been little more than a clerk in the not very honourable pursuit of this plan. Napoleon sent out his ill-fated army to St. Domingo with a message to Toussaint l’Ouverture that it was coming to help him. At the same time he directed Talleyrand to inform England that it was going to destroy the native government, and hint that it might restore the slave trade; while Bruix and others were pointing out to the dazed new democracy in France that slavery had been fully recognised by those admirable models of theirs, the “free peoples of antiquity.” In 1801 he made Talleyrand assure Spain that Louisiana, which Spain ceded to him, would never be given to a third Power. It is on record that Talleyrand firmly opposed him when he unscrupulously sold it to the United States two years later. Expeditions to India and to Australia complete the gigantic programme of their activity, save for the important work of reconciliation with Catholicism which may open a new chapter. CHAPTER XI THE RESTORATION OF RELIGION