In the early days of 1803 the First Consul’s attention was distracted by events nearer home, and he had no alternative but to abandon his dreams of a Colonial Empire. If, as he afterwards stated, “the Saint Domingo business” was “the greatest error in all my government I ever committed,” he had been able to obtain Louisiana from Spain in exchange for an extension of territory in Italy, and also to secure Guiana. CHAPTER XV The Dawn of the Empire (1803-1804) While neither party kept strictly to the terms of the Peace of Amiens, Napoleon’s aggressive policy was such as to disturb other Powers as well as Great Britain. There was no knowing who might be the object of his unwelcome attentions. Frontiers seemed suddenly to have lost their significance and usefulness, treaties became of less value than the parchment on which they were written. Great Britain complained that whereas the Treaty of Lunéville had guaranteed the independence of the Batavian Republic, French troops were stationed within her borders, as well as in those of Switzerland. Napoleon retorted by saying that Great Britain still kept Malta. Eventually England declared war on the 18th May 1803, and it was to be a duel to the death. Napoleon, usually so wide awake, was taken by surprise. He did not anticipate so quick a decision on the part of Addington’s administration. He retaliated in an utterly senseless and cruel way by ordering that every British subject on French territory should be arrested and imprisoned. Small wonder that English newspapers vilified the First Consul as the Corsican Ogre, that the pens of Gillray, Cruikshank, Woodward, and a host of lesser artists caricatured him almost out of recognition; that poets poured forth vituperation in minor verse, and that Scott and Wordsworth wrote battle cries. Few people in England entertained the sympathy and admiration for the ruler of France shown by Dr Parr. “Sir,” he once remarked, “I should not think I had done my duty if I went to bed any night without praying for the success of Napoleon Bonaparte.”