The French troops were to evacuate Mexico in proportion as the Emperor of Mexico could organize troops to replace them. The "foreign legion," composed of 8,000 men, was to remain in Mexico six years after all the other French troops should have been recalled. The expenses of the French expedition to Mexico, to be paid by the Mexican government, were fixed at the sum of two hundred and seventy million francs for the whole duration of the expedition down to July 1, 1864. From July 1st all expenses of the Mexican army were to be met by Mexico.[225] The resolution of the House referred to above came very near producing the rupture that Mr. Seward was striving to avert, or at least to postpone, during the continuance of the war of secession. When Mr. Dayton visited M. Drouyn de Lhuys just after the resolution reached Europe, the remark which greeted Mr. Dayton when he entered the room was: "Do you bring us peace, or bring us war?" Mr. Dayton replied that he did not think France had a right to think that the United States was about to make war against her on account of anything contained in that resolution; that it embodied nothing more than the principles which the United States had constantly held out to France from the beginning. The Confederate agents were taking advantage of the resolution to stir up trouble between the United States and France. In fact they had long caused reports to be spread in Europe, and had succeeded in gaining credence for them, to the effect that the United States government was only awaiting the termination of domestic troubles to drive the French from Mexico. The French naturally concluded that if they were to have trouble with the United States, it was safest for them to choose their own time.[226] Napoleon was all the while coquetting with the Confederate government, and holding above Mr. Seward's head a veiled threat of recognition of Confederate independence. The Confederate government quickly caught at the suggestion of an alliance between Maximilian and the South with the power of France to back them. A Confederate agent was actually accredited to the government of Maximilian, but did not reach his destination. Although Napoleon's calculations were based on the overthrow of the Union, and although he had assumed at the outset, with England and Spain, an attitude decidedly unfriendly to the Federal government, nevertheless he was not willing to go the full length of recognizing the Confederacy as an independent power while the issue of the conflict was still in doubt. In speaking of Slidell's movements in Europe and the encouragement given him in France, Mr. Bigelow wrote to Mr. Seward, February 14, 1865: