Finally, in July the famous "Continental System" was instituted by the decree which absolutely forbade the importation of all English wares into France or the sphere of her influence. In order to cut his enemy off from another quarter of the globe, to strengthen a maritime power hostile to England, and to secure new resources, Bonaparte had already extended the hand of friendship to the United States, having sold to them in April the immense territory then known by the name of Louisiana. The event was second in importance to no other in their history; for it gave them immediate control of the entire intercontinental river-system and later that of the Pacific coast, while indirectly it prepared the way for the conflict of 1812, which finally secured their commercial independence. Thenceforward Bonaparte concentrated his energies for the control of Europe. His financial condition was acute, for Barbé-Marbois had failed in his efforts to negotiate a loan of forty million francs from the Dutch bankers. It was possibly a conversation between Bonaparte and Ralph Izard of South Carolina which turned the attention of the First Consul to Louisiana as a quick asset. The United States easily secured the cash where the French had failed, in Amsterdam by the intermediation of Stephen Girard. With sixty million francs in hand as security, Bonaparte raised as much more on credit, and the purchasing power of this hundred and twenty million francs was fully equal to that of four times the sum to-day. With it he refitted his little fleet, and purchased two hundred and fifty thousand muskets, a hundred thousand cavalry pistols, thirty thousand sabers, and a hundred batteries of field artillery, all arms of improved quality and pattern, the arms used at Austerlitz, and to which, as he told Latour-Maubourg, he owed that signal victory. The West Indies and Louisiana in one hemisphere, in the other the Cape of Good Hope, Egypt, and a portion of India, with St. Helena and Malta as ports of call--of this he had dreamed; but the failure to secure San Domingo, and England's evident intention to keep Malta, combined to topple the whole cloud castle into ruins. The Continent must be his sphere of action.