On his side, Napoleon upbraided him with governing too softly, and with seeking popularity where he should seek control. After the Walcheren expedition, he chid him severely for allowing the English fleet ever to show its face in the Scheldt; for "the fleets of that Power ought to find nothing but rocks of iron" in that river, "which was as important to France as the Thames to England."[226] But the head and front of his offending was that British goods still found their way into Holland. In vain did the Emperor forbid that American ships which had touched at English ports should be debarred from those of Holland. In vain did he threaten to close the Scheldt and Rhine to Dutch barges. Louis held on his way, with kindly patience towards his merchants, and with a Bonapartist obstinacy proof against fraternal advice or threats. At last, early in 1810, Napoleon sent troops to occupy Walcheren and neighbouring Dutch lands. It seemed for a time as though this was but a device to extort favourable terms of peace from England in return for an offer that France would not annex Holland. Negotiations to this effect were set on foot through the medium of Ouvrard and Labouchere, son-in-law of the banker Baring: Fouché also, without the knowledge of his master, ventured to put forth a diplomatic feeler as to a possible Anglo-French alliance against the United States, an action for which he was soon very properly disgraced.[227]
The negotiation failed, as it deserved to do. Our objections were, not merely to the absurd proposal that we should give up our maritime code if Napoleon would abstain from annexing Holland and the Hanseatic towns, but still more against the man himself and his whole policy. We had every reason to distrust the good faith of the man who had betrayed the Turks at Tilsit, Portugal at Fontainebleau, and the Spaniards at Bayonne. To pause in the strife, to relax our hold on our new colonies, and to desert the Spaniards, in order to preserve the merely titular independence of Holland and the Hanse Towns, would have been an act of singular simplicity. Nor does Napoleon seem to have expected it. He wrote to his Foreign Minister, Champagny, on March 20th, 1810: "From not having made peace sooner, England has lost Naples, Spain, Portugal, and the market of Trieste. If she delays much longer, she will lose Holland, the Hanse Towns, and Sicily." And surely this Sibylline conduct of his required that he should annex these lands and all Europe in order to exact a suitable price from the exhausted islanders. Such was the corollary of the Continental System.