Napoleon thoroughly despised a republic, and especially a republic without an army or navy.
After the Peace of Amiens he began to treat the Americans with contemptuous disregard; and he planned to throw into Louisiana one of his generals with a force of veteran troops sufficient to hold the country against any attack.
Illusory Nature of Napoleon's Hopes.
His hopes were in reality chimerical.

At the moment France was at peace with her European foes, and could send her ships of war and her transports across the ocean without fear of the British navy.

It would therefore have been possible for Napoleon without molestation to throw a large body of French soldiers into New Orleans.

Had there been no European war such an army might have held New Orleans for some years against American attack, and might even have captured one or two of the American posts on the Mississippi, such as Natchez; but the instant it had landed in New Orleans the entire American people would have accepted France as their deadliest enemy, and all American foreign policy would have been determined by the one consideration of ousting the French from the mouth of the Mississippi.

To the United States, France was by no means as formidable as Great Britain, because of her inferiority as a naval power.