When the Senegal Colony reported the news back to France, the French Government felt quite troubled about how to handle this incident.
In a way, the French Government had shot itself in the foot. If they hadn't actively provoked the Spaniards, Spain wouldn't have dispatched troops in retaliatory provocation against France.
Faced with Spain's retaliatory provocation, the French Government couldn't possibly retaliate further, could they? If they really did that, Spain and the French Government would be trapped in an endless cycle of retaliation, and nothing else would get done, as they'd spend their days planning retaliatory actions against each other.
The self-proclaimed rational French Government certainly did not want to see things develop in such a direction. There was fundamentally no need for this continual tit-for-tat retaliation; the original intention of the French Government was merely to deter Spain and prevent them from being so wantonly underhanded.
