The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812, Vol II

Upon this followed the renewal of the Armed Neutrality of the Baltic powers. Great Britain found herself again without an ally, face to face with France, now supported by the naval combination of the northern states. Still she stood resolute, abating not a jot of her asserted maritime rights. As before, the allies demanded that the neutral flag should cover the enemy's property that floated under it, and that the term "contraband of war" should apply only to articles strictly and solely applicable to warlike purposes, which, they claimed, naval stores and provisions were not. They proposed also to deprive Great Britain of the belligerent right of search, by sending ships of war with the merchant ships, and requiring that the assertion of the naval captain should be received as establishing the lawful character of the two or three hundred cargoes under his convoy. "The question," said Pitt, "is whether we are to permit the navy of our enemy to be recruited and supplied,—whether we are to suffer blockaded ports to be furnished with warlike stores and provisions,—whether we are to suffer neutral nations, by hoisting a flag upon a sloop or a fishing boat, to convey the treasures of South America to the harbors of Spain, or the naval stores of the Baltic to Brest and Toulon. I would ask, too, has there ever been a period, since we have been a naval country, in which we have acted upon this principle?" [351 - Speech of February 2, 1801.] and he alleged not only the unbroken practice of Great Britain, but her old treaties with the allied states, and especially the convention with Russia in 1793. So far as precedent and tradition went, England's case was unimpeachable. She was called upon to surrender, not a new pretension, but an old right important to her military position. "I have no hesitation," said Fox, Pitt's great opponent, "in saying that, as a general proposition, 'free bottoms do not make free goods;' and that, as an axiom, it is supported neither by the law of nations nor by common-sense." [352 - Speech of March 25, 1801.]

At this time the British navy was superior to the combined forces of all Europe. A fleet, of which Nelson was the animating spirit though not the nominal head, entered the Baltic. Denmark was struck down on the 2d of April, 1801; and this blow, coinciding with the murder of the Czar Paul, dissolved a coalition more menacing in appearance than in reality. The young man who succeeded to the Russian throne met with dignity the imposing attitude of Nelson, now left in chief command; but he had not inherited his father's fantastic ambitions, and the material interests of Russia in that day pointed to peace with Great Britain. The treaty, signed June 5, 1801, [353 - Annual Register, 1801; State Papers, p. 212.] permitted the neutral to trade from port to port on the coast of a nation at war; but renounced, on the part of Russia, the claim that the neutral flag covered the enemy's goods. On the other hand Great Britain admitted that property of a belligerent, sold bonâ fide to a neutral, became neutral in character and as such not liable to seizure; but from the operation of this admission obtained the special exception of produce from the hostile colonies. [354 - Ibid., p. 217.] This, Russia conceded, could not be carried directly from the colony to the mother country, even though it had become neutral property by a real sale; and similarly the direct trade from the mother country to the colony was renounced. Great Britain thus obtained an explicit acknowledgment of the Rule of 1756 from the most formidable of the maritime powers, and strengthened her hands for the approaching dispute with the United States. In return, she abandoned the claim, far more injurious to Russia, to seize naval stores as contraband of war. Four months later, hostilities between Great Britain and France also ceased.

The maritime commercial interests, both of belligerents and neutrals, received convincing and conspicuous illustration from this, the first of the two sea wars growing out of the French Revolution. It was the interest of the neutrals to step in and take up the trade necessarily abandoned, to a greater or less degree, by the belligerents; and it was also useful to both parties to the war that they should do so. But it was very much less to the advantage of the more purely maritime state than it was to its antagonist; for not only did she need help less, but such temporary changes in the course of trade tend to become permanent. The immediate gain may become a final and irretrievable loss. Hence Great Britain is seen to yield readily the restrictions of the Navigation Act, wherever it is clearly advisable to avail herself of neutral seamen or neutral carriers; but the concession goes no further than immediately necessary, and is always expressly guarded as temporary. The relaxation is a purely warlike measure, and she is perfectly consistent in refusing to allow it to her enemies. Every slackening of the Navigation Act was a violation in principle of the Rule of 1756, [355 - The principle of the Rule of 1756, it will be remembered, was that the neutral had no right to carry on, for a belligerent, a trade from which the latter excluded him in peace.] which she was quite content to have her enemy imitate; as the big boy at school offers the small one the opportunity of returning an injury in kind. France might employ neutrals contrary to what Great Britain claimed as the law of nations, as the latter herself did; but there was the difference that Great Britain could put a stop to the operations favorable to her opponent, while France could only partially impede those that advantaged hers. It was, therefore, clearly the policy of the British to yield nothing to neutrals except when they could not avoid it, and then explicitly to assert the principle, while conceding a relaxation; they thus kept control over the neutral trade, and impeded operations that both helped their enemy and might also supplant their own commerce. In the latter part of the war, as the purpose of France to cripple their trade took shape, and the exclusion of British goods from the Continent became an evident and avowed intention, the ministry strengthened itself with the reflection that the measure was impracticable so long as neutral bottoms abounded; but a few months later the denial of intercourse between hostile nations and their colonies by neutral intermediaries was inserted in the Russian treaty. The intention to use neutrals to the utmost extent desirable for British interests thus coincided with the determination to stop a traffic esteemed contrary to them. The permission to neutrals, by the orders of January, 1798, to carry the produce of French and Dutch colonies to Great Britain, when they were threatened with seizure if they sailed with the same for France or Holland, illustrates both motives of action; while it betrays the gradual shaping of the policy—which grew up over against Bonaparte's Continental System—of forcing neutrals to make England the storehouse and toll-gate of the world's commerce. Superficially, Great Britain seems rather to relax toward neutrals between 1793 and 1801; but the appearance is only superficial. The tendencies that issued in the ever famous Orders in Council of 1807 were alive and working in 1798.

The question for British statesmen to determine, therefore, was how far to acquiesce in the expansion of neutral trade, and where to draw their line,—always a difficult task, dependent upon many considerations and liable to result in inconsistencies, real or apparent. For France the problem was less intricate. Her commerce even before the war was chiefly in foreign hands; [356 - By a report submitted to the National Convention, July 3, 1793, it appears that in the years 1787-1789 two tenths only of French commerce was done in French bottoms. In 1792, the last of maritime peace, three tenths was carried by French ships. (Moniteur, 1793, p. 804.)] she had therefore little cause to fear ultimate injury by concessions. Immediate loss by neutral competition was impossible, for the British navy left her no ships to lose. Hence it was her interest to avail herself of neutral carriers to the fullest extent, to recognize that the freer their operations the better for her, and that, even could restrictions upon their carrying for her enemy be enforced, the result would be to compel the British people to develop further their own merchant shipping. Every blow at a neutral was really, even though not seemingly, a blow for Great Britain. In a general way this was seen clearly enough, and a policy favoring neutrals was traditional in France, but the blind passions of the Revolution overthrew it. To use the vigorous words of a deputy: "The French people is the victim of an ill-devised scheme, of a too blind trust in commerce-destroying, an auxiliary measure, which, to be really useful, should strike only the enemy, and not reach the navigation of neutrals and allies, and still less paralyze the circulation and export of our agriculture and of the national industries." [357 - Moniteur, An vii. p. 582; Arnould's speech.] Such were the results of the direct action of successive French governments, and of the indirect embarrassment caused by the delays and inconsistencies of the executive and the tribunals. It was thought that neutrals could be coerced by French severities into resisting British restrictions, whether countenanced or not by international law. But Great Britain, though a hard taskmaster, did not so lay her burdens as to lose services which were essential to her, nor compel a resistance that under the military conditions was hopeless; and the series of wild measures, which culminated in the law of January 18, 1798, only frightened neutrals from French coasts, while leaving Great Britain in full control of the sea. The year 1797 saw the lowest depression of British trade; coincidently with the law of January 18 began a development, which, at first gradual, soon became rapid, and in which the neutrals driven from France bore an increasing proportion.

The short peace of Amiens lasted long enough to indicate how thoroughly Great Britain, while using neutrals, had preserved her own maritime advantages intact. The preliminaries were signed October 1, 1801, and war was again declared May 16, 1803; but, notwithstanding the delays in paying off the ships of war, and the maintenance of an unusually large number of seamen in the peace establishment, the neutral shipping employed fell from twenty-eight per cent, in 1801, to eighteen and a half per cent in 1802.

On the outbreak of the second war Napoleon reverted at once to the commercial policy of the Convention and the Directory. On the 20th of June, 1803, a decree was issued by him directing the confiscation of any produce of the British colonies, and of any manufactures of Great Britain, introduced into France. Neutral vessels arriving were required to present a certificate from the French consul at the port of embarkation, certifying that the cargo was in no part of British origin. The same measure was forcibly carried out in Holland, though nominally an independent state; [358 - Annual Register, 1804. State Papers, p. 286.] and the occupation of Hanover, while dictated also by the general principle of injuring Great Britain as much as possible, had mainly in view the closure of the Elbe and the Weser to British commerce. Beyond this, however, Bonaparte being then engrossed with the purpose of a direct attack by armed force upon the British islands, the indirect hostilities upon their commercial prosperity were, for the moment, neglected.

At the same period Great Britain began to feel that neutral rivalry was being carried too far for her own welfare, and determined to tighten the reins previously slackened. She obtained from Sweden in July, 1803, a special concession, allowing her to arrest Swedish vessels laden with naval stores for France, and to purchase the cargoes at a fair price,—a stipulation identical with that about provisions in Jay's treaty; and when the French occupation of Hanover excluded her ships from the Elbe and Weser, she by a blockade of the rivers shut out neutrals also. But it was in the West Indies, so long a fruitful source of wealth, that the pressure of neutral competition was most heavily felt. The utter ruin of San Domingo, and the embarrassments of the other islands hostile to Great Britain, had in the former war combined with the dangers of the seas to raise the price of colonial produce on the Continent, [359 - The exports of the French West India islands in 1788 amounted to $52,000,000, of which $40,000,000 were from San Domingo alone. (Traité d'Économie Politique et de Commerce des Colonies, par P. F. Page. Paris, An 9 (1800) p. 15.) This being for the time almost wholly lost, the effect upon prices can be imagined.] and, consequently, to give a great development to the British growth of sugar and coffee, the transport of which was confined by law to British vessels. The planters, the shipping business, and the British merchants dealing with the West Indies, together with the various commercial interests and industries connected with them, all participated in the benefits of this traffic, which supplied over one fourth of the imports of the kingdom, and took off besides a large amount of manufactures. As production increased, however, and prices lowered, the West India business began to feel keenly the competition by the produce of the hostile islands, exported by American merchants.

Of the extent of this commerce, and of its dependence upon the interruption, by Great Britain, of the ordinary channels for French and Dutch trade, a few figures will give an idea. In 1792, before the war, the United States exported to Europe 1,122,000 pounds of sugar, and 2,136,742 of coffee; in 1796, 35,000,000 of sugar and 62,000,000 of coffee; in 1800, 82,000,000 of sugar and 47,000,000 coffee. In 1803, during the short peace, the exports fell to 20,000,000 of sugar and 10,000,000 coffee; in 1804, a year of war, they again rose to 74,000,000 sugar, and 48,000,000 coffee. The precise destination cannot be given; but the trade between France and her West India Islands, carried on by American ships, amounted in 1805 to over $20,000,000, of which only $6,000,000 were United States produce. In like manner the trade with Holland was over $17,000,000, of which $2,000,000 were of American origin.

Upon the return of Mr. Pitt to power, in 1804, the attempt was made to strengthen the fabric of British commercial prosperity in the Caribbean, by an extension of the system of free ports in the different colonies; by means of which, and of their large merchant shipping, the British collected in their own hands, by both authorized and contraband traffic, so much of the carrying trade of this region, extending their operations to the mainland as well as throughout the islands. More, however, was needed to restrain the operations of the Americans, who, by reducing the price of coffee on the Continent, diminished the re-exportation from Great Britain, thus affecting the revenue of the kingdom and the profits of the planters; and who also, by acting as carriers, interfered with the accumulations at the free ports and the consequent employment of British ships. All the classes interested joined in urging the government to find some relief; and the clamor was increased by a sense of indignation at the tricks by which belligerent rights were believed to be evaded by the Americans. The Rule of 1756 did not allow the latter to carry their cargoes direct to Europe; but, as the trade winds compelled vessels to run to the northward until they reached the westerly winds prevailing in the higher latitudes, no great delay was involved in making an American port, or even in trans-shipping the cargo to a vessel bound for Europe. [360 - An American vessel arrived in Marblehead May 29, landed her cargo on the 30th and 31st, reloaded, and cleared June 3. (Robinson's Admiralty Reports, vol. v. p. 396.)] Great Britain admitted that articles of hostile origin, but become neutral property, could be carried freely to the neutral country; and, when so imported, became part of the neutral stock and could then be freely re-exported to a hostile state.

The question of a bonâ fide importation, like all others involving a question of intention, could be determined only by the character of the transactions attending it; but it was held generally that actual landing and storage, with payment of the duties, was sufficient proof, unless rebutted by other circumstances. Early in the war following the peace of Amiens, the British courts awoke to the fact that the duties paid on goods so imported were simply secured by a bond, and that on re-exportation a drawback was given, so that a very small percentage of the nominal duties was actually paid. [361 - In the case of the brig "Aurora," Mr. Madison, the Secretary of State, wrote: "The duties were paid or secured, according to law, in like manner as they are required to be secured on a like cargo meant for home consumption; when re-shipped, the duties were drawn back with a deduction of three and a half per cent (on them), as is permitted to imported articles in all cases." (Am. State Papers, vol. ii. p. 732.)In the case of the American ship "William," captured and sent in, on duties to the amount of $1,239 the drawback was $1,211. (Robinson's Admiralty Reports, vol. v. p. 396.) In the celebrated case of the "Essex," with which began the seizures in 1804, on duties amounting to $5,278, the drawback was $5,080. (Ibid., 405.)] Upon this ground a ship was condemned in May, 1805, and great numbers of American vessels carrying colonial produce to Europe were seized and brought into port, as well as others proceeding from the United States to the West Indies, with cargoes originating in the mother countries; and when, in the opinion of the court, the duties had been only nominally paid, they were condemned. It is hard to see the soundness of an objection to these decisions, based on the validity of the payments; but the action of the British government is open to severe censure in that no warning was given of its purpose no longer to accept, as proof of importation, the payment of duties by bond, on which drawback was given. Whether it had known the law of the United States or not, that law had been open to it, and ignorance of its provisions was due not to any want of publicity, but to the carelessness of British authorities. Under the circumstances, the first seizures were little short of robbery.

The reclamations of the United States met with little attention during Pitt's brief second administration; but after his death, in January, 1806, and the accession to office of Grenville and Fox, a more conciliatory attitude was shown,—especially by the latter, who became Minister of Foreign Affairs. Favorably inclined to the Americans since his opposition to the policy of the Revolutionary War, he seemed desirous of conceding their wishes; but the pressure from without, joined to opposition within the ministry, prevented a frank reversal of the course pursued. Instead of the Rule of 1756, Fox obtained an Order in Council, dated May 16, 1806, placing the coast of the Continent, from Brest to the Elbe, in a state of blockade. The blockade, however, was only to be enforced strictly between the mouth of the Seine and Ostend. Into ports between those two points no neutral would be admitted on any pretext, and, if attempting to enter, would be condemned; but on either side, neutral ships could go in and out freely, provided they "had not been laden at any port belonging to his Majesty's enemies, or, if departing, were not destined to any port belonging to his Majesty's enemies." The wording of the order was evidently framed to avoid all question as to the origin of cargoes, upon which the Rule of 1756 hinged. Not the origin of the cargo, but the port of lading, determined the admission of the neutral ship to the harbors partially blockaded; and if to them, then, a fortiori, to all open ports of the enemy. On the other hand, the strict blockade already established of the Elbe and Weser was by this order partially relieved, in the expectation that neutrals would carry British manufactures to those northern markets. In short, the Order was a compromise, granting something both to the mercantile interest and to the Americans, though not conceding the full demands of either. It is at best doubtful whether the British were able to establish an effective blockade over the extent of coast from Brest to the Elbe, but the United States and Napoleon had no doubts whatever about it; and it thus fell, by a singular irony of fate, to the most liberal of the British statesmen, the friend of the Americans and of Napoleon, as almost the last act of his life, to fire the train which led to the Berlin and Milan decrees, to the Orders in Council of 1807, and to the war with the United States six years later.

Fox died on the 13th of September, 1806, and was succeeded as Minister of Foreign Affairs by Lord Howick. On the 25th of the same month the partial restrictions still imposed on the Elbe and the Weser were removed; so that neutral ships, even though from the ports of an enemy of Great Britain, were able to enter. In the mean time, war had broken out between France and Prussia; the battle of Jena was fought October 14, and on the 26th Napoleon entered Berlin. The battle of Trafalgar, a twelvemonth before, had shattered all his confidence in the French navy and destroyed his hopes of directly invading Great Britain. On the other hand the short campaign of 1805 had overthrown the Austrian power, and that of 1806 had just laid Prussia at his feet. The dream of reducing Great Britain by the destruction of her commercial prosperity, long floating in his mind, now became tangible, and was formulated into the phrase that he "would conquer the sea by the land." Two of the great military monarchies were already prostrate. Spain, Holland, Italy, and the smaller German states were vassals, more or less unwilling, but completely under his control; there seemed no reason to doubt that he could impose his will on the Continent and force it to close every port to British trade. On the 21st of November, 1806, the emperor issued the famous Berlin Decree; and then, having taken the first in the series of fated steps which led to his ruin, he turned to the eastward and plunged with his army into the rigors of a Polish winter to fulfil his destiny.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Warfare against Commerce, 1806-1812

The Berlin and Milan Decrees of Napoleon, 1806 and 1807.—The British Orders in Council, 1807-1809.—Analysis of the Policy of these Measures of the two Belligerents.—Outline of Contemporary Leading Events.

NAPOLEON'S Berlin decree alleged many reasons and contained many provisions; but the essential underlying idea was to crush the commerce of Great Britain by closing the Continent to her products of every kind. [362 - The text of the Berlin decree can be found among the series beginning in American State Papers, vol. iii. p. 262.] The pretext was found in the Order in Council of May 16, 1806, issued by the ministry of Grenville and Fox, putting the coast of the Continent from Brest to the Elbe under blockade. Napoleon asserted that the right to blockade applied only to fortified, not to commercial, ports, which was not true; and further, that the united forces of Great Britain were unable to maintain so extensive an operation, which, if not certainly true, was at least plausible. Retaliating an abuse, if it were one, with a yet greater excess, the Berlin decree began by declaring the British islands blockaded, at a time when the emperor could not keep a ship at sea, except as a fugitive from the omnipresent fleets of his enemy. From this condition of phantom blockade it resulted that all commerce with the British Islands was forbidden; and consequently all merchandise exported from them, having been unlawfully carried, became good prize. Vessels from Great Britain could not be admitted into French ports. Further, as the British refused to surrender the old rule, by which the goods of individual enemies at sea were liable to capture, Napoleon decreed that not only the property of individual Englishmen on the Continent was to be seized, but also that of individual neutrals, if of British origin. The preamble ended with a clause defining the duration of the edict, by which the emperor burned his ships, laying down conditions which Great Britain would never accept until at her last gasp. "The present decree shall be considered as a fundamental principle of the Empire, until England has acknowledged that the law of war is one and the same on the land as on the sea; that it cannot be extended to private property of whatever kind, nor to the person of individuals not in the profession of arms, and that the right of blockade must be restricted to fortified places, actually invested by sufficient forces."

Having launched his missile, Napoleon became at once engaged in the campaign against Russia. The bloody and doubtful battle of Eylau was fought on the 8th of February, 1807, and for the next few months the emperor was too busily engaged, holding on by his teeth on the banks of the Vistula, to superintend the working of his decree. [363 - A curious indication of the dependence of the Continent upon British manufactures is afforded by the fact that the French army, during this awful winter, was clad and shod with British goods, imported by the French minister at Hamburg, in face of the Berlin decree. (Bourrienne's Memoirs, vol. vii. p. 292.)] Immediately upon its promulgation in Paris, the American minister demanded an explanation on several points from the Minister of Marine, who replied that he did not understand it to make any alterations in the laws respecting maritime captures, and that an American vessel could not be taken at sea merely on the ground that she was bound to, or coming from, a British port; this he inferred from the fact that such vessels were, by the seventh article, denied admission to French ports. [364 - Am. State Papers, vol. ii. p. 805.] The inference, natural though it was, only showed how elastic and slippery the terms of Napoleon's orders could be. The whole edict, in fact, remained a dead letter until the struggle with Russia was decided. At first, British merchants desisted from sending to the Continent; but, as advices showed that the decree was inoperative, shipments by neutral vessels became as brisk as at any time before, and so continued until August or September, 1807. [365 - Cobbett's Parl. Debates, vol. xiii. Appendix, pp. xxxiv-xlv.] The battle of Friedland, resulting in the total defeat of the Russian army, was fought on the 14th of June; on the 22d an armistice was signed; and on the 25th Alexander and Napoleon had their first interview upon the raft in the Niemen. On the 8th of July was concluded the remarkable and, to Europe, threatening Treaty of Tilsit. The czar recognized all the new states created by the emperor, and ceded to him the maritime positions of the Ionian Islands, and the mouths of the Cattaro in the Adriatic; in return for which Napoleon acquiesced in Russia's taking Finland from Sweden, and also, under certain conditions, the European provinces of the Turkish Empire as far as the Balkans. A further clause, buried in the most profound secrecy, bound Russia and France to make common cause in all circumstances; to unite their forces by land and sea in any war they should have to maintain; to take arms against Great Britain, if she would not subscribe to this treaty; and to summon, jointly, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal, and Austria to concur in the projects of Russia and France,—that is to say, to shut their ports to England and to declare war against her. [366 - Thiers, Consulat et Empire, vol. vii. pp. 666-669.]

At the time the Berlin decree was issued, negotiations were proceeding in London, between the United States envoys and the British ministry, concerning the several matters in dispute between the two countries; and on the 31st of December, 1806, a commercial treaty was signed by the respective commissioners. The vexed question of the trade between the hostile countries and their colonies was arranged, by a stipulation that goods imported from the colonies to the United States might be re-exported, provided, after deducting the drawback, they had paid full two per cent duties, ad valorem, to the Treasury; and that articles coming from the mother countries might likewise be re-shipped to the colonies, provided they remained subject to one per cent duty, after recovering the drawback. These, as well as other features of the treaty, were not acceptable to the United States, and it was not ratified by that government.

Meantime the British ministry had been considering the terms of the Berlin decree, and, instead of waiting to see how far it would become operative, determined to retort by a measure of retaliation. On the 7th of January, 1807, an Order in Council was issued by the Whig ministers, which often returned to plague them in the succeeding years, when they, in opposition, were severely criticising the better known measures of the following November. The January Order, after quoting Napoleon's decree, avowed his Majesty's unwillingness to carry to extremes his undoubted right of retaliation; and therefore, for the present, went no further than to forbid all trade by neutral vessels "from one port to another, both of which ports shall belong to, or be in possession of, France or her allies, or shall be so far under their control as that British vessels may not freely trade thereat." [367 - Letter of Lord Howick to Mr. Monroe, Jan. 10, 1807; Am. State Papers, vol. iii. p. 5.] The direct object of this step was to stop the coastwise trade in Europe; its principle was the right of retaliation; in its effect, it was an extension of the prohibition laid by the Rule of 1756. The latter forbade the direct trade between hostile colonies and the mother countries; the order of January, 1807, extended the restriction to trade between any two hostile ports. It bore particularly hard upon American ships, which were in the habit of going from place to place in Europe, either seeking the best markets or gathering a cargo. Under it, "American trade in the Mediterranean was swept away by seizures and condemnations, and that in other seas threatened with the same fate." [368 - President's Message to Congress, Oct. 27, 1807; Am. State Papers, vol. iii. p. 5.]

Matters were in this state when Napoleon returned to Paris at the end of July, full of his projects against Great Britain, and against neutrals as the abettors of her prosperity. His aims were not limited to crushing her by commercial oppression; in the not distant future he intended to seize the navies of Europe and combine them in a direct assault upon her maritime power. On the 19th of July, while he was still at Dresden, Portugal was notified that she must choose between war with France or with Great Britain; and on the 31st, from Paris, a similar intimation was given to Denmark. [369 - Correspondance de Napoléon.] To constrain the latter, a corps under Bernadotte was collecting on her frontiers; while another, under Junot, was assembling in the south of France to invade Portugal. But in both countries Napoleon was anticipated by Great Britain. The ministry had received certain information [370 - British Declaration of September 25, 1807,—a paper which ably and completely vindicates the action of Great Britain; Annual Register, 1807, p. 735.] of the secret articles agreed to at Tilsit, and foresaw the danger of allowing the two navies of Denmark and Portugal to fall into the hands of the emperor. Early in August twenty-five sail-of-the-line entered the Baltic, convoying transports with twenty-seven thousand troops; the island on which Copenhagen stands was invested by the ships, and the town itself by the army. The Danish government was then summoned to surrender its fleet into the safe keeping of Great Britain, a pledge being offered that it, and all other maritime equipment delivered, should be held only as a deposit and restored at a general peace. The offer being refused, the city was bombarded from the 2d to the 5th of September, at the expiration of which time the terms demanded were yielded, the British took possession of eighteen sail-of-the-line besides a number of frigates, stripped the dockyards of their stores, and returned to England. The transaction has been visited with the most severe, yet uncalled-for, condemnation. The British ministry knew the intention of Napoleon to invade Denmark, to force her into war, and that the fleet would soon pass into his hands, if not snatched away. They avoided the mistake made by Pitt, in seizing the Spanish frigates in 1804; for the force sent to Copenhagen was sufficient to make opposition hopeless and to justify submission. To have receded before the obstinacy of the Danish government would have been utter weakness.

In Portugal Great Britain had to deal with a friendly nation, instead of the hostile prepossessions of Denmark. The French corps of invasion, under Junot, entered Spain on its way to Portugal on the 17th of October. Under the urgent and unsparing orders of Napoleon it made a march of extreme suffering with great rapidity, losing most of its numbers by the way from privation, exposure, or straggling; but when the handful that kept together entered Lisbon on the 30th of November, it found the Portuguese fleet gone, and that the court and its treasure had departed with it. The British government had for some time past expected such an attempt by Napoleon, and at the critical moment a squadron on the spot determined the vacillating regent to withdraw to Brazil.

Though foiled in his endeavors to seize the fleets, Napoleon had succeeded in formally closing the ports of the two countries to the introduction of British goods; while the bombardment at Copenhagen had served as a colorable pretext for the declaration of hostility against Great Britain made by Russia on the 20th of October. The mediation proposed by the czar had already been refused by the British ministry, unless the articles of the Treaty of Tilsit were first communicated to it; [371 - Annual Register, 1807. State Papers, p. 771.] but those articles were not of a character to bear such an exposure. Prussia, under the compulsion of the two empires, closed her ports against Great Britain by a proclamation dated September 2d; no navigation nor trade with England or her colonies was to be permitted, either in British or in neutral vessels. [372 - Ibid., p. 739.] Austria also acceded to the Continental System, and excluded British goods from her borders. [373 - Lanfrey's Napoleon (French ed.), vol. iv. p. 153.] In Italy, the new kingdom of Etruria showed little zeal in enforcing Napoleon's commands to co-operate in his measures; the British carried on commerce at Leghorn, as freely as at any port in their own country. By the emperor's orders the viceroy of Italy therefore took possession of the city; and at the same time French detachments entered also the Papal States, occupied their coasts, and drove the British from them. Joseph Bonaparte being already king of Naples, the control of Napoleon and the exclusion of his enemies were thus extended over both coasts of Italy. Turkey being at this time involved in hostilities with Great Britain, the emperor was able to assert that "England sees her merchandise repelled by all Europe; and her ships, loaded with useless wealth, seek in vain, from the Sound to the Hellespont, a port open to receive them." [374 - Corr. de Nap., vol. xv. p. 659.] Decrees applying extreme rigor to the examination of vessels entering the Elbe and the Weser were issued on the 6th of August and 13th of November. [375 - Annual Register, 1807, p. 777.] Napoleon had a special grudge against the two Hanseatic cities, Bremen and Hamburg, which had long mocked his efforts to prevent the introduction of British merchandise to the Continent; for which the commercial aptitudes of their merchants, their extensive intelligence abroad, and their noble rivers, afforded peculiar facilities. Despite all these efforts and the external appearances of universal submission, there still occurred wide-spread evasions of the emperor's orders, to which allusion must be made later. It is necessary, before doing so, to give the contemporary measures of other nations, in order that the whole situation, at once of public regulation and private disobedience, together with the final results, may come distinctly before the reader.

Great as was the power of Napoleon, it ceased, like that of certain wizards, when it reached the water. Enemies and neutrals alike bowed to his invincible armies and his superb genius when he could reach them by land; but beyond the water there was one enemy, Great Britain, and one neutral, America, whom he could not directly touch. The spirit of his course toward England and his initiatory steps have been given; it remained now to define his action toward the United States. Weak as the latter was, feeble to humiliation as had been the course of its government hitherto, and although the prepossessions of the party in power were undoubtedly strongly against Great Britain, the question was one of immense importance; but the emperor, who respected nothing but force, failed so to realize it. He stood just where the Directory stood at the end of 1797, every enemy but Great Britain overthrown, but seeing her defiant still and prosperous. Napoleon, however, had, what the Directory had not, experimental evidence of the results of such restrictions upon neutrals as were imposed by the law of January 18, 1798. It was possible to ascribe the disastrous effects to France of that measure, and its total failure to achieve the object intended, to one of two totally distinct causes. Either the law had been inadequately enforced, owing to the feeble executive efforts of the Directors and the comparatively limited extent of their influence, or else it was in its nature and essence so contrary to the true interest and policy of France that the very limitations imposed by defective power had saved her, and the ability to carry it further would have ended in utter ruin. Pursued somewhat further, the question became: Will it be possible, not for France only but for all Europe,—for the concurrence of all Europe is necessary to the effectual working of the scheme,—to dispense with the neutral carrier (whom it is the tendency of the Berlin decree to repel) for a length of time sufficient to ruin Great Britain? Can Europe forego external commerce for a longer time than Great Britain can spare the European market? Can the intercourse between the continental nations be so facilitated, the accustomed routes of import and export so modified, such changes introduced into the habits of manufacture and consumption, as will render bearable the demands made upon the patience of nations? If, as the Order in Council of January seems to indicate, Great Britain resent the attempt to keep neutrals from her ports, by retaliatory measures impeding their traffic with the Continent, upon whom will these combined French and English restrictions fall most heavily?—upon the state having a large body of merchant ships, to which neutrals are the natural rivals; or upon the nations whose shipping is small, and to whom therefore neutrals are useful, if not necessary, auxiliaries?

In a commercial war, as in any other, the question must be faced whether with ten thousand it is possible to meet him who is coming with twenty thousand. As a matter of fact, while Napoleon was contemplating a measure which would most injuriously affect neutrals, already largely employed in transporting British goods, the jealousy of British merchants and statesmen was keenly excited by the growth of this neutral carrying trade, [376 - See, for example, Cobbett's Parl. Debates, vol. viii. pp. 636 and 641-644; vol. ix. p. 87, petition of West India planters; p. 100, speech of Mr. Hibbert, and p. 684, speech of Mr. George Rose.] and they were casting about for a pretext and a means to cripple it. The Berlin decree revived the clamor of these men, who, being then in opposition, had condemned the Order of January, 1807, for not carrying retaliation far enough, and for directing it upon the coasting trade, which could only partially be reached, instead of upon the neutral carriage of colonial goods, which lay open everywhere to the British navy. A change of ministry in the latter part of March, 1807, brought this party again into power, after an absence from it of fourteen months since the death of Pitt. In the mean time, however, the decree had remained inoperative, through the absence of Napoleon in Poland, the decisions of the Minister of Marine as to its scope, and the connivance of the local authorities everywhere in its neglect. No further steps therefore had been taken by the new British ministry up to the time of the emperor's return to Paris. The latter at first only issued some additional regulations of a municipal character, to ensure a stricter observance, but he was soon called upon to give a momentous decision. The opinion of the Minister of Marine, as to the meaning of certain clauses of the decree, [377 - See ante, p. 273.] was submitted to him by the Minister of Justice; and he stated that the true original intention was that French armed vessels should seize and bring into port neutrals having on board any goods of British origin, even though at the time neutral property. As to whether they should also arrest neutrals for the simple reason that they were going to, or coming from, the British Islands, his Majesty reserved his decision. This dictum of the emperor, which threw to the winds the ruling of the Minister of Marine, was given to the prize courts on the 18th of September, 1807, and shortly afterward the latter acted upon it in the case of an American ship wrecked upon the French coast; that part of her cargo which was of British origin was ordered to be sold for the benefit of the state. [378 - Am. State Papers, vol. iii. pp. 245-247.] The effect of Napoleon's pronouncements was at once seen in Great Britain. The insurance of neutral ships bound to continental ports, especially to those of Holland and Hamburg, rose from four guineas in August to eight and twelve in October, and some insurers refused to take risks even at twenty-five and thirty. In the two months of September and October sixty-five permits were issued by the Custom House to re-land and store cargoes that had actually been shipped for the Continent. [379 - Cobbett's Parl. Debates, vol. xiii. Appendix, pp. xxxiv-xlv.] The Tory ministry now had the pretext it wanted for a far-reaching and exhaustive measure of retaliation.

Napoleon's decisions of September 18 were communicated to the Congress of the United States on December 18 by the President; who at the same time transmitted a proclamation from the king of Great Britain, dated October 16, directing the impressment of British seamen found serving on board any foreign merchant ship. [380 - Am. State Papers, vol. iii. pp. 23, 24.] In view of the dangers to which American vessels were exposed by the action of the two belligerents, an embargo was recommended, to insure their safety by keeping them in their own ports; the real purpose, however, being to retaliate upon Great Britain, in pursuance of the policy of a Non-Importation Act directed against that country, which had gone into effect the previous July. An Act of Embargo was accordingly at once passed, and was approved on the 22d of December. [381 - Annals of Congress, 1807, p. 2814.] All registered vessels belonging to the United States were forbidden to depart from the ports in which they were then lying, except upon giving bond that their cargoes would be landed in another port of the country. This continued in force throughout the year 1808 and until March 1, 1809, when it was repealed; and for it was substituted a Non-Intercourse Act, [382 - Annals of Congress, 1808-1809, p. 1824.] which allowed the merchant ships of the United States to go abroad in search of employment and to traffic between their own and other countries, except Great Britain and France and the colonies occupied by them, which were wholly forbidden to American vessels. They not only could not clear from home for those countries, but they were required to give bond that they would not, during the voyage, enter any of their ports, nor be directly or indirectly engaged in any trade with them. French or British ships entering a port of the United States were to be seized and condemned. This act was to continue in force until the end of the next session of Congress; and it accordingly remained the law governing the intercourse of the United States with Great Britain and France until May, 1810.

On the 11th of November, 1807, were published the great retaliatory measures of Great Britain, which for the moment filled the cup of neutrals. Setting forth the Berlin Decree as the justifying ground for their action, the Orders in Council of that date [383 - There were three Orders in Council published on the 11th of November, all relating to the same general subject. They were followed by three others, issued November 25, further explaining or modifying the former three. The author, in his analysis, has omitted reference to particular ones; and has tried to present simply the essential features of the whole, suppressing details.] proclaimed a paper blockade, of the barest form and most extensive scope, of all enemies' ports. "All ports and places of France and her allies, or of any other country at war with his Majesty, and all other ports or places in Europe from which, although not at war with his Majesty, the British flag is excluded, and all ports in the colonies of his Majesty's enemies, shall from henceforth be subject to the same restrictions, in point of trade and navigation, as if the same were actually blockaded in the most strict and rigorous manner." All trade in hostile colonial produce was likewise declared unlawful for neutrals.

An actual blockade, such as is here mentioned, requires the presence off the blockaded port of a force sufficient to make entrance or departure manifestly dangerous; in which case a vessel attempting to pass in either direction is, by that common consent of nations called International Law, justly liable to capture. To place such a force before each of the many and widely scattered harbors embraced by these Orders, was evidently beyond the power of even the vast numbers of the British navy. The object which could not be attained by the use of means acknowledged to be lawful, the British ministry determined to compass by sheer force, by that maritime supremacy which they unquestionably wielded, and which they could make effectual to the ends they had in view, namely: to maintain the commerce and shipping of Great Britain, upon which her naval strength depended, to force the enemy's trade to pass through her ports, and thus to raise her revenues to the point necessary to her salvation in the life and death struggle in which she was embarked. [384 - The attention paid to sustaining the commerce of Great Britain was shown most clearly in the second Order of November 11, which overrode the Navigation Act by permitting any friendly vessel to import articles the produce of hostile countries; a permission extended later (by Act of Parliament, April 14, 1808) to any ship, "belonging to any country, whether in amity with his Majesty or not." Enemy's merchant ships were thus accepted as carriers for British trade with restricted ports. See Am. State Papers, vol. iii. pp. 270, 282.]

The entire suppression of trade with the restricted coasts, whether by neutral carriers or in the articles of import or export the world needed, was in no sense whatever the object of the British ministers. To retaliate on their enemy was the first aim, to make him suffer as he had meant to make them; but, withal, to turn his own measures against him, so that while he was straitened, Great Britain should reap some amelioration for her own troubles. Throughout this stormy and woeful period, the instinct of the British nation recognized that the hearts of the continental peoples were with them rather than with Napoleon,—and for much the same reason that the United States, contrary alike to the general interests of mankind and to her own, sided upon the whole, though by no means unanimously, against Great Britain. In either case the immediate oppressor was the object of hatred. Throughout the five years or more that the Continental blockade was in force, the Continental nations saw the British trying everywhere, with more or less success, to come to their relief,—to break through the iron barrier which Napoleon had established. During great part of that time a considerable intercourse did prevail; and the mutual intelligence thus maintained made clear to all parties the community of interests that bound them together, notwithstanding the political hostilities. Nothing appears more clearly, between the lines of the British diplomatic correspondence, than the conviction that the people were ready to further their efforts to circumvent the measures of Napoleon.

Keeping in view the purpose of making the United Kingdom the centre and warehouse of the world's commerce, it was evident that, provided this end—the chief object of the Orders in Council—were attained, the greater the commerce of the outside world was, the greater would be the advantage, or toll, resulting to Great Britain. The Orders therefore contained, besides the general principle of blockade, certain exceptions, narrow in wording but wide in application. By the first, neutrals were permitted to trade directly between their own country and the hostile colonies. They were also allowed to trade direct between the latter and the free ports of the British colonies, which were thus enabled, in their degree, to become the centres of local commerce, as Britain herself was to be the entrepôt of European and general commerce.

The second exception, which was particularly odious to neutrals, permitted the latter to go direct from a port of the United Kingdom to a restricted hostile port, although they might not start from their own country for the same, nor for any other place in Europe from which the British flag was excluded. Conversely, neutrals were at liberty to sail from any port of his Majesty's enemies forbidden to them by the Orders, provided they went direct to some port in Europe belonging to Great Britain; [385 - Gibraltar and Malta are especially named, they being natural depots for the Mediterranean, whence a large contraband trade was busied in evading Napoleon's measures. The governors of those places were authorized to license even enemy's vessels, if unarmed and not over one hundred tons burthen, to carry on British trade, contrary to the emperor's decrees.] but they might not return to their own land without first stopping at a British port.

Such, stripped of their verbiage, appears to be the gist of the Orders in Council of November 11, 1807. Neutrals might not trade directly with any ports in Europe not open to British ships; but they might trade with them by going first to a British port, there landing their cargo, reshipping it subject to certain duties, [386 - On March 28, 1808, an Act of Parliament was passed, fixing the duties on exportations from Great Britain in furtherance of the provisions of the Orders. This Act contained a clause excepting American ships, ordered into British ports, from the tonnage duties laid on those which entered voluntarily.] and thence proceeding to a hostile port. The same process was to be observed on the return voyage; it might not be direct home, but must first be to Great Britain. The commerce of the Continent thus paid toll, going and coming; or, to repeat the words of the ministry, there was for the enemy "no trade except through Great Britain." British cruisers were "instructed to warn any vessel which shall have commenced her voyage prior to any notice of this Order, to discontinue it; and to proceed instead to some port in this kingdom, or to Gibraltar or Malta; and any vessel which, after being so warned, shall be found in the prosecution of a forbidden voyage, shall be captured." Vessels which in obedience to the warning came into a British port were to be permitted, after landing their cargo, to "report it for exportation, and allowed to proceed to their original port of destination, or to any other port at amity with his Majesty, upon receiving a certificate from the collector of the port" setting forth these facts; but from this general permission to "report," were specially excepted "sugar, coffee, wine, brandy, snuff, and tobacco," which could be exported to a restricted port only "under such conditions as his Majesty, by any license to be granted for that purpose, may direct." Licenses were generally necessary for export of any foreign produce or manufacture; while goods of British origin could be taken to a hostile country without such license. In the end, the export of cotton to the Continent was wholly forbidden, the object being to cripple the foreign manufactures. Upon the license requirements was soon built up the extraordinary licensed traffic, which played so important a subordinate part in the workings both of the Orders and of the Continental System.

Anything more humiliating and vexatious to neutrals than these Orders can scarcely be conceived. They trampled upon all previously received law, upon men's inbred ideas of their rights; and that by sheer uncontrolled force, the law of the strongest. There was also not only denial of right, but positive injury and loss, direct and indirect. Yet it must not be forgotten that they were a very real and severe measure of retaliation upon Napoleon's government; of which a contemporary German writer had truly said it was already wound up so tight the springs could almost be heard to crack. It must be remembered, too, that Great Britain was fighting for her life. The additional expense entailed upon every cargo which reached the Continent after passing through her ports, the expenses of delay, of unloading and reloading, wharfage, licenses, maintenance, fell chiefly upon the continental consumer; upon the subjects of Napoleon, or upon those whom he was holding in military bondage. Nor was this all. Although Great Britain was not able to blockade all the individual French or continental ports,—an inability due more to the dangers of the sea than to the number of the harbors,—she was able to make the approach to the French coast exceedingly dangerous, so much so that it was more to the interest of the ordinary trader to submit to the Orders than to attempt to evade them; especially as, upon arriving at a port under Napoleon's control, he found the emperor possessed with every disposition to confiscate his cargo, if a plausible pretext could be made. In the English Channel Great Britain controlled the approaches from the Atlantic to all the northern continental ports; and at Gibraltar those to the Mediterranean. The Orders were therefore by no means an empty threat. They could not but exercise a very serious influence upon the imports to the Continent, and especially upon those exotic objects of consumption, sugar, coffee, and other tropical growths, which had become so essential to the comfort of people; and upon certain raw materials, such as cotton, dye-woods and indigo. Naval stores from the Baltic for England passed so near the French coast that they might be slipped in by a lucky chance; but the neutral from the Atlantic, who was found near the coast of France or Spain, had to account for the appearances which were against him. These obstacles to direct import tended therefore to increase prices by diminishing supplies, and combined with the duties laid by Great Britain, upon the cargoes forced into her ports, to raise the cost of living throughout the Continent. The embarrassments of its unfortunate inhabitants were further augmented by the difficulty of exporting their own products; and nowhere was this more keenly felt than in Russia, where the revenues of the nobility depended largely on the British demand for naval stores, and where the French alliance and the Continental System were proportionately detested.

The object of the Orders in Council was therefore twofold: to embarrass France and Napoleon by the prohibition of direct import and export trade, of all external commerce, which for them could only be carried on by neutrals; and at the same time to force into the Continent all the British products or manufactures that it could take. A preference was secured for the latter over foreign products by the license practice, which left the course of traffic to the constant manipulation of the Board of Trade. The whole system was then, and has since been, roundly abused as being in no sense a military measure, but merely a gigantic exhibition of commercial greed; but this simply begs the question. To win her fight Great Britain was obliged not only to weaken Napoleon, but to increase her own strength. The battle between the sea and the land was to be fought out on Commerce. England had no army wherewith to meet Napoleon; Napoleon had no navy to cope with that of his enemy. As in the case of an impregnable fortress, the only alternative for either of these contestants was to reduce the other by starvation. On the common frontier, the coast line, they met in a deadly strife in which no weapon was drawn. The imperial soldiers were turned into coast-guards-men to shut out Great Britain from her markets; the British ships became revenue cutters to prohibit the trade of France. The neutral carrier, pocketing his pride, offered his service to either for pay, and the other then regarded him as taking part in hostilities. The ministry, in the exigencies of debate, betrayed some lack of definite conviction as to their precise aim. Sometimes the Orders were justified as a military measure of retaliation; sometimes the need of supporting British commerce as essential to her life and to her naval strength was alleged; and their opponents in either case taunted them with inconsistency.[387 - In a debate on the Orders, March 3, 1812, the words of Spencer Perceval, one among the ministers chiefly responsible for them, are thus reported: "With respect to the principle upon which the Orders in Council were founded, he begged to state that he had always considered them as strictly retaliatory; and as far as he could understand the matter they were most completely justified upon the principle of retaliation.... The object of the government was to protect and force the trade of this country, which had been assailed in such an unprecedented manner by the French decrees. If the Orders in Council had not been issued, France would have had free colonial trade by means of neutrals, and we should have been shut out from the Continent.... The object of the Orders in Council was, not to destroy the trade of the Continent, but to force the Continent to trade with us." (Cobbett's Parl. Debates, vol. xxi. p. 1152.)As regards the retaliatory effect upon France, Perceval stated that the revenue from customs in France fell from sixty million francs, in 1807, to eighteen and a half million in 1808, and eleven and a half in 1809. (Ibid. p. 1157.)] Napoleon, with despotic simplicity, announced clearly his purpose of ruining England through her trade, and the ministry really needed no other arguments than his avowals. Salus civitatis suprema lex. To call the measures of either not military, is as inaccurate as it would be to call the ancient practice of circumvallation unmilitary, because the only weapon used for it was the spade.

Napoleon was not the man to accept silently the Orders in Council. On the 27th of October he had signed the treaty of Fontainebleau with Spain, arranging the partition of Portugal and taking thus the first step in the invasion of the Peninsula. On November 16 he left Fontainebleau to visit his kingdom of Italy. From the capital, Milan, he issued the decree which bears its name, on the 17th of December, 1807. Alleging the Orders as its motive, the Milan Decree declared that any ship which submitted to search by a British cruiser was thereby "denationalized;" a word for which, at sea, "outlaw" is the only equivalent. It lost the character of its own country, so far as French cruisers were concerned, and was liable to arrest as a vagrant. The decree further declared that all vessels going to, or sailing from, Great Britain, were for that fact alone good prize,—a point which, under the Berlin decree, had as yet been left open. French privateers were still sufficiently numerous to make these regulations a great additional danger to ships at sea; and the decree went on to say that, when coming under the previous provisions, they should be seized whenever they entered a French port.

The two belligerents had now laid down the general lines of policy on which they intended to act. The Orders in Council received various modifications, due largely to the importance to Great Britain of the American market, which absorbed a great part of her manufactures; but these modifications, though sensibly lightening the burden upon neutrals and introducing some changes of form, in no sense departed from the spirit of the originals. The entire series was finally withdrawn in June, 1812, but too late to avert the war with the United States, which was declared in the same month. Napoleon never revoked his Berlin and Milan decrees, although by a trick he induced an over-eager President of the United States to believe that he had done so.

In the year 1808 the emperor's purpose to overthrow the Spanish monarchy, and place one of his own family upon the throne, finally matured. He left Paris on the 2d of April, and, after a long delay at Bordeaux, on the 14th reached Bayonne. There took place his meetings with the king and infante of Spain which resulted in the former resigning his crown, to be disposed of as to Napoleon might seem best. While at Bayonne, on April 17, the emperor issued an order, directing the sequestration of all American ships which should enter the ports of France, Italy, Holland, and the Hanse towns, as being under suspicion of having come from Great Britain. The justification for this step was found in the Embargo Act of December, 1807, in consequence of which, Napoleon argued, as such ships could not lawfully have left their own country, they came really from England, and their papers were fabricated. [388 - Correspondance de Napoléon, vol. xvii. p. 19.] Under this ruling sequestrations continued to be made until March 23, 1810; when the Decree of Rambouillet confiscated finally the vessels and cargoes thus seized. [389 - Mr. Henry Adams (History of the United States, 1801-1817) gives 134 as the number of American ships seized between April, 1809, and April, 1810, and estimates the value of the vessels and cargoes at $10,000,000 (Vol. v. p. 242.) The author takes this opportunity of acknowledging his great indebtedness to Mr. Adams's able and exhaustive work, in threading the diplomatic intricacies of this time.] After May, 1810, the Non-Intercourse Act, which had replaced the Embargo, was temporarily suspended as regarded both Great Britain and France, and never renewed as to the latter; so the plea upon which these confiscations had proceeded was no longer valid.

Meanwhile the emperor's plans for the Peninsula met with unexpected reverses. An insurrection on the 2d of May in Madrid was followed by spontaneous popular risings in all parts of the country. On the 21st of July an army corps under General Dupont was cut off by the insurgents in Andalusia and surrendered, to the number of eighteen thousand, at Baylen; and on the 29th the new king of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte, fled from Madrid, which he had only entered on the 20th. On the 1st of August a British fleet appeared off the coast of Portugal, bearing the first division of troops destined to act in the Peninsula, under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley. On the 21st the battle of Vimiero was fought, resulting in the defeat of Junot; who, by the Convention of Cintra, signed on the 30th, was permitted to evacuate Portugal and was conveyed to France with his army in British transports. At the same time a division of the Russian fleet which had taken refuge in Lisbon, on its return from the Mediterranean, was, by a separate convention, left in the hands of Great Britain until the conclusion of the war. The admiral had steadily refused to co-operate with Junot; in which course he probably reflected the strong feeling of the Russian upper classes against the French alliance. In consequence of these successive disasters Portugal was wholly lost, and the French army in Spain fell back to the line of the Ebro.

Napoleon realized the necessity of vigorous measures to suppress the general uprising, before it had attained organization and consistency, and determined to take the field in person; but, before removing to this distant scene of action, he thought advisable to confirm and establish his understanding with the czar, upon whose support depended so much of his position in Central Europe. The two sovereigns met for the second time, September 27, 1808, at Erfurt. The alliance formed at Tilsit was renewed; France undertook not to consent to peace until Russia obtained Finland from Sweden, Moldavia and Wallachia from Turkey; Russia guaranteed the crown of Spain to Joseph; and it was agreed that a formal proposition for peace should at once be made to England, as publicly and conspicuously as possible. The czar had already in the preceding February begun hostilities against Sweden, giving as a pretext her leaning toward Great Britain and her refusal to join with Russia and Denmark in shutting the Baltic to British fleets. Denmark also had declared war against Sweden, for carrying on which the possession of Norway then gave her facilities which she no longer has; and Prussia, on the 6th of March, had closed her ports against Swedish commerce "at the solicitation of the imperial courts of Paris and St. Petersburg."

The vital importance of the Baltic to Great Britain, both as the source whence her naval stores were drawn and as a channel whereby her commerce might find a way into the Continent remote from the active vigilance of Napoleon, imposed upon her the necessity of strenuously supporting Sweden. A fleet of sixty-two sail, of which sixteen were of the line, was accordingly sent through the Sound in April, under Sir James Saumarez, one of the most distinguished of British admirals; who, to an unusually brilliant reputation for seamanship, activity, and hard fighting, joined a calm and well-balanced temper, peculiarly fitted to deal with the delicate political situation that obtained in the North during the four years of his Baltic command. The fleet was shortly followed by a body of ten thousand troops under the celebrated Sir John Moore; but the rapid progress of the Russian arms rendered this assistance abortive, and Moore was soon transported to that scene of action in the Peninsula in connection with which his name has been immortalized.

A joint letter, addressed to the king of Great Britain by the allied emperors, was forwarded through the usual channels by the foreign ministers of both powers on the 12th of October. The British reply, dated October 28, expressed a willingness to enter into the proposed negotiations, provided the king of Sweden and the government acting in the name of the king of Spain, then a prisoner in the hands of Napoleon, were understood to be parties to any negotiation in which Great Britain was engaged. "To Spain," said the British note, "his Majesty is not bound by any formal instrument; but his Majesty has, in the face of the world, contracted with that nation engagements not less sacred, and not less binding upon his Majesty's mind, than the most solemn treaties." This reply was, in one point at least, open to severe criticism for uncalled-for insolence. To that part of the letter of the two sovereigns which attributed the sufferings of the Continent to the cessation of maritime commerce, it was retorted: "His Majesty cannot be expected to hear with unqualified regret that the system devised for the destruction of the commerce of his subjects has recoiled upon its authors, or its instruments." Nevertheless, it is impossible to withhold admiration for the undaunted attitude of the solitary Power that ruled the sea, in the face of the two mighty sovereigns who between them controlled the forces of the Continent, or to refuse recognition of the fidelity with which, against overwhelming odds, she now, as always in the time of Pitt, refused to separate her cause from that of her allies. The decision of the British court was made known to Europe by a public declaration, dated December 15, which, while expressing the same firm resolve, allowed to appear plainly the sense entertained by the ministry of the restiveness of the Continent under the yoke it was bearing.

The proposal to include the Spanish people in the negotiations was rejected by both France and Russia. Napoleon, having in the mean time returned to Paris, left there on the 29th of October to take command of the armies, which, to the number of over three hundred thousand men of all arms, had either entered Spain or were rapidly converging upon it. On the 8th of November he crossed the frontier, and on the 4th of December Madrid surrendered. Northern Spain being overrun and subdued, the capital having fallen without any real resistance, and the political prestige of the insurrection being thus seriously, if not hopelessly, injured, the emperor now proposed to divide the mass of soldiers that had so far acted under his own supreme direction. In the disorganized and helpless condition of the Spanish people, with the proved weakness and imbecility of the provisional governments, a dispersion that might otherwise be unwise became admissible. Army corps under his marshals were to overrun the southern provinces of the Peninsula, while an overwhelming force under his personal leadership was to cross the frontier, and carry the eagles to Lisbon, in accordance with his boast made before leaving Paris. From this determination he was turned aside by the sudden intelligence that the small body of British troops, commanded by Sir John Moore, which he supposed to be retreating toward Lisbon, and which he expected to drive on board the ships there, had cut loose from their connection with it, and, by a daring move to the north, were threatening his own lines of communication with France. Upon the receipt of this news, on the 21st of December, he at once postponed his previous purposes to the necessity of dislodging and driving out of Spain the little force, of less than twenty-five thousand men, that had dared thus to traverse his plans. Thus was Napoleon headed from his course by an imperious military necessity, and Spain saved at a most critical moment, by the petty army which had come from the sea, and which had only dared to make this move—well nigh desperate at the best—because it knew that, in the inevitable retreat, it would find in the sea no impassable barrier, but a hospitable host,—in truth, its own country. The Peninsula gained the time to breathe, which, unless under stern compulsion, Napoleon never granted to an enemy; and the opportunity thus lost to him never again returned.

Thus opened the year 1809. Napoleon at the head of eighty thousand men was driving before him, through the snows of northwestern Spain, some twenty thousand British troops, with the relentless energy that distinguished all his movements of pursuit. In the north, Russia, having completed the conquest of Finland, was now preparing to invade Sweden on the west of the Baltic, the king of that country was on the point of being dethroned on account of insanity, and the policy of the nation was tending to a peace with its gigantic enemy; which the latter refused to grant except upon the condition of joining the alliance against Great Britain. To this Sweden was most unwilling to accede. Her people depended wholly upon their produce of naval stores and grain and upon maritime commerce. Hence, to lose the freedom of their trade was almost tantamount to destruction, and the British ministry from the first saw that, whatever steps Sweden might be forced to take, its real wishes must be to keep open intercourse with Great Britain. From the anxious and delicate position of this small country, between these opposing claims, arose the necessity of great prudence and caution on the part of the British government, of its diplomatic representative, and of the admiral commanding the fleet. The task ultimately devolved upon the latter, when Sweden was at last forced into formal war; and to his sound judgment and self-restraint was largely due that no actual collision took place, and that, in the decisive moments of 1812, she, despite her serious causes of complaint against the czar, sided with Russia, instead of against her.

In Central Europe, Austria, since the peace of Presburg, [390 - December 26, 1805.] three years before, had been quietly engaged in restoring her military strength. The various changes which had taken place in Germany during that time, the establishment and growth of the Confederation of the Rhine, the destruction of the power of Prussia, the foundation of the Duchy of Warsaw, combined with the great losses of territory which she had herself undergone, had left Austria in a position that she could not possibly accept as final; while the alliance between Russia and France placed her in a state of isolation, which Napoleon had been careful to emphasize during the meeting at Erfurt. The renewal of the war between herself and France was therefore in the nature of things. The only question to be decided was when to declare it; [391 - Metternich's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 82.] but this was a matter which Napoleon, who fully understood the political situation, was not in the habit of allowing an enemy to determine. He undertook his Spanish enterprise with the full knowledge that his absence, and that of his Grand Army, in the Peninsula must be short; he understood that a prolonged stay there, caused by lack of immediate and decisive success, would give Austria the opportunity she needed; but he had reasonable expectation of accomplishing his task, and returning with his army to his eastern frontiers, within a safe period of time. This hope was frustrated by the action of Sir John Moore. The year 1809 therefore opened with the prospect of war impending over the two empires. "From the frontiers of Austria to the centre of Paris," wrote Metternich, "I have found but one opinion accepted by the public,—that is, that in the spring at latest, Austria will take the field against France. This conclusion is drawn from the relative position of the two powers." [392 - Metternich to Stadion, Jan. 11, 1809; Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 312.]

Underlying the other contentions, affecting them all with the unheeded, quiet, but persistent action which ordinarily characterizes the exertions of sea power, fermenting continually in the hearts of the people, was the commercial warfare, the absence of that maritime peace for which the nations sighed. The Berlin and Milan decrees on the one side, the Orders in Council on the other, were still, at the opening of 1809, in full force. France, which especially needed the concurrence of neutral carriers, had taken away even the slight chances of reaching her ports which British cruisers might leave, by pronouncing confiscation on any ship which had submitted to a search, though it was powerless to resist. Great Britain, on the other hand, having shut out all competition with her own trade to the Continent by the blockade, which forbade direct access to neutral ships, was prepared to avail herself of every chance to force upon Europe, at any point, and by any means, neutral or other, any and all merchandise, manufactured or colonial, which came from her own warehouses. For this the license system offered a means of which neutrals were only too ready to avail themselves. A British license could admit them to any port from which a British blockade excluded them; and, as it was only to be obtained legitimately in a British port, the neutral carriers, when there, naturally filled up with the most paying cargo, whatever its origin.

In the years from 1806 to 1810, as at earlier periods of the revolutionary wars, Holland and the Hanse towns competed for the profits of this indirect and often contraband trade. In June, 1806, Napoleon, in pursuance of his policy of placing members of his own family upon the thrones of the Continent, had obtained the conversion of Holland from a republic to a monarchy and bestowed its crown upon his brother Louis. The latter sought from the first to identify himself with his new subjects, and constantly withstood the commands of Napoleon in favor of their interests. Foremost among these was maritime commerce, for which geographical position and generations of habit especially fitted the Dutch. With such dispositions on the part of the king, notwithstanding the jealous watchfulness and sharp remonstrances of the emperor, evasions were frequent, and the decrees even openly disregarded on different pretences. The whole community naturally engaged in undertakings at once so consonant to its habits and so remunerative when successful. From the time the Berlin decree was issued until after the war with Austria in 1809, Napoleon's attention, though often angrily attracted by Holland and the neglect of his orders, was still too much diverted to admit of the decisive measures needed to enforce them. First, the Russian war in 1807, then the affairs of the Peninsula extending through 1808, finally the Austrian war in 1809 with his hazardous position between the battles of Essling and Wagram, accompanied as the whole period was with financial difficulties and expedients due to the straits of the empire under the cessation of maritime commerce, occupied his mind almost wholly, and allowed but partial attention to the Continental System.

Neutral ships therefore continued to be openly admitted into Holland, and the emperor's demands for their confiscation to be eluded; and there was besides much smuggling, for which the character of the coast and its nearness to England offered ample facilities. From Holland the goods usually found their way without great difficulty into France, though on two occasions Napoleon, to punish Holland for her waywardness, closed the frontier against her. "Your Majesty," wrote he to Louis, "took advantage of the moment in which I had embarrassments upon the Continent, to allow the relations between Holland and England to be resumed; to violate the laws of the blockade, the only measure by which that power can be seriously injured. I showed my dissatisfaction by forbidding France to you, and made you feel that, without having recourse to my armies, I could, by closing the Rhine, the Weser, the Scheldt, and the Meuse to Holland, place her in a position more critical than by declaring war against her. I was so isolating her as to annihilate her. The blow resounded in Holland. Your Majesty appealed to my generosity.... I removed the line of custom-houses; but your Majesty returned to your former system. It is true I was then at Vienna, and had a grievous war upon my hands. All the American ships which entered the ports of Holland, while they were repelled from those of France, your Majesty received. I have been obliged a second time to close my custom-houses to Dutch commerce.... I will not conceal my intention to re-unite Holland to France, to round off her territory, as the most disastrous blow I can deal to England." He consented, however, to suspend his action, upon condition that the existing stores of colonial merchandise were confiscated, as well as the cargoes of the American ships. [393 - Letter of Napoleon to Louis, dated Trianon, Dec. 20, 1808; Mémoires de Bourrienne, vol. viii. p. 134. Garnier's Louis Bonaparte, p. 351. The date should be 1809. On Dec. 20, 1808, Napoleon was at Madrid, in 1809 at Trianon; not to speak of the allusion to the Austrian war of 1809.]

The important part played in the former war by Hamburg and Bremen, as commercial centres and warehouses for continental trade, has already been mentioned. To a certain extent they still fulfilled the same function, but under greatly altered conditions. The political changes following the war of 1806 and 1807, and the presence of French troops in Prussian fortresses and throughout Northern Germany, combined to make them subservient, as Prussia was, to the emperor's wishes. In point of form the continental blockade extended throughout all this region, as in Holland; everywhere vessels and merchandise coming from Great Britain were proscribed and should be confiscated, whenever found. [394 - Napoleon issued orders to this effect in August, 1807. Cargoes of goods such as England might furnish were sequestrated; those that could not possibly be of British origin, as naval stores and French wines, were admitted. All vessels were to be prevented from leaving the Weser. No notification of this action was given to foreign agents. See Cobbett's Political Register, 1807, pp. 857-859.] All the shores of the North Sea, those of Denmark, and, by the co-operation of the czar, the coasts of the Baltic, shared the general prohibition. The minister of France at Hamburg found his chief occupations in either demanding subsidies—contributions in money or kind—for the French troops, or in insisting, much against his will, upon increased severity against the introduction of British goods. The distress occasioned by these stringent requirements was very great, even while Napoleon's other preoccupations lasted; but the general consent of all the people in passive resistance, the activity of smugglers, and the corruption that ever hangs about custom-houses and increases with the duties, conspired to mitigate the privations. The coasts of the North Sea, between the mouths of the Ems, the Weser, and the Elbe, and those of Danish Holstein, low, of difficult approach for large vessels, and hence favorable to the multiplication of small boats and the operations of those having local knowledge, fostered smuggling; to which also conduced the numbers of fishermen, and the fringe of off-lying islands, out of the reach of the ordinary custom-house officer.

To support this contraband trade, the British, on the 5th of September, 1807, seized Heligoland and converted it into a depot for goods waiting to be introduced into Germany or Holstein. "A garrison of six hundred men defended the island, and ships of war cruised continually in its neighborhood. From there contraband traders obtained merchandise, with which they supplied the Continent. Farmers along the coast received these smuggled goods, which were taken from them during the night and spread far and wide. The populations of the various countries aided the smugglers, joined them in opposing the revenue officers and in seducing the latter from their duty." [395 - Thiers, Consulate and Empire (Forbes's translation), vol. xii. p. 21.] Between Holstein and Hamburg was drawn up a close line of custom-house officials; but the forbidden goods leaked through all barriers. "More than six thousand persons of the lower and middle classes passed their day in going more than twenty times from Altona, in Holstein, to Hamburg. Punishments and confiscations fell upon the guilty; but this did not put an end to the incessant strife, sometimes by cunning, sometimes by force, against this fiscal tyranny." [396 - Mémoires de Bourrienne, French Minister at Hamburg, vol. viii. pp. 193-198.] Between five and six hundred women were employed by the merchants of Hamburg daily to convey into the city, each of them, fourteen pounds of coffee and other produce, concealed beneath their garments. [397 - Annual Register, 1809; State Papers, 747.]

In the Baltic conditions were somewhat different. Much there depended upon the heartiness of the czar in the cause; upon whether he would content himself with a bare perfunctory compliance with the letter of his engagements at Tilsit and Erfurt, or would decisively enforce an entire cessation of traffic with Great Britain. The latter course, however, was impossible to Alexander. Impulsive and ambitious, he yet lacked the hardness of character needed to disregard the cold disapproval of the nobles and the distress of his subjects. Under the influence of Napoleon's presence, of his fascination and his promises, it had seemed possible to do that which in the isolation of his court, and deprived of sympathy, became drearily monotonous; nor did Napoleon, by fidelity to his word, make the task easier. Decrees of great severity were issued, [398 - April 1, 1808; Naval Chronicle, vol. xxi. p. 48. May 7, 1809; Annual Register, 1809, p. 698.] and the British flag was honestly excluded; but the quick mercantile intelligence soon detected that no ill-timed curiosity as to ships' papers would be exercised, [399 - Napoleon saw, in 1809, that his work at Tilsit was all to be done over, since the only war Russia could make against the English was by commerce, which was protected nearly as before. There was sold in Mayence sugar and coffee which came from Riga.—Mémoires de Savary, duc de Rovigo (Imperial Chief of Police), vol. iii. p. 135.] nor vexatious impediments thrown in the way of exporting the national products, which, if essential to Great Britain's naval supremacy, were no less the source of Russia's wealth. In truth, British consumption of naval stores, and British capital invested in Russia, had been leading elements in the prosperity of the country; and it had been no light sacrifice to concede such advantages as the czar had already yielded.

Such was the working condition of the Continental System between 1806 and 1810. Despite the general disquietude in Great Britain and the undoubted impediments raised to that free export upon which her prosperity was based, the general confidence was unabated. [400 - D'Ivernois, Effects of the Continental blockade, London, Jan., 1810. Lord Grenville, one of the leaders of the Opposition, expressed a similar confidence when speaking in the House of Lords, Feb. 8, 1810. (Cobbett's Parl. Debates, vol. xv. p. 347.) So also the King's speech at the opening of Parliament, Jan. 19, 1809: "The public revenues, notwithstanding we are shut out from almost all the continent of Europe and entirely from the United States, has increased to a degree never expected, even by those persons who were most sanguine." (Naval Chronicle, vol. xxi. p. 48.)] Much was hoped from the resistance of the continental peoples, more from their steadfast evasion of the edicts. In 1806, just before the Berlin decree was issued, but when the system was already in force, a commercial magazine wrote: "The regulations adopted only show the ignorance of the French government of commercial principles. When the blockade of the Elbe was removed, instead of finding markets exhausted and prices enhanced, they were found overstocked." [401 - Monthly Magazine, vol. xxi. p. 195.] "In spite of every prohibition British goods continue (Dec. 1, 1806) to find their way in vast quantities into France. They are exported hence on French orders. It is easy to insure them for the whole transit to the town in France where they are to be delivered to the purchaser. They are introduced at almost all parts of the land confines of the French Empire. No sooner are they received into the French merchant's warehouse, than evidence is procured that they are of French manufacture; the proper marks are stamped, and the goods are in a state to be exhibited, in proof that the manufactures of France quite outrival those of England. The writer had this information from gentlemen who have a concern in the trade to which it relates." [402 - Ibid., vol. xxii. p. 514.] "Though the port of Venice is now totally shut against British commerce, as also the peninsula of Istria from whence Italian silk has always been obtained, yet through neutral vessels we now obtain Piedmont silk, which is the best and finest, direct from Leghorn, Lucca, and Genoa." [403 - Ibid., vol. xxi. p. 539.] "From Malta a brisk trade, yielding quick returns, is kept up with the ports of Italy. Malta is the emporium, the storehouse. From Malta we supply Leghorn and other places in the power of France. But the British goods are sold, even before they are landed, for ready money; and scarcely a pound's worth of British property is at any moment hazarded where the French might seize it." [404 - Monthly Magazine, vol. xxii. p. 618.]