Chapter XVIII: The Warfare Against Commerce, 1806-1812 (2)

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.[391] 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."[392] 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."[393] 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.[394]

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,[395] 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,[396] 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.[397] 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."[398] "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."[399] "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."[400] "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."[401]

Indications of embarrassment now begin to accumulate, but still, in January, 1808, we read: "Several ships from Holland have lately entered our harbors, and brought over large quantities of goods usually imported from Hamburg. This is a proof of the futility of Bonaparte's commercial speculations."[402] Russia had by this declared against Great Britain, causing a rise in all Russian produce; and the Embargo Act of the United States had just gone into operation. There is a vast falling off in the Baltic and American trade. In 1805 over eleven thousand ships had passed through the Sound, going and coming; in 1807 barely six thousand, and British ships are excluded from all but Swedish harbors. In August, 1808, the ports of Holland are opened for the export of Dutch butter, and two hundred bales of silk are allowed to be smuggled out, for which a bribe of six thousand guineas was extorted by some person in authority.[403] In 1809 a notice again occurs of the ports of Holland being opened by the king; and concurrently, West India produce, which has been for some months dull, is found more in demand and commanding good prices.[404] Malta is doing a famous business at the same time, and has become one of the greatest depots in the Mediterranean.[405]

The year 1809 was marked by a great, though temporary, revival of trade, due to several causes. Napoleon himself was detained during great part of the year in the heart of Austria, absorbed in one of his most doubtful contests with the empire; and in his absence trade with the North Sea ports went on almost as in time of peace. In the United States an eager British minister, of politics opposed to the party in power, had committed himself without due authority to an official statement to the government that the Orders in Council would be rescinded by June 10. The President, without waiting to hear further, removed the restrictions of the Non-Intercourse Act on that date; and accordingly, for some months there was free traffic and a very great interchange of goods between the United States and Great Britain. In South America, the withdrawal of the Portuguese court to Brazil and the uprising of Spain against Napoleon had resulted in throwing open the colonial ports to Great Britain; and an immense wave of speculative shipments, heavily employing the manufactories, was setting in that direction. In the Baltic, the czar was wearying of his engagements with France, and of the emperor's tergiversations; wearying too, of the opposition of his court and subjects. He adhered faithfully, indeed, to the letter of his bargain and refused admission to British ships: but he would not open his eyes to the fact that British commerce was being carried on in his ports by neutrals with British licenses. He had never promised to exclude neutrals, or forbid all export and import; and it was none of his business to pry behind the papers that covered transactions essential to his people. The imports to Great Britain of naval stores, mainly from the Baltic, more than doubled from 1808 to 1809, and were even greater the following year.[406] Wool from Spain and silk from Italy experienced a similar rise. Even West India produce, so vigorously excluded from the Continent, shared the general advance; and there was a great, though feverish and unsound, hope of returning prosperity. It was evident that Napoleon's measures were meeting only partial success, and men were willing to believe that their failure lay in the nature of things,—in the impossibility of his attempt. They had yet to learn that persecution fails only when it is not, or cannot be, thorough and unrelenting.

Among the multiplied impediments to intercourse between nations, due first of all to the narrow ideas of commercial policy prevalent at that epoch, increased by the state of open maritime war or hostile exclusion existing between Great Britain and most of the continental countries, and further complicated by the continental blockade of Napoleon and the retaliatory orders of the British government, there arose an obscure but extensive usage of "licenses;" which served, though but partially, and in a wholly arbitrary manner, to remove some of the difficulties that prevented the exchange of commodities. A license, from its name, implies a prohibition which is intended to be removed in the particular case; and the license practice of the Napoleonic wars was for the most part not so much a system, as an aggregation of individual permissions to carry on a traffic forbidden by the existing laws of the authority granting them. The licenses were issued both by the British government and by Napoleon; and they were addressed, according to the character of the sway borne by one party or the other, either to the police of the seas, the armed cruisers, or to the customs authorities of the continental ports. It was generally admitted in Great Britain that the Board of Trade was actuated only by upright motives in its action, though the practice was vigorously attacked on many grounds,—chiefly in order to impugn the Orders in Council to which alone their origin was attributed; but in France the taint of court corruption, or favoritism, in the issue of licenses was clearly asserted.[407]

The "License System," in the peculiar and extensive form to which the phrase was commonly applied, was adopted by the British government in 1808,[408] immediately after the Orders in Council and the alliance of Russia with Napoleon. Licenses did not then first begin to be issued, nor were they then for the first time necessary;[409] but then began the development which carried their numbers from two thousand six hundred and six in 1807, to over fifteen thousand in 1809 and over eighteen thousand in 1810. After the last year there was a rapid falling off, due, not to a change of system, but to the bitter experience that the license, which protected against a British cruiser, did not save the ship and cargo upon arrival in a port under Napoleon's control, when he had at last devoted his indomitable energy to the thorough enforcement of his decrees. During the years in which the practice flourished, it was principally to the Baltic ports that the licensed vessels went, though they also made their way to those of Holland, France, Spain, and other countries on the Continent. The trade to the British East and West Indies was confined to British vessels, as in time of profound peace.

The true origin of the later license trade is to be found in that supremacy and omnipresence of the British navy, which made it impossible for vessels under an enemy's flag to keep the sea. In order to employ their vessels, hostile owners transferred them to a neutral ownership, ordinarily by a fraudulent process which received the name of "neutralization." A neutralized ship remained the property of the hostile merchant; but, for a stipulated price, a neutral firm, who made this their regular business, gave their name as the owners and obtained from the authorities of the neutral country all the requisite papers and attestations by which the British cruisers, on searching, might be deceived. As a regular systematic business, fraudulent from beginning to end, the practice first arose during the war of the American Revolution, in 1780, when Holland became a party to the war, having a large mercantile tonnage with very inadequate means of protecting it. At that time a firm established itself in Embden, on the Prussian side of the Ems, which divides Prussia from Holland, and within the two years that remained of the war "neutralized," under Prussian flags, a hundred thousand tons of foreign shipping, besides cargoes to an immense value for those days. In the wars of Napoleon it was the fate of Holland to be again dragged in the wake of France, and the same practice of neutralization, supported by false oaths and false papers, again sprang up and flourished extensively in the Prussian province of East Friesland,—Prussia carefully maintaining her neutrality from 1795 to the unfortunate Jena campaign of 1806.

In the year 1806 it was asserted that there were upwards of three thousand sail belonging to merchants of Holland, France, and Spain navigating under the Prussian flag; and the practice doubtless was not confined to Prussia. "It is notorious," wrote Lord Howick, the British foreign minister, "that the coasting trade of the enemy is carried on not only by neutral ships but by the shameful misconduct of neutral merchants, who lend their names for a small percentage, not only to cover the goods, but in numberless instances to mask the ships of the enemy."[410] The fact becoming known, British cruisers, when meeting a valuable ship with Prussian papers, were apt to take the chance of her being condemned and send her in; but even in British ports and admiralty courts the neutralizing agent was prepared to cover his transaction. The captain and crew of the detained vessel were all carefully instructed and prepared to swear to the falsehoods, which were attested by equally false papers sworn to before Prussian judges. To this trade, it was alleged, France owed the power to obtain naval stores despite the British blockade of her arsenals. The frauds recoiled in a curious way on the head of Prussia; for, in the later stage of the Jena campaign, the neutralized ships supplied French magazines in the Baltic ports, the French hospitals at Lubeck, and the army that besieged Dantzic. The capture of vessels, the character of whose papers was suspected, served to swell the cry against Great Britain for violating neutral rights, induced greater severity in the British naval measures, and so directly contributed to the Berlin Decree and the Orders in Council.[411]

Thus had stood the neutralizing trade toward the end of 1805. After Napoleon had finally abandoned all thought of invading England, the victorious campaign of Austerlitz and the peace of Presburg, extending by conquest the boundaries of the empire, extended also the sweep of those municipal regulations, already in force, which excluded British goods from French territory. Early in 1806, beguiling Prussia into hostilities with Great Britain through the occupation of Hanover, the emperor compassed also the closure of the great German rivers. Peace was indeed soon restored; but the Jena campaign, quickly following, delivered Prussia, bound hand and foot, to Napoleon's dictates. In the summer of 1807 the Peace of Tilsit united the empires of the East and West in a common exclusion of British trade, to which Prussia could not but accede. Great Britain thus found herself face to face with no mere municipal regulations of one or two countries, but with a great political combination aiming at her destruction through the commerce which was her life. Nor was this combination merely one of those unfriendly acts which seeks its end by peaceful means, like the Non-Intercourse Acts of America. The British cabinet was perfectly informed that the minor states were to be coerced, by direct military force, into concurrence with the commercial policy of France and Russia,—a concurrence essential to its success.

It was necessary for Great Britain to meet this threatening conjunction, with such measures as should reduce the proposed injury to an amount possible for her to bear, until the inevitable revulsion came. She found ready to her hand the immense unprincipled system of neutralized vessels, and by means of them and of veritable neutrals she proposed to maintain her trade with the Continent. To do so, without reversing the general lines of her policy, as laid down in the Orders in Council, it was necessary to supply each neutral employed with a clear and unmistakable paper, which would insure beyond peradventure the respect of British cruisers for a class of vessels they had been accustomed to regard with suspicion. It would not do that a ship engaged in maintaining a British trade that was in great danger of extinction should be stopped by their own cruisers. The wording of the licenses was therefore emphatically sweeping and forcible. They protected against detention the vessel carrying one, whatever the flag she flew (the French flag alone being excepted), and directed that "the vessel shall be allowed to proceed, notwithstanding all the documents which accompany the ship and cargo may represent the same to be destined to any neutral or hostile port, or to whomsoever such property may belong."[412] These broad provisions were necessary, for the flags flown, except that of the United States, were those of nations which had, willingly or under duress, entered the Continental System; and the papers, having to undergo the scrutiny of hostile agents at the ports of arrival, had to be falsified, or, as it was euphoniously called, "simulated," to deceive the customs officer, if zealous, or to give him, if lukewarm, fair ground for admitting the goods. The license protected against the British cruiser, which otherwise would have detained the vessel on the ground of her papers, intended to deceive the port officers. "The system of licenses," said an adverse petition, "renders it necessary for the ships employed to be provided with sets of forged, or, as they are termed, simulated papers."[413] Of these, two sets were commonly carried, the paper, the wax for the seals, and other accompaniments being carefully imitated, and signatures of foreign rulers, as of Napoleon and of the President and Secretary of State of the United States, skilfully forged.[414] The firms conducting this business made themselves known to the mercantile community by circular letters.[415]

In this way large fleets of licensed vessels under the flags of Prussia, Denmark, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, Kniphausen, and other almost unknown German principalities, as well as many American merchant ships, went yearly to the Baltic laden with British and colonial produce, and returned with the timber, hemp, tallow, and grain of the North. They entered St. Petersburg and every port in the Baltic, discharged, loaded with the return cargo, and then repaired to a common rendezvous; whence, when collected to the number of about five hundred, they sailed for Great Britain under convoy of ships of war, to protect them against the privateers that swarmed in the Sound and North Sea.[416] Crushed between England and France, the Danish seamen, who would not come into the licensed service of the former, had lost their livelihood and had turned in a body to privateering, in the practice of which they fell little short of piracy;[417] and French privateers also found the ground profitable for cruising.

It was to this disposition of the north countries, as well as to conciliate the United States, that was probably due the Order in Council of April 26, 1809; which, while preserving the spirit, and probably securing the advantages of those of November, 1807, nevertheless formally and in terms revoked the latter, except so far as expressly stated in the new edict. The constructive, or paper, blockade, which under the former orders extended to every port whence the British flag was excluded, was now narrowed down to the coasts of Holland, France, and so much of Italy as was under Napoleon's immediate dominion. The reasons assigned for this new measure were "the divers events which had taken place since the date of the former orders, affecting the relations between Great Britain and the territories of other powers." The Spanish peninsula, being now in open and general revolt against Napoleon, was of course exempted; and southern Italy, by its nearness to Malta and Sicily, one a possession and the other an ally of England, might more readily be supplied from them than by neutrals coming from a greater distance. The maintenance of the blockade of Holland was particularly favorable to British trade. By that means the great articles of continental consumption could reach Holland and France, direct, only by British license, which meant that they came from England; while, if carried from a neutral country to the German rivers, to the Hanse towns, or to the Baltic, as the new Order allowed them to be, they had to be brought thence to the regions more immediately under Napoleon's government by land carriage, which would so raise their price as not to conflict with the British licensed trade. Thus the condition of the suffering neutral populations was relieved, without loosening the pressure upon France; and some of the offence given to the neutral carriers was removed. Another advantage accrued to Great Britain from thus throwing open the trade to the Baltic to all neutrals; for the great demand and high prices of naval equipment would induce them to bring these to the British market and arsenals, in preference to other countries.

This Order was issued at the moment when the British minister at Washington was assuring the American government that the Orders in Council would be wholly withdrawn on the 10th of June following.[418] At the same time the French and Austrians were drawing near to each other on the fields of Germany. On the 6th of April the Archduke Charles issued his address to the Austrian army, and on the 10th crossed the Inn, moving toward Bavaria. On the 12th Napoleon quitted Paris to place himself at the head of his troops, which had already preceded him, but were then scattered in different positions, in sore need of his directing hand. On the 17th he was in their midst. On the same day the first collision occurred with Davout's corps under the walls of Ratisbon. Five days of active manœuvring and hard fighting succeeded, ending with the battle of Eckmuhl; after which the Archduke, outgeneralled and defeated, fell back into Bohemia. On the 12th of May Vienna surrendered, and on the 13th Napoleon entered the Austrian capital for the second time in his career.

In the same eventful week, and on the very day of the battle of Eckmuhl, Sir Arthur Wellesley again landed at Lisbon to begin his memorable four years of command in the Peninsula. Napoleon had relinquished to Soult the pursuit of Sir John Moore, while still in mid-career; and after the embarkation of the British army from Coruña and the surrender of that city, January 16-26, 1809, the marshal was ordered to invade Portugal. After a difficult series of operations, Oporto was reached and stormed on the 29th of March; but Soult lacked the means to push further south. Wellesley, on his arrival, at once decided to march against him, in preference to attacking the French forces in Spain on the line of the Tagus. On the 12th of May, the same day that Vienna surrendered, the British troops crossed the Douro, Soult was forced to evacuate Oporto in haste, retreated to the northward, and re-entered Spain. The British general then returned with his army to the Tagus, and on the 27th of June advanced along that line into Spain. On the 28th of July he fought the battle of Talavera; but, though victorious, the failure of the Spanish troops to support him, their unreliable character as soldiers, and the want of provisions, compelled him to return at the end of August into Portugal, where he took up a position close to the frontier.

The French movements in Spain were rendered indecisive by lack of unity in the direction of the armies, due to the military incapacity of the king and the jealousies of the different marshals. The same early summer months were passed by Napoleon in a desperate struggle on the banks of the Danube, below Vienna. Though the capital had fallen, the Austrian army still remained, chastened but not subdued, and now confronted him on the north side of the stream under a general of a high order of merit, if inferior to the great emperor. To cross from the south to the north bank of the broad river, in the face of such a foe, was no light undertaking even for Napoleon. The first attempt began on the 20th of May; and during the two succeeding days the French army passed slowly across the insufficient bridges which alone could be thrown, for lack of proper material. During the 21st and 22d continued the strife, known in history as the battle of Essling; and on the latter day some sixty thousand French troops were in action with the Austrians, when the great bridge, joining the south shore to the island of Lobau in mid-stream, gave way before a freshet, which had already raised the waters of the Danube by fourteen feet. The supply of ammunition to the engaged troops ceased, and it therefore became impossible to retain the positions already gained. During the night of the 22d the corps on the north side were withdrawn into the island; and for the next six weeks Napoleon was untiringly occupied in providing materials for bridges which would be sure not to fail him. At last, when all was prepared, the army again crossed, and on the 6th of July was fought the memorable battle of Wagram. Terminating in the defeat of the Austrians, it was followed on the 12th by an armistice; and a definitive treaty of peace was ratified at Vienna on the 15th of October. Austria surrendered all her remaining sea-board on the Adriatic, besides portions of her interior territory, and again acceded to the prohibition of British goods of all kinds within her dominions.

A month before, September 17, 1809, peace had been concluded between Russia and Sweden; the latter ceding Finland and engaging to close her ports to all British ships, "with the exception of the importation of salt and colonial productions, which habit had rendered necessary to the people of Sweden."[419] On the 6th of January Napoleon, less merciful than the czar, exacted a convention which allowed only the entry of salt, excluding explicitly the colonial produce permitted by the Russian treaty; in return for which he restored Pomerania to Sweden.[420] Thus were formally closed to Great Britain all the northern ports through which, by the license trade, she had continued to pour her merchandise into the Continent, though in much diminished volume.

It now became Napoleon's great object to enforce the restrictions, which had thus been wrested from vanquished opponents in support of his continental policy, by increased personal vigilance and by urgently reiterated demands, for which he had an undeniable ground in the express terms of his treaties with the sea-board powers. Upon the Continent, except in the Spanish peninsula, the treaty of Vienna was followed by a peace of exhaustion, which lasted nearly three years. The emperor returned to Fontainebleau on the 26th of October, and at once began the dispositions from which he hoped the reduction of Great Britain, but which irresistibly led, step by step, to his own final overthrow. The French army was withdrawn from southern Germany, but gradually; remaining long enough in the various conquered or allied countries to ease the imperial treasury from the expense of their support, according to Napoleon's invariable policy. The evacuation was not completed until the first of June, 1810. A hundred thousand men, chiefly new levies, were directed on Spain, together with the Imperial Guard, the supposed precursor of the emperor himself; but the best of the troops, the hardened corps of Davout and Masséna, were reserved for northern Germany and the Dutch frontiers, to enforce the submission of the people to the continental blockade. Napoleon himself did not go to Spain, and that tedious war dragged wearily on, with greater or less vigor here or there, according to the qualities of the different leaders; but lacking the unity of aim, the concert of action, which nothing but the presence of a master spirit could insure among so many generals of equal rank, imbued with mutual jealousy, and each taxed with a burden that demanded his utmost strength. Around Lisbon, Wellington was preparing the lines of Torres Vedras, and thus striking deep into the soil of the Peninsula a grip from which all the armies of France could not shake him, so long as the navy of Great Britain stood at his back, securing his communications and his line of retreat; but of this Napoleon knew nothing.

It was above all things necessary to bring the Spanish war to an end, and the emperor was heartily weary of it; but still the Continental System constrained him. "Duroc assured me," writes Bourrienne,[421] "that the emperor had more than once shown regret at being engaged in the Spanish war; but since he had the English to fight there, no consideration could have induced him to abandon it, the more so as all that he was then doing was to defend the honor of the Continental System.... He said to Duroc one day, 'I no longer hold to Joseph being king of Spain, and he himself cares little about it. I would place there the first comer, if he could close his ports to the English.'" The military situation in Spain imperatively demanded his own presence; without it the war was interminable. The Spanish ulcer, as he himself aptly termed it, was draining away both men and money; and the seat of the trouble was at Lisbon, where the British sea power had at last found the place to set its fangs in his side and gnaw unceasingly. But Napoleon could not resolve either to withdraw from the contest or to superintend it in person. The Spaniards and Portuguese, in the prevailing anarchy, could contribute little, as consumers, to British commerce; whereas the north of Europe, from Holland to St. Petersburg, while yielding a nominal acquiescence, everywhere evaded the blockades with the connivance of their governments. Here, then, in his opinion, was the quarter to strike Great Britain; the Peninsula was to her but a drain of men and money, which the custom of northern and central Europe alone enabled her to endure. The emperor therefore decided to sustain both efforts, the peninsular war and the northern continental blockade; to divide his strength between the two, instead of combining it upon either; and to give his immediate attention to the North. Thus it was that the Sea Power of Great Britain, defying his efforts otherwise, forced him into the field of its own choosing, lured him, the great exemplar of concentrated effort, to scatter his forces, and led him along a path which at last gave no choice except retreat in discomfiture or advance to certain ruin.

Napoleon advanced. Since the Jena campaign he had occupied with French and Polish troops the fortresses of Glogau, Custrin, Stettin, and Dantzic. By these he controlled the Oder and the Vistula, and kept a constant rein upon Prussia, so as to exact the war indemnities she still owed, to check any movement upon her part, and to enforce the demands of his policy. Davout, the most severe and thorough of the French marshals, took command of these fortresses, as also of Hanover and of the Hanse towns, on which likewise imperial troops were quartered. At the mouth of the Ems his corps was in touch with that of Marshal Oudinot, which stretched thence along the frontiers of Holland to Belgium and Boulogne. Thus the whole sea-board from Boulogne to the Baltic was gripped by French divisions, which in any dispute or doubt powerfully supported the emperor's arguments and sustained the Continental System, both by actual interference and by the constant threat contained in their presence. These measures "were necessary," says M. Thiers[422] "in order to compel the Hanse towns to renounce commercial intercourse with Great Britain, and to coerce Holland, which paid no more attention to the commercial blockade than if it had been governed by an English or a German prince. Even when the governments attempted to keep good faith the communities were little affected, and pursued a contraband trade which the most vigorous measures failed to prevent. Napoleon determined to conduct in person this kind of warfare."

Holland was the first victim. As has before been said, Louis Bonaparte strove continually to thwart the operation of the system. Napoleon now demanded a strict execution of the blockade, and for that purpose that the guard of the Dutch coasts and of the mouths of the rivers should be entrusted to French custom-house officers.[423] He also required that the American vessels which had entered Dutch ports under the king's permission should be confiscated. Louis, though willing to concede the former conditions and to exclude Americans and other neutrals thenceforward, could not bring himself to give up those that had entered under his own authority; but, having been induced to visit his brother in Paris in November, 1809, he was by threats and persuasion brought to yield every point demanded. It was during these interviews that Napoleon, giving way to one of those transports of passion which increased with him as years went by, again betrayed the fatal compulsion under which England held him, and the purposes already forming in his mind. "It is the English," he cried, "who have forced me to aggrandize myself unceasingly.[424] But for them I would not have united Naples, Spain, Portugal to my empire. I have willed to struggle and to extend my coasts, in order to increase my resources. If they keep on, they will oblige me to join Holland to my shore lines, then the Hanse towns, finally Pomerania, and perhaps even Dantzic." Then he suggested that Louis should, by indirect means, convey to the British cabinet the impending danger of Napoleon's proceeding to these extremities, in the hopes that apprehension might induce it to offer terms of peace, in order to avert the union of Holland to the empire.

A Dutch banker, M. Labouchère, who had extensive relations with prominent houses, was accordingly dispatched, though without formal credentials, and opened the matter to the ministers; but the latter showed little interest. Whatever the nominal state of Holland, they said, it is really only a French dependency; and as for the extension of the Continental System, they expected no less than an increase of tyranny with the increase of the emperor's sway. Louis was then sent back to Holland, having further agreed to cede to France all his provinces west of the Rhine, and to line the coasts of the remainder with an army partly Dutch, partly French, but commanded by a French general. Overwhelmed with mortification, he cherished at times impotent thoughts of resistance, which issued only in insults to the French Chargé and in impediments thrown in the way of the French army of occupation and the customs officers. Finally, in June, 1810, a body of French troops having presented themselves before Harlem were denied entrance; and at about the same time a servant of the French embassy was mobbed at the Hague. Napoleon at once ordered Oudinot to enter, not only Harlem, but Amsterdam, with drums beating and colors flying, while the French corps to the north and south of Holland crossed the frontiers to support the army of occupation. On the first of July Louis signed his abdication, which was published on the 3d; by which time he had secretly left the kingdom for an unknown destination. On the 9th Holland was united to the empire by an imperial decree. The coveted American ships with their cargoes were sequestrated, and the large accumulations of colonial produce formed under Louis's lax blockade were made to contribute to the imperial treasury, by being admitted into France upon payment of a duty of fifty per cent. But, for this immediate benefit, the thrifty Hollanders were to pay by an unrelenting exclusion of trade, by the quartering of foreign troops, and by the conscription, both land and naval.

The empire now extended to the Ems; but still, with persevering cunning, smugglers and neutrals contrived to introduce tropical produce and British manufactures to some extent. Owing to the restrictions, indeed, the goods rose from fifty to a hundred per cent over the London prices, but still they came; and, in consequence at once of the British blockade of the French coast and of the emperor's jealous support of that blockade by his own decrees, the people of France had to pay far dearer than the other continental nations.[425] Thus were Napoleon's objects doubly thwarted; for, while he aimed at breaking down Great Britain by exclusion from the rest of Europe, he also meant to make France, as the corner stone of his power, the most prosperous nation, and to secure for her the continental market which her rival was to lose.[426] All foreign articles decreased in price in proportion as the distance from Paris increased. Before the union, coffee and sugar cost in his capital three and four times what they did in Holland. He now became unremitting and threatening in his representations to the Northern states. Exacting the last farthing of Prussia at one breath, with the next he offered to deduct from the debt the value of all licensed cargoes seized by her. He menaced Sweden with the reoccupation of Pomerania, if the great fleets under British license were admitted to Stralsund. It was indeed to the Northern and Baltic ports that four fifths of the licensed vessels went; only a small proportion sailed to the blockaded ports of France and Holland.[427] By dint of urgent representations and the presence of the French troops, he contrived to have seized the greater part of a convoy of six hundred sail, which entered the Baltic in the summer of 1810; but which, being delayed by head winds, had not reached their ports in time to escape the movements of his troops. The Northern trade had taken on immense dimensions in 1809, when Napoleon was battling about Vienna and the governments were not under his eye; but this year he could make himself felt, and some forty million dollars' worth of British property was seized in the northern ports.[428] The blow seriously affected the already overstrained commercial system of Great Britain, and its results were shown by the fall in the number of licenses issued, from eighteen thousand in 1810 to seventy-five hundred in 1811.

The emperor went further. Deciding, after long consideration, that fifty per cent on the London prices represented the profits of smugglers of colonial goods, he determined to allow the introduction of the latter upon payment of duty to that extent. Characteristically unwilling to appear to take a step backward, he extended this permission only to produce not coming from British colonies; but it was understood, and officially intimated to the customs authorities, that the inquiry should not be rigorous. In this subterfuge, says M. Thiers, consisted the whole combination.[429] Having thus constituted a lawful variety of colonial products in the empire and in the subject countries, the emperor felt at liberty to execute one of those vast confiscations, which contributed so materially to his military chest. All collections of these goods existing within his reach were to be seized at the same time, and, if they had not been declared, should be condemned; if they had, should pay half their value, in money or in kind. "Thus it was hoped to seize everywhere at the same time, and to take for the treasury of Napoleon, or for that of his allies, the half in case of declaration, the whole in case of dissimulation. It can be conceived what terror would be caused to the numerous accomplices of British commerce."[430] This measure was established by a decree of August 5, 1810, and accepted by all the continental states, except Russia. The latter refused to go beyond her obligations by the treaty of Tilsit, and took the occasion to express her uneasiness at seeing the French troops gradually extending along the northern seas, and even as close to her own borders as Dantzic. The impossibility of cordial co-operation in the immense sacrifices demanded by the Continental System was clearly shown by this refusal; but by no less vigorous means could Great Britain be reached, and Napoleon could not recede. The decree was extended outside the boundaries of the empire, to any depot of colonial goods within four days' march of the frontiers, in Switzerland, in Germany, in Prussia, in the Hanse towns. Large sums of money were realized, and the government became a dealer in groceries when the payments were made in kind. The pressure of the French troops extended everywhere, and French flotillas cruised along the coasts of the North Sea, whether within the limits of the empire or not, in the mouths and along the course of the great rivers, to seal them more completely.

The decree of August 5 was carried out by the armed hand. "_Wherever my troops are_," wrote Napoleon to Prussia, "I suffer no English smuggling." On this ground French authorities executed the mandate in the Prussian port of Stettin, which was in the military occupation only of his troops. "All the ports of this once potent kingdom," says a contemporary magazine, "are filled with French soldiers, who seize and burn every article which can possibly have passed through British hands. Prussia is described as in a deplorable state, almost disorganized and no employment for industry."[431] Similar action was taken in the Hanse towns with no other justification. The king of Westphalia was ordered to withdraw his army from the northern part of the kingdom, that French soldiers might enter for the same purpose. In Switzerland the native authorities were permitted to act, but a French customs officer supervised. On the 18th of August the emperor directed the military occupation of the territory of Lubeck, Lauenburg, Hamburg, and all the west bank of the Elbe, for a length of fifty miles from its mouth; thence the line extended, at about the same distance from the sea, to Bremen, and thence to the frontiers of Holland, taking in the little states of Arenberg and Oldenburg. This military occupation was but the precursor of the annexation of these countries a few months later, which led to the first overt act of displeasure on the part of the czar. In justification of the step, one of a series which alienated Alexander and led up to the Russian war, was alleged the purpose of sustaining the continental blockade as the only means of destroying Great Britain. "General Morand," so read the orders, "is charged to take all necessary measures for the prevention of smuggling. For this purpose he will establish a first line of troops from Holstein to East-Frisia, and a second line in rear of the first."[432]

On the 6th of October the viceroy of Italy was directed to occupy with Italian troops all the Italian cantons of Switzerland, and to sequestrate at once all colonial or other contraband merchandise. The order was accompanied with Napoleon's usual formula: "This ought to bring in several millions." Eugene was to explain that this was only a step similar to the occupation of northern Germany, that it did not invade the neutrality of Switzerland; and he was to be particularly careful that the emperor's hand did not appear. "That there should be a quarrel between _you_ and Switzerland will do no harm."[433] On the 19th of October Prussia was notified that, if she did not efficiently preclude the passage of British and colonial merchandise through her states, the French army would enter them; and the French minister was directed to leave Berlin if satisfaction was not given.[434]

Coincidently with these principal measures, the correspondence of Napoleon teems with orders, complaints, remonstrances, reprimands, queries, all showing how bent his mind was on the one purpose. Having turned over the command of the army in Portugal, directed against the British, to his ablest marshal, Masséna, he was concentrating his own energies on the blockade. At the same time, he occupied himself with stringent measures for protecting the industries of France in the European market. No man ever held more thoroughly than the emperor that element of the theory of protection, that the government can manage the business of the people better than themselves. His kingdom of Italy should not use Swiss nor German cottons; such goods must come only from France.[435] Italian raw silks shall go nowhere but to France,[436] and then only to Lyon. The whole export trade is in his hands by a system of licenses,[437] apparently borrowed from Great Britain, and which at this time he greatly extended. On the 25th of July an order was given that no ship could clear from a port of the empire for abroad without a license, signed by the emperor himself. On September 15 another decree was issued,[438] allowing licensed vessels to sail from Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck for French ports. The license was to cost twelve dollars per ton, and was good only for the return voyage; but the vessel upon arriving in France was exempt from all question as to search by British cruisers, and might even land all her cargo in a British port,—in other words, she was excepted from the Berlin and Milan decrees. She could not, however, enter France with any British goods. Returning, she was to load with wines or other French produce, except grain or flour. Under the rival license systems new and curious methods of evasion grew up. Compelled to take French articles which were not wanted in Great Britain, as well as those that were, the former were put on board of so inferior a quality that they could be thrown into the sea without loss. At either end smuggling boats met the licensed vessel before entering port, and took from her forbidden articles. Ships of either nation, with foreign flag, and simulated papers, were to be seen in each other's ports.[439] The British, as a commercial people, were naturally willing to give a larger extension to this evasive trade; but the emperor would not grant anything that he thought could help his enemy, even though it benefited his own people. He believed, and rightly, that Great Britain was receiving more harm than France; he did not realize that, from her immense wealth and commercial aptitudes, she could endure the process longer.

The decree of August 5 admitted colonial goods, but excluded British manufactures. On the 19th of October was issued another edict, directing that all such manufactured goods, wherever found in the emperor's dominions, or even in countries in the mere military occupation of his troops, should be publicly burned. This was remorselessly done. "Persons who at this epoch were living in the interior of France can form no idea of the desolation which so savage a measure spread through countries accustomed to live by commerce. What a spectacle offered to peoples impoverished and lacking everything, to see the burning of articles the distribution of which would have been an alleviation to their sufferings!... What a means of attacking conquered peoples, to irritate their privations by the destruction of a number of articles of the first necessity!"[440] "The tampering with the mails," says Savary, the Minister of Police, "caused me to make some very sad reflections, and forced me to admit that we were not advancing toward tranquillity; and that, if the party against us were not yet formed, at least all sentiments were agreed, and that a single reverse would be enough to ruin us.... The more we disturbed the relations of Europe with England, the more, on all sides, men sought to draw together; and we remained with the odious epithets given to us by all those whom our measures thwarted."[441] "There was already an understanding from one end of Europe to the other; every cabinet earnestly wished the overthrow of Napoleon, as the people also wished, with at least equal ardor, a state of things less stifling for their industry and trade. Despite the terror inspired by Napoleon's name, there was, side by side with that terror, that damnable Continental System which settled the question; it was necessary either to fight or to succumb. The people of the North were under an imperious necessity to break that yoke of lead, which made the custom house the prime agent of the governments of Europe."[442]

Russia had refused to accede to any steps beyond her engagements of Tilsit; but nowhere was discontent more profound, nowhere opposition more to be dreaded. While Napoleon was indisputably leading Great Britain into greater and greater embarrassment, by the depreciation of her manufactures and by the accumulations of unsalable sugars and coffees in her warehouses, he was also ruining the agriculture of Russia and the revenues of her nobles. Despite the relief afforded by the great licensed fleets, the Tilsit agreements so embarrassed trade, that hemp, which in 1802 was worth £32 the ton in London, had reached, in 1809, £118;[443] and other products of the North rose in the same proportion. At the same time sixty thousand tons of coffee lay in the London warehouses, unsalable at sixpence the pound, while the price on the Continent was from four to five shillings, and in places even seven shillings.[444] No better proof of the efficacious co-working of Napoleon's system and of the British Orders can be offered; but the question was one of endurance. Which could stand such a strain longer? In Russia matters were fast approaching a climax. The czar felt the ground trembling under his feet;[445] and, while he renewed his protestations of fidelity to Tilsit and Erfurt, he had to see Napoleon, by his licenses, evading the restrictions which he at the same time was pressing his ally to enforce more rigorously. In vain was the explanation offered that these licenses were but in furtherance of the restrictive system; that France was unloading her surplus products upon England, while refusing to receive aught but specie in return; and that in consequence the exchange was going more and more against Great Britain. The czar knew better; and the repeated and urgent letters of the emperor, becoming, as was the wont of Napoleon's requests, rather peremptory than entreating, to seize and confiscate all neutral ships entering Russian ports, fell on deaf ears. Alexander feared war; but he remembered his father's fate, and feared assassination more.

On the 10th of December, 1810, the emperor sent a message to the Senate announcing that he had annexed to the empire the Hanse towns, together with the region on the North Sea intervening between them and Holland, which had been as yet only in military occupation. In the same paper he expressed his intention of making a canal from the Elbe to Lubeck, by which the empire should be brought into direct water communication with the Baltic. This assurance was not calculated to ease the anxiety of the czar as to the eastward progress of France; but the measure was accompanied by a circumstance of personal affront, peculiarly dangerous to an alliance which depended chiefly upon the personal relations of two absolute sovereigns. The Grand Duke of Oldenburg, one of the countries thus unceremoniously annexed, was uncle to the czar; and though Napoleon proposed to indemnify him for the material loss, by territory taken in the interior of Germany, Alexander would not accept such satisfaction nor name any compensation that he would think adequate. He did not threaten war, but he refused to surrender his grievance, and reserved his right to retaliate an injury.