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.[359] 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.[360]
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.[361] 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.[362] 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.[363]
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."[364]
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."[365]
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.[366] 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[367] 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;[368] 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.[369] Austria also
acceded to the Continental System, and excluded British goods from
her borders.[370] 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."[371] 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.[372]
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,[373] 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,[374] 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.[375] 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.[376] 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.[377] 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.[378] 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,[379] 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[380] 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.[381]
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;[382] 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,[383] 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.[384]
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.[385] 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.[386] 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,[387] 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;[388] 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."[389]
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.[390]
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.