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

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

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

On the 11th of November, 1807, were published the great retaliatory measures of Great Britain, which for the moment filled the cup of neutrals. Setting forth the Berlin Decree as the justifying ground for their action, the Orders in Council of that date 383 proclaimed a paper blockade, of the barest form and most extensive scope, of all enemies' ports. "All ports and places of France and her allies, or of any other country at war with his Majesty, and all other ports or places in Europe from which, although not at war with his Majesty, the British flag is excluded, and all ports in the colonies of his Majesty's enemies, shall from henceforth be subject to the same restrictions, in point of trade and navigation, as if the same were actually blockaded in the most strict and rigorous manner." All trade in hostile colonial produce was likewise declared unlawful for neutrals.

An actual blockade, such as is here mentioned, requires the presence off the blockaded port of a force sufficient to make entrance or departure manifestly dangerous; in which case a vessel attempting to pass in either direction is, by that common consent of nations called International Law, justly liable to capture. To place such a force before each of the many and widely scattered harbors embraced by these Orders, was evidently beyond the power of even the vast numbers of the British navy. The object which could not be attained by the use of means acknowledged to be lawful, the British ministry determined to compass by sheer force, by that maritime supremacy which they unquestionably wielded, and which they could make effectual to the ends they had in view, namely: to maintain the commerce and shipping of Great Britain, upon which her naval strength depended, to force the enemy's trade to pass through her ports, and thus to raise her revenues to the point necessary to her salvation in the life and death struggle in which she was embarked. 384

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

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

The second exception, which was particularly odious to neutrals, permitted the latter to go direct from a port of the United Kingdom to a restricted hostile port, although they might not start from their own country for the same, nor for any other place in Europe from which the British flag was excluded. Conversely, neutrals were at liberty to sail from any port of his Majesty's enemies forbidden to them by the Orders, provided they went direct to some port in Europe belonging to Great Britain; 385 but they might not return to their own land without first stopping at a British port.

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

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

The object of the Orders in Council was therefore twofold: to embarrass France and Napoleon by the prohibition of direct import and export trade, of all external commerce, which for them could only be carried on by neutrals; and at the same time to force into the Continent all the British products or manufactures that it could take. A preference was secured for the latter over foreign products by the license practice, which left the course of traffic to the constant manipulation of the Board of Trade. The whole system was then, and has since been, roundly abused as being in no sense a military measure, but merely a gigantic exhibition of commercial greed; but this simply begs the question. To win her fight Great Britain was obliged not only to weaken Napoleon, but to increase her own strength. The battle between the sea and the land was to be fought out on Commerce. England had no army wherewith to meet Napoleon; Napoleon had no navy to cope with that of his enemy. As in the case of an impregnable fortress, the only alternative for either of these contestants was to reduce the other by starvation. On the common frontier, the coast line, they met in a deadly strife in which no weapon was drawn. The imperial soldiers were turned into coast-guards-men to shut out Great Britain from her markets; the British ships became revenue cutters to prohibit the trade of France. The neutral carrier, pocketing his pride, offered his service to either for pay, and the other then regarded him as taking part in hostilities. The ministry, in the exigencies of debate, betrayed some lack of definite conviction as to their precise aim. Sometimes the Orders were justified as a military measure of retaliation; sometimes the need of supporting British commerce as essential to her life and to her naval strength was alleged; and their opponents in either case taunted them with inconsistency.387 Napoleon, with despotic simplicity, announced clearly his purpose of ruining England through her trade, and the ministry really needed no other arguments than his avowals. Salus civitatis suprema lex. To call the measures of either not military, is as inaccurate as it would be to call the ancient practice of circumvallation unmilitary, because the only weapon used for it was the spade.

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

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

In the year 1808 the emperor's purpose to overthrow the Spanish monarchy, and place one of his own family upon the throne, finally matured. He left Paris on the 2d of April, and, after a long delay at Bordeaux, on the 14th reached Bayonne. There took place his meetings with the king and infante of Spain which resulted in the former resigning his crown, to be disposed of as to Napoleon might seem best. While at Bayonne, on April 17, the emperor issued an order, directing the sequestration of all American ships which should enter the ports of France, Italy, Holland, and the Hanse towns, as being under suspicion of having come from Great Britain. The justification for this step was found in the Embargo Act of December, 1807, in consequence of which, Napoleon argued, as such ships could not lawfully have left their own country, they came really from England, and their papers were fabricated. 388 Under this ruling sequestrations continued to be made until March 23, 1810; when the Decree of Rambouillet confiscated finally the vessels and cargoes thus seized. 389 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.