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

408

Ibid., p. 135.

409

Tooke's History of Prices, vol. i. pp. 300, 301.

410

Salgues, Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la France, vol. viii. pp. 350-355. Mémoires de Marmont, due de Raguse, vol. iii. p. 365. Mémoires de Savary, due de Rovigo, vol. v. p. 115.

411

Quarterly Review, May, 1811, p. 465.

412

For instance, a license was necessary for a British subject to ship any articles to an enemy's port, though in a neutral vessel. In principle, licenses are essential to trade with an enemy. In 1805 and 1807 Orders in Council dispensed with the necessity of a license in particular instances; but even then merchants preferred to take out a license, because it cut short any questions raised by British cruisers, and especially by privateers. See Cobbett's Parl. Debates, vol. x. p. 924.

413

Cobbett's Parl. Debates, vol. x. p. 406.

414

For an interesting account of the neutralizing trade, see Naval Chronicle, vol. xxxi. pp. 288-295, and vol. xxxii. p. 119. On the License System, the Parliamentary Debates (table of contents), and the Quarterly Review of May, 1811, may be consulted.

415

Quarterly Review, May, 1811, p. 461. Lindsay's History of Merchant Shipping, vol. ii. p 316.

416

Petition of Hull merchants, 1812; Cobbett's Parl. Debates, vol. xxi. p. 979.

417

Am. State Papers, vol. iii. p. 341.

418

Cobbett's Parliamentary Debates, vol. xxi. p. 1113.

419

Ross's Life of Admiral Saumarez, vol. ii. pp. 196, 241.

420

In the years 1809 and 1810 one hundred and sixty American vessels alone were seized by Danish privateers. Only a part, however, were condemned. (Am. State Papers, vol. iii. p. 521.)

421

Erskine's note to that effect was dated April 19, 1809.

422

Annual Register, 1809, p. 726.

423

Moniteur, Feb. 24, 1810.

424

Mémoires, vol. ix. pp. 21-24.

425

Cons. et Empire (Forbes's Trans.), xii. 15.

426

Corr. de Nap., vol. xx. p. 235.

427

Compare Metternich's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 188.

428

Thiers, Cons. et Emp., Book xxxviii. p. 182.

429

Corr. de Nap., vol. xxi. p. 70: "Mon principe est, La France avant tout." (Letter to viceroy of Italy.)

430

Parl. Debates, vol. xxi. p. 1050; xxiii. p. 540.

431

Cobbett's Parl. Debates, vol. xxi. pp. 1056, 1117.

432

The decree was also shrouded in secrecy, and its existence denied in the Moniteur (Cobbett's Pol. Register, xviii. p. 701). Napoleon wrote to the viceroy of Italy, Aug. 6, 1810: "You will receive a decree which I have just issued to regulate duties on colonial produce.... It is to be executed in Italy; it is secret and to be kept in your hands. You will therefore give orders in pursuance of this decree only by ministerial letters." (Corr., vol. xxi. p. 28.)

433

Thiers, Cons. et Empire, Book xxxviii. pp. 181-189.

434

Monthly Magazine, Feb. 1811, vol. xxxi. p. 67.

435

Corr. de Nap., vol. xxi. p. 58.

436

Corr. de Nap., vol. xxi. p. 224.

437

Ibid., p. 268.

438

Ibid., p. 77.

439

Ibid., pp. 70, 71.

440

Ibid., pp. 61, 62.

441

Cobbett's Pol. Register, vol. xviii. pp. 704, 722.

442

At Bordeaux licensed vessels were known to take on board wines and brandies for the British army in Portugal. (Mémoires du duc de Rovigo, vol. v. p. 60.)

443

Bourrienne, Mémoires, vol. viii. p. 261.

444

Mémoires du duc de Rovigo, vol. v. p. 66.

445

Mémoires de Bourrienne, vol. ix. p. 60.

446

Porter's Progress of the Nation, sect. iii. p. 205. In 1815, after Napoleon's overthrow, the price fell to £34.

447

Tooke's Hist. of Prices, vol. i. p. 354.

448

Souvenirs du duc de Vicence, vol. i. p. 88.

449

Both Monroe and Pinkney, while ministers in London, informed the United States government that the extreme measures taken were popular. (Am. State Papers, vol. iii. pp. 188, 206.)

450

Letter on the Genius and Disposition of the French Government; by an American lately returned from Europe, pp. 189-192. Baltimore, 1810. See also Metternich's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 476, for the unhappiness of France.

451

Mémoires du due de Raguse, vol. iii. p. 423. Marmont adds: "This was a powerful help to French industry during that time of suffering and misery."

452

Tooke's History of Prices, vol. i. p. 311.

453

In like manner, vessels with British licenses frequently slipped into French ports, especially with naval stores from the Baltic.

454

"There was not a Dutchman," says M. Thiers, "who had not lost fifty per cent by foreign loans." (Cons. et Empire (Forbes's trans.), xii. 47.)

455

"The emperor does desire war, because he needs more or less virgin soil to explore, because he has need to occupy his armies and to entertain them at the expense of others.... M. Romanzow has repeated to me a long conversation he had had with the emperor. 'He wants money,' said he,—'he does not hide it; he wishes war against Austria to procure it.'" (Metternich to Stadion, Feb. 17, 1809; Memoirs, ii. 329.) The Austrian war of 1809 brought $34,000,000 into Napoleon's military chest. (Thiers, Cons. et Emp., Book xxxviii. p. 34.)

456

Thus to Davout, commanding the Army of Germany: "I shall need much money, which should make you feel the importance of obtaining for me as much as you can, and asking of me as little as possible." (Corr., March 24, 1811.)

457

This condition of the debt was partly factitious, Napoleon maintaining the public funds at eighty, by the secret intervention of the military chest. (Thiers, Cons. et Emp., Book xli. p. 18.)

458

Mémoires du duc de Rovigo, vol. v. p. 116.

459

Genius and Disposition of French Govt., p. 166. Baltimore, 1810.

460

Genius and Disposition of French Govt., pp. 181-192.

461

Thiers, Cons. et Emp., Book xli. p. 22.

462

Thiers, Cons. et Emp., Book xli. p. 11.

463

Arnold's History of Rome, opening of chap. xliii.

464

It is interesting to observe in Metternich's letters, while ambassador at Paris, how he counts upon this exhausting of the capital of French soldiers as the ultimate solution of the subjection of Austria. "For some time Napoleon has lived on anticipations. The reserves are destroyed." (April 11, 1809.) Compare also his exclamation to the emperor in 1813: "Is not your present army anticipated by a generation? I have seen your soldiers; they are mere children." (Memoirs, vol. i. p. 189).

465

See Metternich's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 477.

466

Corr. de Nap., vol. xxi. p. 497 (Feb. 28, 1811).

467

Ibid., p. 275.

468

Ibid., p. 296.

469

These contentions of Napoleon were for the most part perfectly correct. Some interesting facts, bearing upon the true character of the so-called neutral trade in the Baltic, may be gathered from Ross's Life of Saumarez, vol. ii. chaps. ix.-xiii. See also representations made by a number of American ship-captains, Am. State Papers, vol. iii. pp. 329-333. On the other hand, the scrupulously upright John Quincy Adams, U. S. minister to Russia, affirmed that he positively knew some of the American ships to be direct from the United States. The facts, however, only show the dependence of the world at that time upon the Sea Power of Great Britain, which made Napoleon's Continental System impossible; yet, on the other hand, it was his only means of reaching his enemy. If he advanced, he was ruined; if he receded, he failed.

470

During one year, 1809, this fleet captured 430 vessels, averaging sixty tons each, of which 340 were Danes. Among these were between thirty and forty armed cutters and schooners, of which Denmark had to employ a great many to supply Norway with grain. The remaining ninety vessels were Russian. (Naval Chronicle, vol. xxii. p. 517.)

471

"Once more I must tell you," wrote a Swedish statesman to Saumarez, "that you were the first cause that Russia dared to make war against France. Had you fired one shot when we declared war against England, all had been ended and Europe would have been enslaved." (Ross's Saumarez, vol. ii. p. 294.)

472

Thiers, Cons. et Emp., Book xlii. p. 383.

473

Compare Metternich's argument with the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, October, 1807. (Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 161.)

474

Annual Register, 1792; State Papers, p. 355.

475

Moniteur, Dec. 25, 1792; Proposition of M. Barailon.

476

Pitt's Speeches, vol. ii. pp. 46, 47.

477

Lanfrey's Napoleon, vol. iv. p. 112 (Eng. trans., ed. 1886).

478

Lanfrey's Napoleon, vol. ii. chap. iii. p. 122 (Eng. trans., 2d ed.).

479

Jurien de la Gravière, Vie de l'Amiral Baudin, p. 9.

480

That is, about 8 per cent annually. The increase during the four years of the elder Pitt in the Seven Years' War, 1757-1761, was 29 per cent, about 7 per cent annually.

481

Système Maritime et Politique des Européens dans le 18me siècle, par Arnould. Paris, 1797.

482

For Napoleon's own assertion of this fact, see "Note pour le Ministre des Relations Extérieures," Corr. de Nap., Oct. 7, 1810. See also ante, p. 320.

483

Martin, Hist. de France depuis 1789, vol. i. p. 396.

484

Annual Register, 1793, p. 163. For the correspondence on that occasion see A. R. 1792; State Papers, pp. 326, 327. See also letter of Le Brun, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, in the Moniteur of Aug. 26, 1792.

485

The Directory tended to impose upon the smaller states, neighboring to or allies of France, republican constitutions, "unitaires" (centralized) in form, analogous to our own, as Bonaparte had done for the Cisalpine Republic and for Genoa. It had just done so in Holland, where it had raised against the government of the United Provinces a kind of 18th of Fructidor (coup d'état). It now (1798) aimed at revolutionizing Switzerland. Bonaparte urged it on. He had already provoked a revolution in a republic near to and allied with the Swiss, that of the Grisons.—Martin: Hist. de France depuis 1789, vol. iii. p. 7.

486

Napoleon's remark referred to the edicts of the Directory, confiscating British goods wherever found on land; but it applies equally to the decree of January, 1798, which extended the edict to the sea: "Le Directoire ébaucha le système du blocus continental; il ordonna la saisie de toutes les marchandises Anglaises qui pouvaient se trouver à Mayence et dans les autres pays cédés à la France." (Commentaires de Napoléon I., Paris, 1867, vol. iii. p. 413.)

487

This correspondence, so far as published, is to be found in the Annual Register for 1797; State Papers, pp. 181-223.

488

See Stanhope's Life of Pitt, vol. ii. p. 224 (ed. 1879).

489

For a graphic description of the effects of the Berlin decree on the Continent, see Fyffe's History of Modern Europe, vol. i. p. 328.

490

Metternich's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 65.