The "License System," in the peculiar and extensive form to which the phrase was commonly applied, was adopted by the British government in 1808, [408] immediately after the Orders in Council and the alliance of Russia with Napoleon. Licenses did not then first begin to be issued, nor were they then for the first time necessary; [409] but then began the development which carried their numbers from two thousand six hundred and six in 1807, to over fifteen thousand in 1809 and over eighteen thousand in 1810. After the last year there was a rapid falling off, due, not to a change of system, but to the bitter experience that the license, which protected against a British cruiser, did not save the ship and cargo upon arrival in a port under Napoleon's control, when he had at last devoted his indomitable energy to the thorough enforcement of his decrees. During the years in which the practice flourished, it was principally to the Baltic ports that the licensed vessels went, though they also made their way to those of Holland, France, Spain, and other countries on the Continent. The trade to the British East and West Indies was confined to British vessels, as in time of profound peace.
The true origin of the later license trade is to be found in that supremacy and omnipresence of the British navy, which made it impossible for vessels under an enemy's flag to keep the sea. In order to employ their vessels, hostile owners transferred them to a neutral ownership, ordinarily by a fraudulent process which received the name of "neutralization." A neutralized ship remained the property of the hostile merchant; but, for a stipulated price, a neutral firm, who made this their regular business, gave their name as the owners and obtained from the authorities of the neutral country all the requisite papers and attestations by which the British cruisers, on searching, might be deceived. As a regular systematic business, fraudulent from beginning to end, the practice first arose during the war of the American Revolution, in 1780, when Holland became a party to the war, having a large mercantile tonnage with very inadequate means of protecting it. At that time a firm established itself in Embden, on the Prussian side of the Ems, which divides Prussia from Holland, and within the two years that remained of the war "neutralized," under Prussian flags, a hundred thousand tons of foreign shipping, besides cargoes to an immense value for those days. In the wars of Napoleon it was the fate of Holland to be again dragged in the wake of France, and the same practice of neutralization, supported by false oaths and false papers, again sprang up and flourished extensively in the Prussian province of East Friesland,—Prussia carefully maintaining her neutrality from 1795 to the unfortunate Jena campaign of 1806.
In the year 1806 it was asserted that there were upwards of three thousand sail belonging to merchants of Holland, France, and Spain navigating under the Prussian flag; and the practice doubtless was not confined to Prussia. "It is notorious," wrote Lord Howick, the British foreign minister, "that the coasting trade of the enemy is carried on not only by neutral ships but by the shameful misconduct of neutral merchants, who lend their names for a small percentage, not only to cover the goods, but in numberless instances to mask the ships of the enemy." [410] The fact becoming known, British cruisers, when meeting a valuable ship with Prussian papers, were apt to take the chance of her being condemned and send her in; but even in British ports and admiralty courts the neutralizing agent was prepared to cover his transaction. The captain and crew of the detained vessel were all carefully instructed and prepared to swear to the falsehoods, which were attested by equally false papers sworn to before Prussian judges. To this trade, it was alleged, France owed the power to obtain naval stores despite the British blockade of her arsenals. The frauds recoiled in a curious way on the head of Prussia; for, in the later stage of the Jena campaign, the neutralized ships supplied French magazines in the Baltic ports, the French hospitals at Lubeck, and the army that besieged Dantzic. The capture of vessels, the character of whose papers was suspected, served to swell the cry against Great Britain for violating neutral rights, induced greater severity in the British naval measures, and so directly contributed to the Berlin Decree and the Orders in Council. [411]
Thus had stood the neutralizing trade toward the end of 1805. After Napoleon had finally abandoned all thought of invading England, the victorious campaign of Austerlitz and the peace of Presburg, extending by conquest the boundaries of the empire, extended also the sweep of those municipal regulations, already in force, which excluded British goods from French territory. Early in 1806, beguiling Prussia into hostilities with Great Britain through the occupation of Hanover, the emperor compassed also the closure of the great German rivers. Peace was indeed soon restored; but the Jena campaign, quickly following, delivered Prussia, bound hand and foot, to Napoleon's dictates. In the summer of 1807 the Peace of Tilsit united the empires of the East and West in a common exclusion of British trade, to which Prussia could not but accede. Great Britain thus found herself face to face with no mere municipal regulations of one or two countries, but with a great political combination aiming at her destruction through the commerce which was her life. Nor was this combination merely one of those unfriendly acts which seeks its end by peaceful means, like the Non-Intercourse Acts of America. The British cabinet was perfectly informed that the minor states were to be coerced, by direct military force, into concurrence with the commercial policy of France and Russia,—a concurrence essential to its success.
It was necessary for Great Britain to meet this threatening conjunction, with such measures as should reduce the proposed injury to an amount possible for her to bear, until the inevitable revulsion came. She found ready to her hand the immense unprincipled system of neutralized vessels, and by means of them and of veritable neutrals she proposed to maintain her trade with the Continent. To do so, without reversing the general lines of her policy, as laid down in the Orders in Council, it was necessary to supply each neutral employed with a clear and unmistakable paper, which would insure beyond peradventure the respect of British cruisers for a class of vessels they had been accustomed to regard with suspicion. It would not do that a ship engaged in maintaining a British trade that was in great danger of extinction should be stopped by their own cruisers. The wording of the licenses was therefore emphatically sweeping and forcible. They protected against detention the vessel carrying one, whatever the flag she flew (the French flag alone being excepted), and directed that "the vessel shall be allowed to proceed, notwithstanding all the documents which accompany the ship and cargo may represent the same to be destined to any neutral or hostile port, or to whomsoever such property may belong." [412] These broad provisions were necessary, for the flags flown, except that of the United States, were those of nations which had, willingly or under duress, entered the Continental System; and the papers, having to undergo the scrutiny of hostile agents at the ports of arrival, had to be falsified, or, as it was euphoniously called, "simulated," to deceive the customs officer, if zealous, or to give him, if lukewarm, fair ground for admitting the goods. The license protected against the British cruiser, which otherwise would have detained the vessel on the ground of her papers, intended to deceive the port officers. "The system of licenses," said an adverse petition, "renders it necessary for the ships employed to be provided with sets of forged, or, as they are termed, simulated papers." [413] Of these, two sets were commonly carried, the paper, the wax for the seals, and other accompaniments being carefully imitated, and signatures of foreign rulers, as of Napoleon and of the President and Secretary of State of the United States, skilfully forged. [414] The firms conducting this business made themselves known to the mercantile community by circular letters. [415]
In this way large fleets of licensed vessels under the flags of Prussia, Denmark, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, Kniphausen, and other almost unknown German principalities, as well as many American merchant ships, went yearly to the Baltic laden with British and colonial produce, and returned with the timber, hemp, tallow, and grain of the North. They entered St. Petersburg and every port in the Baltic, discharged, loaded with the return cargo, and then repaired to a common rendezvous; whence, when collected to the number of about five hundred, they sailed for Great Britain under convoy of ships of war, to protect them against the privateers that swarmed in the Sound and North Sea. [416] Crushed between England and France, the Danish seamen, who would not come into the licensed service of the former, had lost their livelihood and had turned in a body to privateering, in the practice of which they fell little short of piracy; [417] and French privateers also found the ground profitable for cruising.
It was to this disposition of the north countries, as well as to conciliate the United States, that was probably due the Order in Council of April 26, 1809; which, while preserving the spirit, and probably securing the advantages of those of November, 1807, nevertheless formally and in terms revoked the latter, except so far as expressly stated in the new edict. The constructive, or paper, blockade, which under the former orders extended to every port whence the British flag was excluded, was now narrowed down to the coasts of Holland, France, and so much of Italy as was under Napoleon's immediate dominion. The reasons assigned for this new measure were "the divers events which had taken place since the date of the former orders, affecting the relations between Great Britain and the territories of other powers." The Spanish peninsula, being now in open and general revolt against Napoleon, was of course exempted; and southern Italy, by its nearness to Malta and Sicily, one a possession and the other an ally of England, might more readily be supplied from them than by neutrals coming from a greater distance. The maintenance of the blockade of Holland was particularly favorable to British trade. By that means the great articles of continental consumption could reach Holland and France, direct, only by British license, which meant that they came from England; while, if carried from a neutral country to the German rivers, to the Hanse towns, or to the Baltic, as the new Order allowed them to be, they had to be brought thence to the regions more immediately under Napoleon's government by land carriage, which would so raise their price as not to conflict with the British licensed trade. Thus the condition of the suffering neutral populations was relieved, without loosening the pressure upon France; and some of the offence given to the neutral carriers was removed. Another advantage accrued to Great Britain from thus throwing open the trade to the Baltic to all neutrals; for the great demand and high prices of naval equipment would induce them to bring these to the British market and arsenals, in preference to other countries.
This Order was issued at the moment when the British minister at Washington was assuring the American government that the Orders in Council would be wholly withdrawn on the 10th of June following. [418] At the same time the French and Austrians were drawing near to each other on the fields of Germany. On the 6th of April the Archduke Charles issued his address to the Austrian army, and on the 10th crossed the Inn, moving toward Bavaria. On the 12th Napoleon quitted Paris to place himself at the head of his troops, which had already preceded him, but were then scattered in different positions, in sore need of his directing hand. On the 17th he was in their midst. On the same day the first collision occurred with Davout's corps under the walls of Ratisbon. Five days of active manœuvring and hard fighting succeeded, ending with the battle of Eckmuhl; after which the Archduke, outgeneralled and defeated, fell back into Bohemia. On the 12th of May Vienna surrendered, and on the 13th Napoleon entered the Austrian capital for the second time in his career.
In the same eventful week, and on the very day of the battle of Eckmuhl, Sir Arthur Wellesley again landed at Lisbon to begin his memorable four years of command in the Peninsula. Napoleon had relinquished to Soult the pursuit of Sir John Moore, while still in mid-career; and after the embarkation of the British army from Coruña and the surrender of that city, January 16-26, 1809, the marshal was ordered to invade Portugal. After a difficult series of operations, Oporto was reached and stormed on the 29th of March; but Soult lacked the means to push further south. Wellesley, on his arrival, at once decided to march against him, in preference to attacking the French forces in Spain on the line of the Tagus. On the 12th of May, the same day that Vienna surrendered, the British troops crossed the Douro, Soult was forced to evacuate Oporto in haste, retreated to the northward, and re-entered Spain. The British general then returned with his army to the Tagus, and on the 27th of June advanced along that line into Spain. On the 28th of July he fought the battle of Talavera; but, though victorious, the failure of the Spanish troops to support him, their unreliable character as soldiers, and the want of provisions, compelled him to return at the end of August into Portugal, where he took up a position close to the frontier.
The French movements in Spain were rendered indecisive by lack of unity in the direction of the armies, due to the military incapacity of the king and the jealousies of the different marshals. The same early summer months were passed by Napoleon in a desperate struggle on the banks of the Danube, below Vienna. Though the capital had fallen, the Austrian army still remained, chastened but not subdued, and now confronted him on the north side of the stream under a general of a high order of merit, if inferior to the great emperor. To cross from the south to the north bank of the broad river, in the face of such a foe, was no light undertaking even for Napoleon. The first attempt began on the 20th of May; and during the two succeeding days the French army passed slowly across the insufficient bridges which alone could be thrown, for lack of proper material. During the 21st and 22d continued the strife, known in history as the battle of Essling; and on the latter day some sixty thousand French troops were in action with the Austrians, when the great bridge, joining the south shore to the island of Lobau in mid-stream, gave way before a freshet, which had already raised the waters of the Danube by fourteen feet. The supply of ammunition to the engaged troops ceased, and it therefore became impossible to retain the positions already gained. During the night of the 22d the corps on the north side were withdrawn into the island; and for the next six weeks Napoleon was untiringly occupied in providing materials for bridges which would be sure not to fail him. At last, when all was prepared, the army again crossed, and on the 6th of July was fought the memorable battle of Wagram. Terminating in the defeat of the Austrians, it was followed on the 12th by an armistice; and a definitive treaty of peace was ratified at Vienna on the 15th of October. Austria surrendered all her remaining sea-board on the Adriatic, besides portions of her interior territory, and again acceded to the prohibition of British goods of all kinds within her dominions.