A month before, September 17, 1809, peace had been concluded between Russia and Sweden; the latter ceding Finland and engaging to close her ports to all British ships, "with the exception of the importation of salt and colonial productions, which habit had rendered necessary to the people of Sweden." [419] On the 6th of January Napoleon, less merciful than the czar, exacted a convention which allowed only the entry of salt, excluding explicitly the colonial produce permitted by the Russian treaty; in return for which he restored Pomerania to Sweden. [420] Thus were formally closed to Great Britain all the northern ports through which, by the license trade, she had continued to pour her merchandise into the Continent, though in much diminished volume.
It now became Napoleon's great object to enforce the restrictions, which had thus been wrested from vanquished opponents in support of his continental policy, by increased personal vigilance and by urgently reiterated demands, for which he had an undeniable ground in the express terms of his treaties with the sea-board powers. Upon the Continent, except in the Spanish peninsula, the treaty of Vienna was followed by a peace of exhaustion, which lasted nearly three years. The emperor returned to Fontainebleau on the 26th of October, and at once began the dispositions from which he hoped the reduction of Great Britain, but which irresistibly led, step by step, to his own final overthrow. The French army was withdrawn from southern Germany, but gradually; remaining long enough in the various conquered or allied countries to ease the imperial treasury from the expense of their support, according to Napoleon's invariable policy. The evacuation was not completed until the first of June, 1810. A hundred thousand men, chiefly new levies, were directed on Spain, together with the Imperial Guard, the supposed precursor of the emperor himself; but the best of the troops, the hardened corps of Davout and Masséna, were reserved for northern Germany and the Dutch frontiers, to enforce the submission of the people to the continental blockade. Napoleon himself did not go to Spain, and that tedious war dragged wearily on, with greater or less vigor here or there, according to the qualities of the different leaders; but lacking the unity of aim, the concert of action, which nothing but the presence of a master spirit could insure among so many generals of equal rank, imbued with mutual jealousy, and each taxed with a burden that demanded his utmost strength. Around Lisbon, Wellington was preparing the lines of Torres Vedras, and thus striking deep into the soil of the Peninsula a grip from which all the armies of France could not shake him, so long as the navy of Great Britain stood at his back, securing his communications and his line of retreat; but of this Napoleon knew nothing.
It was above all things necessary to bring the Spanish war to an end, and the emperor was heartily weary of it; but still the Continental System constrained him. "Duroc assured me," writes Bourrienne, [421] "that the emperor had more than once shown regret at being engaged in the Spanish war; but since he had the English to fight there, no consideration could have induced him to abandon it, the more so as all that he was then doing was to defend the honor of the Continental System.... He said to Duroc one day, 'I no longer hold to Joseph being king of Spain, and he himself cares little about it. I would place there the first comer, if he could close his ports to the English.'" The military situation in Spain imperatively demanded his own presence; without it the war was interminable. The Spanish ulcer, as he himself aptly termed it, was draining away both men and money; and the seat of the trouble was at Lisbon, where the British sea power had at last found the place to set its fangs in his side and gnaw unceasingly. But Napoleon could not resolve either to withdraw from the contest or to superintend it in person. The Spaniards and Portuguese, in the prevailing anarchy, could contribute little, as consumers, to British commerce; whereas the north of Europe, from Holland to St. Petersburg, while yielding a nominal acquiescence, everywhere evaded the blockades with the connivance of their governments. Here, then, in his opinion, was the quarter to strike Great Britain; the Peninsula was to her but a drain of men and money, which the custom of northern and central Europe alone enabled her to endure. The emperor therefore decided to sustain both efforts, the peninsular war and the northern continental blockade; to divide his strength between the two, instead of combining it upon either; and to give his immediate attention to the North. Thus it was that the Sea Power of Great Britain, defying his efforts otherwise, forced him into the field of its own choosing, lured him, the great exemplar of concentrated effort, to scatter his forces, and led him along a path which at last gave no choice except retreat in discomfiture or advance to certain ruin.
Napoleon advanced. Since the Jena campaign he had occupied with French and Polish troops the fortresses of Glogau, Custrin, Stettin, and Dantzic. By these he controlled the Oder and the Vistula, and kept a constant rein upon Prussia, so as to exact the war indemnities she still owed, to check any movement upon her part, and to enforce the demands of his policy. Davout, the most severe and thorough of the French marshals, took command of these fortresses, as also of Hanover and of the Hanse towns, on which likewise imperial troops were quartered. At the mouth of the Ems his corps was in touch with that of Marshal Oudinot, which stretched thence along the frontiers of Holland to Belgium and Boulogne. Thus the whole sea-board from Boulogne to the Baltic was gripped by French divisions, which in any dispute or doubt powerfully supported the emperor's arguments and sustained the Continental System, both by actual interference and by the constant threat contained in their presence. These measures "were necessary," says M. Thiers [422] "in order to compel the Hanse towns to renounce commercial intercourse with Great Britain, and to coerce Holland, which paid no more attention to the commercial blockade than if it had been governed by an English or a German prince. Even when the governments attempted to keep good faith the communities were little affected, and pursued a contraband trade which the most vigorous measures failed to prevent. Napoleon determined to conduct in person this kind of warfare."
Holland was the first victim. As has before been said, Louis Bonaparte strove continually to thwart the operation of the system. Napoleon now demanded a strict execution of the blockade, and for that purpose that the guard of the Dutch coasts and of the mouths of the rivers should be entrusted to French custom-house officers. [423] He also required that the American vessels which had entered Dutch ports under the king's permission should be confiscated. Louis, though willing to concede the former conditions and to exclude Americans and other neutrals thenceforward, could not bring himself to give up those that had entered under his own authority; but, having been induced to visit his brother in Paris in November, 1809, he was by threats and persuasion brought to yield every point demanded. It was during these interviews that Napoleon, giving way to one of those transports of passion which increased with him as years went by, again betrayed the fatal compulsion under which England held him, and the purposes already forming in his mind. "It is the English," he cried, "who have forced me to aggrandize myself unceasingly. [424] But for them I would not have united Naples, Spain, Portugal to my empire. I have willed to struggle and to extend my coasts, in order to increase my resources. If they keep on, they will oblige me to join Holland to my shore lines, then the Hanse towns, finally Pomerania, and perhaps even Dantzic." Then he suggested that Louis should, by indirect means, convey to the British cabinet the impending danger of Napoleon's proceeding to these extremities, in the hopes that apprehension might induce it to offer terms of peace, in order to avert the union of Holland to the empire.
A Dutch banker, M. Labouchère, who had extensive relations with prominent houses, was accordingly dispatched, though without formal credentials, and opened the matter to the ministers; but the latter showed little interest. Whatever the nominal state of Holland, they said, it is really only a French dependency; and as for the extension of the Continental System, they expected no less than an increase of tyranny with the increase of the emperor's sway. Louis was then sent back to Holland, having further agreed to cede to France all his provinces west of the Rhine, and to line the coasts of the remainder with an army partly Dutch, partly French, but commanded by a French general. Overwhelmed with mortification, he cherished at times impotent thoughts of resistance, which issued only in insults to the French Chargé and in impediments thrown in the way of the French army of occupation and the customs officers. Finally, in June, 1810, a body of French troops having presented themselves before Harlem were denied entrance; and at about the same time a servant of the French embassy was mobbed at the Hague. Napoleon at once ordered Oudinot to enter, not only Harlem, but Amsterdam, with drums beating and colors flying, while the French corps to the north and south of Holland crossed the frontiers to support the army of occupation. On the first of July Louis signed his abdication, which was published on the 3d; by which time he had secretly left the kingdom for an unknown destination. On the 9th Holland was united to the empire by an imperial decree. The coveted American ships with their cargoes were sequestrated, and the large accumulations of colonial produce formed under Louis's lax blockade were made to contribute to the imperial treasury, by being admitted into France upon payment of a duty of fifty per cent. But, for this immediate benefit, the thrifty Hollanders were to pay by an unrelenting exclusion of trade, by the quartering of foreign troops, and by the conscription, both land and naval.
The empire now extended to the Ems; but still, with persevering cunning, smugglers and neutrals contrived to introduce tropical produce and British manufactures to some extent. Owing to the restrictions, indeed, the goods rose from fifty to a hundred per cent over the London prices, but still they came; and, in consequence at once of the British blockade of the French coast and of the emperor's jealous support of that blockade by his own decrees, the people of France had to pay far dearer than the other continental nations. [425] Thus were Napoleon's objects doubly thwarted; for, while he aimed at breaking down Great Britain by exclusion from the rest of Europe, he also meant to make France, as the corner stone of his power, the most prosperous nation, and to secure for her the continental market which her rival was to lose. [426] All foreign articles decreased in price in proportion as the distance from Paris increased. Before the union, coffee and sugar cost in his capital three and four times what they did in Holland. He now became unremitting and threatening in his representations to the Northern states. Exacting the last farthing of Prussia at one breath, with the next he offered to deduct from the debt the value of all licensed cargoes seized by her. He menaced Sweden with the reoccupation of Pomerania, if the great fleets under British license were admitted to Stralsund. It was indeed to the Northern and Baltic ports that four fifths of the licensed vessels went; only a small proportion sailed to the blockaded ports of France and Holland. [427] By dint of urgent representations and the presence of the French troops, he contrived to have seized the greater part of a convoy of six hundred sail, which entered the Baltic in the summer of 1810; but which, being delayed by head winds, had not reached their ports in time to escape the movements of his troops. The Northern trade had taken on immense dimensions in 1809, when Napoleon was battling about Vienna and the governments were not under his eye; but this year he could make himself felt, and some forty million dollars' worth of British property was seized in the northern ports. [428] The blow seriously affected the already overstrained commercial system of Great Britain, and its results were shown by the fall in the number of licenses issued, from eighteen thousand in 1810 to seventy-five hundred in 1811.
The emperor went further. Deciding, after long consideration, that fifty per cent on the London prices represented the profits of smugglers of colonial goods, he determined to allow the introduction of the latter upon payment of duty to that extent. Characteristically unwilling to appear to take a step backward, he extended this permission only to produce not coming from British colonies; but it was understood, and officially intimated to the customs authorities, that the inquiry should not be rigorous. In this subterfuge, says M. Thiers, consisted the whole combination. [429] Having thus constituted a lawful variety of colonial products in the empire and in the subject countries, the emperor felt at liberty to execute one of those vast confiscations, which contributed so materially to his military chest. All collections of these goods existing within his reach were to be seized at the same time, and, if they had not been declared, should be condemned; if they had, should pay half their value, in money or in kind. "Thus it was hoped to seize everywhere at the same time, and to take for the treasury of Napoleon, or for that of his allies, the half in case of declaration, the whole in case of dissimulation. It can be conceived what terror would be caused to the numerous accomplices of British commerce." [430] This measure was established by a decree of August 5, 1810, and accepted by all the continental states, except Russia. The latter refused to go beyond her obligations by the treaty of Tilsit, and took the occasion to express her uneasiness at seeing the French troops gradually extending along the northern seas, and even as close to her own borders as Dantzic. The impossibility of cordial co-operation in the immense sacrifices demanded by the Continental System was clearly shown by this refusal; but by no less vigorous means could Great Britain be reached, and Napoleon could not recede. The decree was extended outside the boundaries of the empire, to any depot of colonial goods within four days' march of the frontiers, in Switzerland, in Germany, in Prussia, in the Hanse towns. Large sums of money were realized, and the government became a dealer in groceries when the payments were made in kind. The pressure of the French troops extended everywhere, and French flotillas cruised along the coasts of the North Sea, whether within the limits of the empire or not, in the mouths and along the course of the great rivers, to seal them more completely.
The decree of August 5 was carried out by the armed hand. "Wherever my troops are," wrote Napoleon to Prussia, "I suffer no English smuggling." On this ground French authorities executed the mandate in the Prussian port of Stettin, which was in the military occupation only of his troops. "All the ports of this once potent kingdom," says a contemporary magazine, "are filled with French soldiers, who seize and burn every article which can possibly have passed through British hands. Prussia is described as in a deplorable state, almost disorganized and no employment for industry." [431] Similar action was taken in the Hanse towns with no other justification. The king of Westphalia was ordered to withdraw his army from the northern part of the kingdom, that French soldiers might enter for the same purpose. In Switzerland the native authorities were permitted to act, but a French customs officer supervised. On the 18th of August the emperor directed the military occupation of the territory of Lubeck, Lauenburg, Hamburg, and all the west bank of the Elbe, for a length of fifty miles from its mouth; thence the line extended, at about the same distance from the sea, to Bremen, and thence to the frontiers of Holland, taking in the little states of Arenberg and Oldenburg. This military occupation was but the precursor of the annexation of these countries a few months later, which led to the first overt act of displeasure on the part of the czar. In justification of the step, one of a series which alienated Alexander and led up to the Russian war, was alleged the purpose of sustaining the continental blockade as the only means of destroying Great Britain. "General Morand," so read the orders, "is charged to take all necessary measures for the prevention of smuggling. For this purpose he will establish a first line of troops from Holstein to East-Frisia, and a second line in rear of the first." [432]
On the 6th of October the viceroy of Italy was directed to occupy with Italian troops all the Italian cantons of Switzerland, and to sequestrate at once all colonial or other contraband merchandise. The order was accompanied with Napoleon's usual formula: "This ought to bring in several millions." Eugene was to explain that this was only a step similar to the occupation of northern Germany, that it did not invade the neutrality of Switzerland; and he was to be particularly careful that the emperor's hand did not appear. "That there should be a quarrel between you and Switzerland will do no harm." [433] On the 19th of October Prussia was notified that, if she did not efficiently preclude the passage of British and colonial merchandise through her states, the French army would enter them; and the French minister was directed to leave Berlin if satisfaction was not given. [434]