Coincidently with these principal measures, the correspondence of Napoleon teems with orders, complaints, remonstrances, reprimands, queries, all showing how bent his mind was on the one purpose. Having turned over the command of the army in Portugal, directed against the British, to his ablest marshal, Masséna, he was concentrating his own energies on the blockade. At the same time, he occupied himself with stringent measures for protecting the industries of France in the European market. No man ever held more thoroughly than the emperor that element of the theory of protection, that the government can manage the business of the people better than themselves. His kingdom of Italy should not use Swiss nor German cottons; such goods must come only from France. [435] Italian raw silks shall go nowhere but to France, [436] and then only to Lyon. The whole export trade is in his hands by a system of licenses, [437] apparently borrowed from Great Britain, and which at this time he greatly extended. On the 25th of July an order was given that no ship could clear from a port of the empire for abroad without a license, signed by the emperor himself. On September 15 another decree was issued, [438] allowing licensed vessels to sail from Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck for French ports. The license was to cost twelve dollars per ton, and was good only for the return voyage; but the vessel upon arriving in France was exempt from all question as to search by British cruisers, and might even land all her cargo in a British port,—in other words, she was excepted from the Berlin and Milan decrees. She could not, however, enter France with any British goods. Returning, she was to load with wines or other French produce, except grain or flour. Under the rival license systems new and curious methods of evasion grew up. Compelled to take French articles which were not wanted in Great Britain, as well as those that were, the former were put on board of so inferior a quality that they could be thrown into the sea without loss. At either end smuggling boats met the licensed vessel before entering port, and took from her forbidden articles. Ships of either nation, with foreign flag, and simulated papers, were to be seen in each other's ports. [439] The British, as a commercial people, were naturally willing to give a larger extension to this evasive trade; but the emperor would not grant anything that he thought could help his enemy, even though it benefited his own people. He believed, and rightly, that Great Britain was receiving more harm than France; he did not realize that, from her immense wealth and commercial aptitudes, she could endure the process longer.
The decree of August 5 admitted colonial goods, but excluded British manufactures. On the 19th of October was issued another edict, directing that all such manufactured goods, wherever found in the emperor's dominions, or even in countries in the mere military occupation of his troops, should be publicly burned. This was remorselessly done. "Persons who at this epoch were living in the interior of France can form no idea of the desolation which so savage a measure spread through countries accustomed to live by commerce. What a spectacle offered to peoples impoverished and lacking everything, to see the burning of articles the distribution of which would have been an alleviation to their sufferings!... What a means of attacking conquered peoples, to irritate their privations by the destruction of a number of articles of the first necessity!" [440] "The tampering with the mails," says Savary, the Minister of Police, "caused me to make some very sad reflections, and forced me to admit that we were not advancing toward tranquillity; and that, if the party against us were not yet formed, at least all sentiments were agreed, and that a single reverse would be enough to ruin us.... The more we disturbed the relations of Europe with England, the more, on all sides, men sought to draw together; and we remained with the odious epithets given to us by all those whom our measures thwarted." [441] "There was already an understanding from one end of Europe to the other; every cabinet earnestly wished the overthrow of Napoleon, as the people also wished, with at least equal ardor, a state of things less stifling for their industry and trade. Despite the terror inspired by Napoleon's name, there was, side by side with that terror, that damnable Continental System which settled the question; it was necessary either to fight or to succumb. The people of the North were under an imperious necessity to break that yoke of lead, which made the custom house the prime agent of the governments of Europe." [442]
Russia had refused to accede to any steps beyond her engagements of Tilsit; but nowhere was discontent more profound, nowhere opposition more to be dreaded. While Napoleon was indisputably leading Great Britain into greater and greater embarrassment, by the depreciation of her manufactures and by the accumulations of unsalable sugars and coffees in her warehouses, he was also ruining the agriculture of Russia and the revenues of her nobles. Despite the relief afforded by the great licensed fleets, the Tilsit agreements so embarrassed trade, that hemp, which in 1802 was worth £32 the ton in London, had reached, in 1809, £118; [443] and other products of the North rose in the same proportion. At the same time sixty thousand tons of coffee lay in the London warehouses, unsalable at sixpence the pound, while the price on the Continent was from four to five shillings, and in places even seven shillings. [444] No better proof of the efficacious co-working of Napoleon's system and of the British Orders can be offered; but the question was one of endurance. Which could stand such a strain longer? In Russia matters were fast approaching a climax. The czar felt the ground trembling under his feet; [445] and, while he renewed his protestations of fidelity to Tilsit and Erfurt, he had to see Napoleon, by his licenses, evading the restrictions which he at the same time was pressing his ally to enforce more rigorously. In vain was the explanation offered that these licenses were but in furtherance of the restrictive system; that France was unloading her surplus products upon England, while refusing to receive aught but specie in return; and that in consequence the exchange was going more and more against Great Britain. The czar knew better; and the repeated and urgent letters of the emperor, becoming, as was the wont of Napoleon's requests, rather peremptory than entreating, to seize and confiscate all neutral ships entering Russian ports, fell on deaf ears. Alexander feared war; but he remembered his father's fate, and feared assassination more.
On the 10th of December, 1810, the emperor sent a message to the Senate announcing that he had annexed to the empire the Hanse towns, together with the region on the North Sea intervening between them and Holland, which had been as yet only in military occupation. In the same paper he expressed his intention of making a canal from the Elbe to Lubeck, by which the empire should be brought into direct water communication with the Baltic. This assurance was not calculated to ease the anxiety of the czar as to the eastward progress of France; but the measure was accompanied by a circumstance of personal affront, peculiarly dangerous to an alliance which depended chiefly upon the personal relations of two absolute sovereigns. The Grand Duke of Oldenburg, one of the countries thus unceremoniously annexed, was uncle to the czar; and though Napoleon proposed to indemnify him for the material loss, by territory taken in the interior of Germany, Alexander would not accept such satisfaction nor name any compensation that he would think adequate. He did not threaten war, but he refused to surrender his grievance, and reserved his right to retaliate an injury.
Meantime very serious results were developing, both in Great Britain and France, from the strained and abnormal conditions of commerce and the shocks caused by Napoleon's sudden and tremendous blows at credit, by his wide-spread confiscations, and by the Baltic seizures. The triple array of French troops that lined the shores of the Continent, re-enforced by the belt of British cruisers girding the coasts from the Ems to Bayonne, and from the Pyrenees to Orbitello, created a barrier which neither mercantile ingenuity nor popular want could longer evade to a degree that afforded any real measure of relief. The stolid, though as yet peaceable, measures of resistance taken by the United States had added seriously to the embarrassments of Great Britain, while rather furthering the policy of Napoleon, however contrary this was to the interests of France. During the years 1808 and 1809, the continuance of the embargo and of the non-intercourse acts, closing the North American market, coincided with the opening of the South American; and a great rush was made by the British mercantile community for the latter, although it was not, by the number of the inhabitants, nor by their wealth, nor by their habits of life, at all able to take the place of the consumers lost in Europe and North America. The goods sent out in great quantities were injudiciously chosen, as well as far in excess of the possible requirements; so they remained unsold, and for the most part uncared for and unhoused, on the beach in South American ports. The judgment of men seemed to become unhinged amid the gloom and perplexity of the time, and the frantic desire of each to save himself increased the confusion. Mere movement, however aimless or dangerous, is less intolerable than passive waiting.
The years 1809 and 1810 were consequently marked by an extensive movement in trade, which carried with it an appearance of prosperity in great part delusive. Immense imports were made from the Baltic, and from Italy, at the moment that Napoleon's coils were tightening around them; large shipments also to the North, to South America, and to the West Indies. In the United States only was there a transient period of solid transactions; for in May, 1810, the Non-Intercourse Act expired by its own limitations. A proviso, however, was immediately enacted that if, before the 3d of March, 1811, either Great Britain or France should recall their decrees so far as they affected the United States, the Act should, within three months of the revocation, revive against the power that maintained its edicts. Napoleon contrived to satisfy President Madison that his Berlin and Milan decrees were so recalled on the first of November; but Great Britain refused to consider the terms of the withdrawal satisfactory, as in truth they were not. The Order in Council of April 26, 1809, remained in force; and non-intercourse between the United States and Great Britain again obtained in February, 1811, and continued to the outbreak of the war in 1812.
Toward the end of 1810 the results of the various causes of trouble began to be heavily felt. Very scant returns coming from South America, the shippers were unable to discharge their debts to the manufacturers; and the embarrassments of the latter were felt by their workmen. From the West Indies the returns came in tropical produce, which could be realized only on the Continent, long since partly and now effectually closed. A succession of bad seasons had necessitated the importation of large quantities of grain from Holland and France, especially in 1809, when an abundant harvest there, coinciding with a very bad crop in England, induced Napoleon to enter upon his license system, and to authorize an export which in three years drained £10,000,000 in specie from the enemy. The freights to the licensed carriers, mostly neutrals or hostile, at least in name, were also paid in specie, which was thus taken out of the country; and there was a further drain of gold for the maintenance of the fleets in distant parts of the world and for the war in Spain, which now took the place of the former subsidies to allies as a consumer of British treasure. Thus arose a scarcity of specie. In November, 1810, the bankruptcies were two hundred and seventy-three, against one hundred and thirty of the same month a year before. Stoppages and compositions equalled in number half the traders of the kingdom. "The general failures have wonderfully affected manufactures, and want of confidence prevails between manufacturer and merchant." A month later "bankruptcies continue to increase, and confidence is nearly at an end. Neither gold nor silver is often to be seen. The trade of the manufacturing towns is at stand; and houses fail, not every day, but every hour. In the great sea-ports, the king's stores are full of all kinds of colonial produce which find no sale. Despondency is increased by the accounts from the Continent, which represent all the sea-ports and internal depots of trade to be full of French soldiers, who seize and burn every article which can possibly have passed through British hands." As the shadows darkened, murmurs grew louder and louder against the once popular [446] Orders in Council, to which all the evil was now attributed. The press changed its tone upon them, and a gradual agitation for their repeal grew up around the Opposition leaders; who, from the moment they lost power, had never ceased to inveigh against the retaliatory system framed by the ministry.
But while disaster was thus thickening about Great Britain, the case of France was worse. It was quite true, as the emperor said, that the people could live without sugar and coffee, and that necessity would in time find ways to produce many articles the import of which was denied her; but such warped applications of her industry and ingenuity, even when finally realized, could neither replace the loss of her natural channels of effort nor for any length of time cope with a nation, which, however momentarily shaken by unprecedented conditions, yet kept power continually to renew her strength by contact, through the sea, with new sources. That Great Britain would do this, her traditions and the habits of her people were the pledge; and the credit of the government bore witness to it through all. In the early part of 1811 a serious commercial crisis occurred in France, causing great anxiety to Napoleon. It was his particular wish to keep this corner-stone of the empire prosperous and contented under the immense demands made upon it for men, and the bitter sufferings entailed by the conscription. But prosperity was hard to secure with all the sea outlets of her manufactures and agriculture closed, with only a continental market, and that impoverished by the universal cessation of trade and further enfeebled by the exhausting demands made upon the peoples to support the armies quartered upon them. The British blockade of the French, Dutch, and Italian coasts forbade absolutely, except to the limited license trade, the water carriage of raw materials essential to manufactures, and prevented the export of French luxuries. "The state of France as it fell under my observation in 1807," wrote an American traveller, "exhibited a very different perspective" from that of Great Britain. "The effects of the loss of external trade were everywhere visible,—in the commercial cities half-deserted, and reduced to a state of inaction and gloom truly deplorable; in the inland towns, in which the populace is eminently wretched, and where I saw not one indication of improvement, but on the contrary numbers of edifices falling to ruin; on the high roads, where the infrequency of vehicles and travellers denoted but too strongly the decrease of internal consumption, and the languor of internal trade; and among the inhabitants of the country, particularly of the South, whose misery is extreme, in consequence of the exorbitant taxes, and of the want of outlet for their surplus produce. In 1807 the number of mendicants in the inland towns was almost incredible.... The fields were principally cultivated by women." [447]