Russell never misunderstood the situation or misled his Government. Although Napoleon’s habit of deception was the theme of every historian and moralist, the more remarkable trait was his frequent effort to avoid or postpone an evidently necessary falsehood, and, above all, his incapacity to adhere to any consistent untruth. Napoleon was easily understood by men of his own stamp; but he was not wholly misunderstood by men like Armstrong and Russell. He did not choose to revoke the decrees, and he made no secret of his reasons even to the American government.
In the spring of 1811 the Emperor was surrounded by difficulties caused by his interference with trade. The financial storm which overspread England in 1810 extended to France in the following winter, and not only swept away credit and capital throughout the empire, but also embarrassed Napoleon’s finances and roused fresh resistance to his experiments on commerce. The resistance irritated him, and he showed his anger repeatedly in public. At the Tuileries, March 17, he addressed some deputies of the Hanseatic League in a tone which still betrayed an effort at self-control:[308]—
“The Decrees of Berlin and Milan are the fundamental laws of my empire. They cease to have effect only for nations that defend their sovereignty and maintain the religion of their flag. England is in a state of blockade for nations that submit to the decrees of 1806, because the flags so subjected to English laws are denationalized; they are English. Nations on the contrary that are sensible of their dignity, and that find resources enough in their courage and strength for disregarding the blockades by notice, commonly called paper blockades, and enter the ports of my empire, other than those really blockaded,—following the recognized usage and the stipulations of the Treaty of Utrecht,—may communicate with England; for them England is not blockaded. The Decrees of Berlin and Milan, founded on the nature of things, will form the constant public law of my empire during the whole time that England shall maintain her Orders in Council of 1806 and 1807, and shall violate the stipulations of the Treaty of Utrecht in that matter.”
The sudden appearance of the Treaty of Utrecht had an effect of comedy; but the speech itself merely reasserted the rules of 1806 and 1807, which time had not made more acceptable to neutrals. Again and again, by every means in his power and with every accent of truth, Napoleon asserted that his decrees were not and never should be revoked, nor should they be even suspended except for the nations that conformed to them. Though America had rejected this law in 1807, she might still if she chose accept it in 1811; but certainly she could not charge Napoleon with deception or concealment of his meaning. A week after the address to the Hanseatic deputies, on Sunday, March 24, he made another and a more emphatic speech. The principal bankers and merchants of Paris came to the Tuileries to offer their congratulations on the birth of a son. Napoleon harangued them for more than half an hour in the tone he sometimes affected, of a subaltern of dragoons,—rude, broken, and almost incoherent, but nervous and terrifying:—
“When I issued my Decrees of Berlin and Milan, England laughed; you made fun of me; yet I know my business. I had maturely weighed my situation with England; but people pretended that I did not know what I was about,—that I was ill-advised. Yet see where England stands to-day!... Within ten years I shall subject England. I want only a maritime force. Is not the French empire brilliant enough for me? I have taken Holland, Hamburg, etc., only to make my flag respected. I consider the flag of a nation as a part of herself; she must be able to carry it everywhere, or she is not free. That nation which does not make her flag respected is not a nation in my eyes. The Americans—we are going to see what they will do. No Power in Europe shall trade with England. Six months sooner or later I shall catch up with it (je l’attendrai),—my sword is long enough for that. I made peace at Tilsit only because Russia undertook to make war on England. I was then victorious. I might have gone to Wilna; nothing could stop me but this engagement of Russia.... At present I am only moderately desirous of peace with England. I have the means of making a navy; I have all the products of the Rhine; I have timber, dock-yards, etc.; I have already said that I have sailors. The English stop everything on the ocean; I will stop everything I find of theirs on the Continent. Their Miladies, their Milords,—we shall be quit! (Leurs Miladies, leurs Milords—nous serons à deux de jeu!)”
This hurried talk, which was rather a conversation than a speech, lasted until the Emperor’s voice began to fail him. He flung defiance in the face of every nation in the Christian world, and announced in no veiled terms the coming fate of Russia. His loquacity astounded his hearers, and within a few days several reports of what he said, differing in details, but agreeing in the main, were handed privately about Paris, and were on their way to St. Petersburg, London, and New York[309]. One account varied in regard to the words used about America:—
“The Decrees of Berlin and Milan are the fundamental laws of my empire,” began the second report. “As for neutral navigation, I regard the flag as an extension of territory; the Power which lets it be violated cannot be considered neutral. The lot of American commerce will be soon decided. I will favor it if the United States conform to those decrees; in the contrary case, their ships will be excluded from the ports of my empire.”
Russell sent to Monroe these private accounts, adding a few details to show more exactly the Emperor’s meaning. Writing April 4, he said that no American vessel had been allowed an entry since February 4 unless carrying a license; that a secret order had then been given to the custom-house to make no reports on American cases; that the Council of Prizes had suspended its decisions; and that, notwithstanding Cadore’s promise, licenses were still issued. “If the license system,” concluded Russell, “were concerned, as the Duke of Cadore suggests, to favor American commerce during the existence only of the Berlin and Milan Decrees, it is probably necessary to infer from the excuse of that system the continuance of those decrees.”
Left without powers or instructions, Russell could thenceforward do nothing. Remonstrance was worse than useless. “A representation of this kind,” he wrote, “however mildly it might portray the unfriendly and faithless conduct of this Government, might have hastened a crisis which it does not become me to urge.”
At length, April 25, despatches arrived from America enclosing the Non-intercourse Act of March 2 and the secret Act for taking possession of Florida. The President’s accompanying instructions[310] ordered Russell to explain that the different dates fixed by the Proclamation and by the Act for enforcing the non-intercourse against England were owing to the different senses in which Cadore’s letter had been construed in France and America,—the President having assumed that the decrees would have been extinct Nov. 1, 1810, while the French government, “as appears from its official acts, admits only a suspension with a view to a subsequent cessation.” These instructions, as well as Russell’s despatches for the most part, were never communicated to Congress.