7. That every vessel which, by a false declaration, contravenes the foregoing dispositions, shall be seized, and the ship and cargo confiscated as English property; and that the councils of prizes at Paris and at Milan are authorized to take cognisance of whatever cases might arise in the empire and in Italy, under this article; the whole instrument winding up with orders to communicate its provisions to the kings of Spain, Naples, Holland, Etruria, and to all others the allies of the French, whose subjects, as well as the subjects of France, “were victims of the injuries and barbarity of the English maritime code.”
Napoleon’s skill and duplicity.
These extraordinary measures having been long conceived by Napoleon, were now, in the full tide of his continental victories, launched against the commerce of England. It will be seen by the calm perusal of this famous but outrageous document, how well Napoleon knew how to frame his edicts in a form to captivate the multitude, to mask his ulterior objects under the appearance of liberty, and to assume the character of a redresser of the wrongs of nations oppressed by the alleged malignity of England. But his staunchest encomiasts have scarcely dared to justify this atrocious decree, or to support his pretence that it was merely issued to compel the English to renounce the supremacy over the ocean, or to intimidate the agents connected with English shipping, and principally the merchants of the Hanseatic towns, whom he stigmatised as “smugglers by profession,” as they had contrived, in spite of the raging of hostilities, as all merchants will contrive, to pour into the continent every description of merchandise.[266]
M. Thiers states[267] that Talleyrand knew nothing of this decree until it was made public, although Napoleon had despatched extraordinary couriers to the governments of Holland, Spain, and Italy with orders to some, and a peremptory summons to others, to carry it into immediate execution. Indeed Marshal Mortier, who had already invaded Hesse, was ordered to proceed with all speed to the Hanseatic towns, Bremen, Hamburg, and Lubeck, and to seize not only those towns but the ports of Mecklenberg and of Swedish Pomerania, as far as the mouths of the Oder. He was further instructed, by occupying the rich entrepôts of these towns, to seize all goods of English origin, to arrest the English merchants, to transport to Germany a certain number of seamen taken from the flotilla of Boulogne, in order that they might cruise in boats at the mouths of the Elbe and Weser, and to sink at once every merchant vessel suspected of attempting to run the blockade.
Russian campaign conceived.
While carrying into effect all over Europe “the continental system,” shadowed forth in this decree, in retaliation, as Napoleon alleged, of the English “paper blockade,” and fulminating his memorable manifesto against England, its author, as is now confessed, was meditating a march to the Vistula, to compel Russia, the only remaining friend and ally of England, to turn against her, while he at the same time attempted to turn the Poles against Russia, by amusing them with the silly notion of the restoration of the kingdom of Poland under the benign protection of France, and to work upon the Sultan of Turkey, with a view to excluding England from the whole of Europe, and thus “to achieve the command of the ocean by land.”
Berlin decree enforced.
The news of the Berlin decree did not, however, create at first so much alarm as might have been anticipated. Its extreme rigour led the majority of shipowners to believe it could not be enforced; though more prudent parties waited to see the upshot of the affair before they hazarded their cargoes on distant voyages. Matters, consequently, remained in a very uncertain state until March 1807, when enterprising shipowners resumed their shipments. These were carried on to a moderate extent, till August 1807, when it was found to a certainty that the Berlin decree had been put in force, and that, wherever the French could send their custom and excise officers, a number of vessels and cargoes had been seized, so that a virtual suspension of all shipping to the continent took place from that date.
Increased rates of insurance.
The seizure of various vessels at Antwerp raised the rates of insurance from England to Holland to fifteen, twenty, and thirty guineas per cent., and, at even these exorbitant rates, the greatest difficulty was experienced in effecting an insurance. It was then when her maritime commerce had suffered severely, that the English government resolved to put in force retaliatory measures of an equally stringent character.