L. 1807. good prize. 6. The half of the confiscated value shall be CHAP. devoted to indemnifying those merchants whose vessels have been seized by the English cruisers, for the losses which they have sustained. 7. No vessel coming directly from England, or any of its colonies, or having touched there since the publication of the present decree, shall be received into any harbour. 8. Every vessel which, by means of a false declaration, shall have effected such entry, shall be liable to seizure, and the ship and cargo shall be confiscated as if they had also belonged to England. 9. The prize-court of Paris is intrusted with the determination of all questions arising out of this decree in France, or the countries occupied by our armies; that of Milan, with the decision of all similar questions in the kingdom of Italy. 10. This decree shall be communicated to the Kings of Spain, Naples, Holland, and Etruria, and to our other allies, whose subjects have been the victims, like our own, of the injustice and barbarity of English legislation. 11. The ministers of foreign affairs, of war, of marine, of finance and of justice, of police, and all postmasters, are charged, each in his own department, xvii. 46, 47. with the execution of the present decree.”1* 1 Martens, Ꭵ. 437. Reg. 1866, Scho ell, ix. 344; and Dum. its rigorous Such was the famous Berlin decree against English 7. commerce, which was only an extension to all Europe of Orders for the declaration and order that all English merchandise execution, should be liable to confiscation, which had been issued by evasion in Napoleon at Leipsic on the 18th of October preceding, and at Hamburg on the 3d November. It was not allowed * Two days after the publication of the Berlin Decree, Napoleon wrote the following highly characteristic letter to Junot, then governor of Paris :-" Take especial care that the ladies of your establishment take Swiss tea; it is as good as that of China. Coffee made from chicory is noways inferior to that of Arabia. Let them make use of these substitutes in their drawing-rooms, instead of amusing themselves with talking politics like Madame de Staël. Let them take care also that no part of their dress is composed of English merchandise; tell that to Madame Junot: if the wives of my chief officers do not set the example, whom can I expect to follow it? It is a contest of life or death between France and England; I must look for the most cordial support in all those by whom I am surrounded."-NAPOLEON to JUNOT, 23d Nov. 1806; D'ABRANTÈS, ix. 287, 288. and its Holland. CHAP L. to remain an instant a dead letter. Orders were despatched in all directions to act upon it with the utmost 1807. rigour. With undisguised reluctance, but trembling hands, the subject monarchs and prefects prepared to carry the stern requisition into execution. So strongly was its unjust character and ruinous tendency felt in Iolland, that Napoleon's own brother, Louis, king of that country, at first positively refused to submit to its iniquity; and at length could only be prevailed on, in the first instance, to promulgate it in the foreign countries occupied by the Dutch troops, reserving its execution in his own dominions till it should be ascertained whether the measures already in force should prove insufficient.* So strongly did this opposition on the part of his brother irritate Napoleon, that he declared in a fit of ill-humour, "that if Louis did not submit to his orders, he would cause domiciliary visits to be made through the whole of Holland." Nevertheless, as Louis perceived, what every 1 Bour. vii. person in the country knew, that this rigorous decree, if 265, 326. fully acted upon, would occasion the total ruin of his i. 295, 297. dominions, it was enforced in a very loose manner in the United Provinces.1 Louis Buon. In the north of Germany, however, it was not only most rigorously put in force, but the decree was made a "This decree," says Louis Buonaparte, King of Holland, " was as unjust as it was impolitic. The command that it should be obeyed by the Kings of Spain, Holland, Naples, and Etruria, was the commencement of universal empire, if it had any meaning; if not so intended, it was senseless. The ground of justification put forth in the decree, viz., 'that England applies the right of blockade, not only to fortified places and the mouths of rivers, but to whole coasts, when the law of nations only authorises that rigour in the case of places so closely invested that they cannot be entered or quitted without danger,' is itself its chief condemnation; for a nation whose vessels can proceed to a distance from its frontiers, even to the waters of the countries belonging to its enemies, is undoubtedly better entitled to say that it blockades coasts and ports, than a nation without a navy to say that it blockades an island surrounded by numerous fleets. In this last case, it is the Continental power which voluntarily places itself in a state of blockade. Besides, wrong cannot authorise wrong, nor injustice injustice. The 4th and 5th articles of the Berlin Decree are atrocious. What! because the English seize merchants travelling from one place to another, and subject the vessels of individuals to ill treatment, shall we, in an age of reason, dare to seize every Englishman, and what pretence for a thousand iniquitous extortions and abuses, CHAP. L. which augmented tenfold its practical oppression. An 1807. 66 8. execution in Germany. army of locusts, in the form of inspectors, customhouseofficers, comptrollers, and other functionaries, fell upon Its rigorous all the countries occupied by the French troops, and the north of made the search for English goods a pretext for innumerable frauds, vexations, and iniquities. They pillaged, they plundered," says Bourrienne, " on a systematic plan, in all the countries of the north of Germany to which my diplomatic mission extended. Rapine was in a manner established by law, and executed with such blind fury, that often the legalised robbers did not know the value of the articles they had seized. All the English merchandise was seized at Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen, and the other Hanse Towns; and Berthier wrote to me, that in that way I should obtain ten millions of francs for the Emperor. In point of fact, I compounded with the proprietors for twenty millions (£800,000); and yet such was the de- 2. mand for these useful articles, that when exposed to sale 27. Louis by the proprietors, after paying this enormous ransom, sur la Holtheir advanced prices brought them a very handsome 309. profit."1 The British government replied to the Berlin Decree, in the first instance, by an order in council of 7th January ever of their property we can lay hold of? This was augmenting and justifying the injury of the English government. The 6th article is barbarous, the 8th still worse. Here, by a single stroke of the pen, the property of all Frenchmen who, up to that period, had traded in English goods, is taken from them: vessels even thrown on the coast by tempests are to be refused admission into any port. Enough has been said to justify the extreme repugnance of the King of Holland to carry this decree into execution: it threw him into the utmost consternation; he felt at once that it would speedily prove the ruin of Holland, and afford a pretext for oppressing it. This measure appeared to him as singular and revolutionary as denationalising. He ventured to write to the Emperor that he believed this gigantic measure to be calculated to effect the ruin of France, and all commercial nations connected with it, before it could ruin England. Obliged, however, to carry it into effect, under the penalty of a complete rupture with France, he only endeavoured to do so in the least illegal and most independent manner possible."--LOUIS BUONAPARTE, Documens sur la Hollande, i. 294, 307, 308. * A striking instance, which has been already noticed, occurred, a few months after the promulgation of the Berlin Decree, of the utter impossibility of carry 1 265, 326, Buon. Doc. lande, i. 295, L. 1807. 9. in council ment. CHAP. 1807, issued by Lord Howick, which, on the preamble of the French decree, and the right of retaliation thence arising to Great Britain, declared, "that no vessel shall First order be permitted to trade from one port to another, if both by the Brit- belong to France or her allies, and shall be so far under ish govern their control as that British vessels are excluded thereJan. 7,1807. from; and the captains of all British vessels are hereby required to warn every neutral vessel coming from any such port, and destined to such other port, to discontinue her voyage; and any vessel, after having been so warned, or after having had a reasonable time allowed it for obtaining information of the present order in council, which shall, notwithstanding, persist in such a voyage to such other port, shall be declared good prize." The object of this order was to deprive the French, and all the nations subject to their control, which had embraced the Continental System, of the advantages of the coasting trade in neutral bottoms; and, considering the much more violent and extensive character of the Berlin Decree, there can be no doubt that it was a very mild and lenient measure of retaliation. This order was relaxed soon after 1 Parl. Deb. as to vessels containing grain or provisions for Great Ann. Reg. Britain, and as to all ships whatever belonging to the Hanse Towns, if employed in any trade to or from the dominions of Great Britain.1 x. 127, 130. 1807, 671, 672. After the treaty of Tilsit, however, had completely subjected the Continent to the dominion or control of the ing such a monstrous system of legislation into execution. Shortly after the Berlin Decree had been issued, there arrived at Hamburg an order for the immediate furnishing of fifty thousand great-coats, two hundred thousand pair of shoes, sixteen thousand coats, thirty-seven thousand waistcoats, and other articles in proportion. The resources of the Hanse Towns were wholly unequal to the supply of so great a requisition in so short a time; and after trying in vain every other expedient, Bourrienne, the French diplomatic agent, was obliged to contract with English houses for the supply, which speedily arrived; and while the Emperor was denouncing the severest penalties against the possession of English goods, and boasting that by the Continental System he had excluded British manufactures from the Continent, his own army was arrayed in the cloths of Leeds and Halifax, and his soldiers would have perished amidst the snows of Eylau but for the seasonable efforts of British industry.-See BOURRIENNE, vii. 292, 294. L. 1807. 10. which led to more rigor ous measure. French Emperor, it soon appeared that some more rigorous CHAP. and extensive system of retaliation was called for. A few months' experience was sufficient to show that the Berlin decree, while it rigorously excluded every species Reasons of British manufacture or colonial produce from the ports a farther and of the Continent, by no means inflicted a proportional injury upon the inhabitants of the countries where its provisions were put in force; and that, in truth, it opened up a most lucrative commerce to the industry and colonies of neutral powers, at the expense of the vital interests of the British empire. By prohibiting, under the penalty of confiscation, the importation of every species of British produce, it necessarily left the market of the Continent open to the manufacturing industry and colonial produce of other states; and this in the end could not but prove highly injurious to English industry. The obvious and direct retaliation would have consisted in prohibiting the importation into the British dominions of the produce of France, or of its dependencies which had embraced the Continental System, whether in their own or neutral bottoms; but it was extremely doubtful whether this would have been by any means a retribution equally injurious. England was essentially a commercial state. The resources from which she maintained the contest were in great part drawn from the produce of her colonies or manufactories; and the general cessation of commercial intercourse, therefore, could not fail to be felt with more severity in her dominions than in the Continental nations. What to them, considered as a whole, was secondary, to her was vital; the suffering which with them would be diffused over a wide circle, to her would be concentrated in the narrow space of a few counties. In these circumstances. some measure seemed indispensable which should inflict upon the enemy not merely the same injustice, but the same suffering which he had occasioned; and, by causing his subjects to feel in their own persons the consequences of his aggression, produce that general discontent which VOL. VIII. I |