Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon was now in a position to turn his attention to England. As she was mistress of the seas, as she had at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 destroyed the French navy, the Emperor was compelled to find other means, if there were any, of humbling the elusive enemy, England, but how? Napoleon now adopted a policy which the Convention and the Directory had originated. Only he gave to it a gigantic application and development. This was the Continental System, or the Continental Blockade. If England could not be conquered directly by French fleets and armies, she might be conquered indirectly.

England's power lay in her wealth, and her wealth came from her factories and her commerce which carried their products to the markets of the world, which brought her the necessary raw materials, and which kept open the fruitful connection with her scattered colonies. Cut this artery, prevent this commerce, close these markets, and her prosperity would be destroyed. Manufacturers would be compelled to shut down their factories. Their employees, thrown out of work, would face starvation. With that doom impending, the working classes and the industrial and commercial classes, threatened with ruin, would resort to terrific pressure upon the English government, to insurrections, if necessary, to compel it to sue for peace. Economic warfare was now to be tried on a colossal scale. By exhausting England's resources it was hoped and expected that England would be exhausted.

By the Berlin Decrees (November, 1806), Napoleon declared a blockade of the British Isles, forbade all commerce with them, all correspondence, all trade in goods coming from England or her colonies, and ordered the confiscation and destruction of all English goods found in France or in any of the countries allied with her. No vessel coming from England or England's colonies should be admitted to their ports. To this England replied by severe Orders in Council, which Napoleon capped by additional decrees, issued from Milan.

This novel form of warfare had very important consequences. This struggle with England dominates the whole period from 1807 to 1814. It is the central thread that runs through all the tangled and tumultuous history of those years. There were plays within the play, complications and struggles with other land nations which sometimes rose to such heights as momentarily to obscure the titanic contest between sea-power and land-power. But the fundamental, all-inclusive contest, to which all else was subsidiary or collateral, was the war to the knife between these two, England and France. Everywhere we see its influence, whether in Spain or Russia, in Rome or Copenhagen, along the Danube or along the Tagus.

The Continental System had this peculiarity, that, to be successful in annihilating English prosperity and power, it must be applied everywhere and constantly. The Continent must be sealed hermetically against English goods. Only then, with their necessary markets closed to them everywhere, would the English be forced to yield. Let there be a leak anywhere, let there be a strip of coast, as in Portugal or Spain or Italy, where English ships could touch and land their goods, and through that leak England could and would penetrate, could and would distribute her wares to eager customers, thus escaping the industrial strangulation intended by the Emperor of the French. This necessity Napoleon saw clearly. It was never absent from his mind. It inspired his conduct at every step. It involved him inevitably and, in the end, disastrously, in a policy of systematic and widespread aggressions upon other countries, consequently in a costly succession of wars.

To close simply the ports of France and of French possessions to English commerce would not at all accomplish the object aimed at. Napoleon must have the support of every other seaboard country in Europe. This he sought to get. He was willing to get it peacefully if he could, prepared to get it forcibly if he must. He secured the adhesion of Russia by the Treaty of Tilsit. Austria and Prussia, having been so decisively beaten, had to consent to apply the system to their dominions. Little Denmark, perforce, did the same when the demand came. Sweden on the other hand adhered to the English alliance. Consequently Russia was urged to take Finland, which belonged to Sweden, with its stretch of coastline and its excellent harbors. Napoleon's brother Louis, King of Holland, would not enforce the blockade, as to do so meant the ruin of Holland. Consequently he was in the end forced to abdicate and Holland was annexed to France (1810). France also annexed the northern coasts of Germany up to Lubeck, including the fine ports of Bremen and Hamburg and the mouths of those rivers which led into central Germany (1810). In Italy the Pope wished to remain neutral but there must be no neutrals, in Napoleon's and also in England's opinion, if it could be prevented. In this case it could. Consequently Napoleon annexed part of the Papal States to the so-called Kingdom of Italy, of which he was himself the King, and part he incorporated directly and without ado into the French Empire (1809). Immediately the Pope excommunicated him and preached a holy war against the impious conqueror. Napoleon in turn took the Pope prisoner and kept him such for several years. This was injecting the religious element again into politics, as in the early days of the Revolution, to the profound embitterment of the times. Some of these events did not occur immediately after Tilsit but did occur in the years from 1809 to 1811.

What did occur immediately after Tilsit was a famous and fatal misadventure in Portugal and Spain. Portugal stood in close economic and political relations with England and was reluctant to enforce the restrictions of the Continental Blockade. Her coastline was too important to be allowed as an open gap. Therefore Napoleon arranged with Spain for the conquest and partition of that country. French and Spanish armies invaded Portugal, aiming at Lisbon. Before they arrived Napoleon had announced in his impressive and laconic fashion that "the fall of the House of Braganza furnishes one more proof that ruin is inevitable to whomsoever attaches himself to the English." The royal family escaped capture by sailing for the colony of Brazil and seeking safety beyond the ocean. There they remained until the overthrow of Napoleon.

This joint expedition had given Napoleon the opportunity to introduce large bodies of troops into the country of his ally, Spain. They now remained there, under Murat, no one knew for what purpose, no one, except Napoleon, in whose mind a dark and devious plan was maturing. The French had dethroned the House of Bourbon in France during the Revolution. Napoleon had himself after Austerlitz dethroned the House of Bourbon in Naples and had put his brother Joseph in its place. There remained a branch of that House in Spain, and that branch was in a particularly corrupt and decadent condition. The King, Charles IV, was utterly incompetent; the Queen grossly immoral and endowed with the tongue of a fishwife; her favorite and paramour, Godoy, was the real power behind the throne. The whole unsavory group was immensely unpopular in Spain. On the other hand, the King's son, Ferdinand, was idolized by the Spanish people, not because of anything admirable in his personality, which was utterly despicable, but because he was opposed to his father, his mother, and Godoy.

Napoleon thought the situation favorable to his plan, which was to seize the throne thus occupied by a family rendered odious by its character and impotent by its dissensions. By a treacherous and hypocritical diplomacy he contrived to get Charles IV, the Queen, Godoy, and Ferdinand to come to Bayonne in southern France. No hungry spider ever viewed more coolly a more helpless prey entangled in his web. By a masterly use of the black arts of dissimulation, vituperation, and intimidation he swept the whole royal crew aside. Charles abdicated his throne into the hands of Napoleon, who thereupon forced Ferdinand to renounce his rights under a thinly veiled threat that, if he did not, the Duke d'Enghien would not be the only member of the House of Bourbon celebrated for an untoward fate. Ferdinand and his brothers were sent as prisoners to a chateau at Valencay. The vacant throne was then given by Napoleon to his brother Joseph, who thereupon abdicated the kingship of Naples, which now passed to Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law.