[417] In the years 1809 and 1810 one hundred and sixty American vessels alone were seized by Danish privateers. Only a part, however, were condemned. (Am. State Papers, vol. iii. p. 521.)

[418] Erskine's note to that effect was dated April 19, 1809.

[419] Annual Register, 1809, p. 726.

[420] Moniteur, Feb. 24, 1810.

[421] Mémoires, vol. ix. pp. 21-24.

[422] Cons. et Empire (Forbes's Trans.), xii. 15.

[423] Corr. de Nap., vol. xx. p. 235.

[424] Compare Metternich's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 188.

[425] Thiers, Cons. et Emp., Book xxxviii. p. 182.

[426] Corr. de Nap., vol. xxi. p. 70: "Mon principe est, La France avant tout." (Letter to viceroy of Italy.)

[427] Parl. Debates, vol. xxi. p. 1050; xxiii. p. 540.

[428] Cobbett's Parl. Debates, vol. xxi. pp. 1056, 1117.

[429] The decree was also shrouded in secrecy, and its existence denied in the Moniteur (Cobbett's Pol. Register, xviii. p. 701). Napoleon wrote to the viceroy of Italy, Aug. 6, 1810: "You will receive a decree which I have just issued to regulate duties on colonial produce.... It is to be executed in Italy; it is secret and to be kept in your hands. You will therefore give orders in pursuance of this decree only by ministerial letters." (Corr., vol. xxi. p. 28.)

[430] Thiers, Cons. et Empire, Book xxxviii. pp. 181-189.

[431] Monthly Magazine, Feb. 1811, vol. xxxi. p. 67.

[432] Corr. de Nap., vol. xxi. p. 58.

[433] Corr. de Nap., vol. xxi. p. 224.

[434] Ibid., p. 268.

[435] Ibid., p. 77.

[436] Ibid., pp. 70, 71.

[437] Ibid., pp. 61, 62.

[438] Cobbett's Pol. Register, vol. xviii. pp. 704, 722.

[439] At Bordeaux licensed vessels were known to take on board wines and brandies for the British army in Portugal. (Mémoires du duc de Rovigo, vol. v. p. 60.)

[440] Bourrienne, Mémoires, vol. viii. p. 261.

[441] Mémoires du duc de Rovigo, vol. v. p. 66.

[442] Mémoires de Bourrienne, vol. ix. p. 60.

[443] Porter's Progress of the Nation, sect. iii. p. 205. In 1815, after Napoleon's overthrow, the price fell to £34.

[444] Tooke's Hist. of Prices, vol. i. p. 354.

[445] Souvenirs du duc de Vicence, vol. i. p. 88.

[446] Both Monroe and Pinkney, while ministers in London, informed the United States government that the extreme measures taken were popular. (Am. State Papers, vol. iii. pp. 188, 206.)

[447] Letter on the Genius and Disposition of the French Government; by an American lately returned from Europe, pp. 189-192. Baltimore, 1810. See also Metternich's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 476, for the unhappiness of France.

[448] Mémoires du due de Raguse, vol. iii. p. 423. Marmont adds: "This was a powerful help to French industry during that time of suffering and misery."

[449] Tooke's History of Prices, vol. i. p. 311.

[450] In like manner, vessels with British licenses frequently slipped into French ports, especially with naval stores from the Baltic.

[451] "There was not a Dutchman," says M. Thiers, "who had not lost fifty per cent by foreign loans." (Cons. et Empire (Forbes's trans.), xii. 47.)

[452] "The emperor does desire war, because he needs more or less virgin soil to explore, because he has need to occupy his armies and to entertain them at the expense of others.... M. Romanzow has repeated to me a long conversation he had had with the emperor. 'He wants money,' said he,—'he does not hide it; he wishes war against Austria to procure it.'" (Metternich to Stadion, Feb. 17, 1809; Memoirs, ii. 329.) The Austrian war of 1809 brought $34,000,000 into Napoleon's military chest. (Thiers, Cons. et Emp., Book xxxviii. p. 34.)

[453] Thus to Davout, commanding the Army of Germany: "I shall need much money, which should make you feel the importance of obtaining for me as much as you can, and asking of me as little as possible." (Corr., March 24, 1811.)

[454] This condition of the debt was partly factitious, Napoleon maintaining the public funds at eighty, by the secret intervention of the military chest. (Thiers, Cons. et Emp., Book xli. p. 18.)

[455] Mémoires du duc de Rovigo, vol. v. p. 116.

[456] Genius and Disposition of French Govt., p. 166. Baltimore, 1810.

[457] Genius and Disposition of French Govt., pp. 181-192.

[458] Thiers, Cons. et Emp., Book xli. p. 22.

[459] Thiers, Cons. et Emp., Book xli. p. 11.

[460] Arnold's History of Rome, opening of chap. xliii.

[461] It is interesting to observe in Metternich's letters, while ambassador at Paris, how he counts upon this exhausting of the capital of French soldiers as the ultimate solution of the subjection of Austria. "For some time Napoleon has lived on anticipations. The reserves are destroyed." (April 11, 1809.) Compare also his exclamation to the emperor in 1813: "Is not your present army anticipated by a generation? I have seen your soldiers; they are mere children." (Memoirs, vol. i. p. 189).

[462] See Metternich's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 477.

[463] Corr. de Nap., vol. xxi. p. 497 (Feb. 28, 1811).

[464] Ibid., p. 275.

[465] Ibid., p. 296.

[466] These contentions of Napoleon were for the most part perfectly correct. Some interesting facts, bearing upon the true character of the so-called neutral trade in the Baltic, may be gathered from Ross's Life of Saumarez, vol. ii. chaps. ix.-xiii. See also representations made by a number of American ship-captains, Am. State Papers, vol. iii. pp. 329-333. On the other hand, the scrupulously upright John Quincy Adams, U. S. minister to Russia, affirmed that he positively knew some of the American ships to be direct from the United States. The facts, however, only show the dependence of the world at that time upon the Sea Power of Great Britain, which made Napoleon's Continental System impossible; yet, on the other hand, it was his only means of reaching his enemy. If he advanced, he was ruined; if he receded, he failed.

[467] During one year, 1809, this fleet captured 430 vessels, averaging sixty tons each, of which 340 were Danes. Among these were between thirty and forty armed cutters and schooners, of which Denmark had to employ a great many to supply Norway with grain. The remaining ninety vessels were Russian. (Naval Chronicle, vol. xxii. p. 517.)

[468] "Once more I must tell you," wrote a Swedish statesman to Saumarez, "that you were the first cause that Russia dared to make war against France. Had you fired one shot when we declared war against England, all had been ended and Europe would have been enslaved." (Ross's Saumarez, vol. ii. p. 294.)

[469] Thiers, Cons. et Emp., Book xlii. p. 383.

[470] Compare Metternich's argument with the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, October, 1807. (Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 161.)

[471] Annual Register, 1792; State Papers, p. 355.

[472] Moniteur, Dec. 25, 1792; Proposition of M. Barailon.

[473] Pitt's Speeches, vol. ii. pp. 46, 47.

[474] Lanfrey's Napoleon, vol. iv. p. 112 (Eng. trans., ed. 1886).

[475] Lanfrey's Napoleon, vol. ii. chap. iii. p. 122 (Eng. trans., 2d ed.).

[476] Jurien de la Gravière, Vie de l'Amiral Baudin, p. 9.

[477] That is, about 8 per cent annually. The increase during the four years of the elder Pitt in the Seven Years' War, 1757-1761, was 29 per cent, about 7 per cent annually.

[478] Système Maritime et Politique des Européens dans le 18^me siècle, par Arnould. Paris, 1797.

[479] For Napoleon's own assertion of this fact, see "Note pour le Ministre des Relations Extérieures," Corr. de Nap., Oct. 7, 1810. See also ante, p. 320.

[480] Martin, Hist. de France depuis 1789, vol. i. p. 396.

[481] Annual Register, 1793, p. 163. For the correspondence on that occasion see A. R. 1792; State Papers, pp. 326, 327. See also letter of Le Brun, French Minister of Foreign Affairs, in the Moniteur of Aug. 26, 1792.

[482] The Directory tended to impose upon the smaller states, neighboring to or allies of France, republican constitutions, "unitaires" (centralized) in form, analogous to our own, as Bonaparte had done for the Cisalpine Republic and for Genoa. It had just done so in Holland, where it had raised against the government of the United Provinces a kind of 18th of Fructidor (coup d'état). It now (1798) aimed at revolutionizing Switzerland. Bonaparte urged it on. He had already provoked a revolution in a republic near to and allied with the Swiss, that of the Grisons.—Martin: Hist. de France depuis 1789, vol. iii. p. 7.

[483] Napoleon's remark referred to the edicts of the Directory, confiscating British goods wherever found on land; but it applies equally to the decree of January, 1798, which extended the edict to the sea: "Le Directoire ébaucha le système du blocus continental; il ordonna la saisie de toutes les marchandises Anglaises qui pouvaient se trouver à Mayence et dans les autres pays cédés à la France." (Commentaires de Napoléon I., Paris, 1867, vol. iii. p. 413.)

[484] This correspondence, so far as published, is to be found in the Annual Register for 1797; State Papers, pp. 181-223.

[485] See Stanhope's Life of Pitt, vol. ii. p. 224 (ed. 1879).

[486] For a graphic description of the effects of the Berlin decree on the Continent, see Fyffe's History of Modern Europe, vol. i. p. 328.

[487] Metternich's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 65.