1807]

THE PERCEVAL MINISTRY

1275

more important than this, for without it the King, who theoretically can do no wrong, would be answerable for his own acts. On a motion by Mr. Brand supporting these doctrines, the Opposition thought themselves secure of a majority. But so great was the royal influence, so strong the Protestant feeling of the country, that they found themselves in a minority of more than thirty. A dissolution of Parliament followed on the 27th of April. And as the King, in the speech with which Parliament was closed, appealed as it were to the constituencies for the vindication of his conduct, the personal loyalty of the people, combined with their attachment to the old cry of Church and State, placed the ministry in possession of a majority which secured its permanence.

During the last days of the Grenville ministry it had been compelled to pursue the warlike policy of its predecessors,

Continuation

1806.

and had exhibited an incapacity which might have of the war. been expected from so mixed a body acting upon compulsion, and in contradiction to its preconceived ideas of policy. The renewed war which at once followed upon the cessation of the negotiations undertaken by Fox was on this occasion directed towards a new enemy. We have seen the contempt with which Bonaparte habitually regarded Prussia: his conduct seems to have been wilfully directed to drive that country into war, and it is interesting to observe that it was this unjustifiable conduct which gave the first obvious proof of the changed character of his policy, and roused that animosity, not of the Court, but of the people assaulted, which finally caused his ruin. All his late acts had tended to the detriment of Prussia. By the Confederation of the Rhine the constitution of Germany, in which Prussia might at all events have claimed some voice, was entirely changed; French fortifications had been raised on the German side of the Rhine at Mayence, and the fortress of Wesel had been re-established; the very bribe with which the apparent friendship of Prussia had been secured had been tampered with. Hanover, which in the winter had been given in full possession to Prussia, was in June without scruple offered to England; as a sort of counterpoise to the Rhenish Confederation, the King of Prussia had been invited by Napoleon to form a Confederation of the North; but he soon found how illusory the offer was, for he was everywhere practically thwarted by the diplomacy of the French. The people even more than the Court had smarted under the disgrace of the Treaty of Schönbrunn; and when Napoleon showed the temper in which he intended to interfere in Germany,-by the apprehension (in a neutral town which chanced to

be occupied by French troops) of the bookseller Palm, and his coldblooded murder on the charge merely of selling a book exciting the Frussia declares national feeling of Germany,-the popular anger grew so high, that the King of Prussia was obliged to act with some energy, especially when the young Queen put herself prominently forward as the leader of the national war party. A declaration of war with France was the consequence.

war with

France.

Oct. 1, 1806.

of Prussia.

But it was too late to be of any use. The French army, considerably more numerous than any troops Prussia could bring against it, was already in Franconia, a few marches from the frontier. There was no time to put to good account the strong national feeling which had been excited. Prussia could rely upon its army alone, and though strong in the military reminiscences of the Great Frederick and admirably appointed, the Prussian troops had never seen war; the generals were old men wedded to obsolete traditions, while the King, in his anxiety to please Napoleon, had even gone so far as to discharge Mismanagement many of his troops in the previous year. The consequence of an encounter between such an army and the veterans of Napoleon might have been foreseen. The catastrophe was hastened by the bad arrangements of the generals. The King and his Court and crowds of enthusiastic nobility were with the army, but the chief command was in the hands of the Duke of Brunswick, an old man past seventy. Anxious to incorporate the troops of Hesse-Cassel, he repeated the error of the Austrians of the previous year, and advancing far beyond the Elbe, which forms the only good line of defence of which Prussia can boast, he took up a position between Eisenach and Weimar, covered by the Thuringian Forest, behind which the French could make any dispositions for the assault they pleased. The mistake was much too obvious to escape the eyes of Napoleon. His army passed rapidly through the defiles which lead to the upper waters of the Saal, and proceeding down the course of that river, interposed themselves between Brunswick and the Elbe. Perceiving too late his false position, the Duke attempted to withdraw towards Magdeburg. With the larger portion of his army he found himself stopped near Auerstadt as he approached Naumbourg on the Saal, by the division of Davoust, while the Prince of Hohenlohe, with a smaller division of the army, who was to have followed him, was fallen upon and overwhelmed at Jena by Napoleon himself with the greater part of his army. Beaten back from Auerstadt, Brunswick retired towards Weimar, only to meet the fugitives of Hohenlohe's army and their victorious pursuers. His

Battle of
Jena.

Oct. 14, 1806.

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THE BERLIN DECREE

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troops were involved in the disaster, the whole Prussian army was broken and destroyed, and that one day's defeat drew with it the destruction of the monarchy. Such fugitive detachments as still kept together were one by one destroyed, and Napoleon entered Berlin in triumph (Oct. 27).

The temporary annihilation of Austria at Austerlitz, and the complete overthrow of Prussia at Jena, had made Napoleon master of nearly the whole of Europe. Nothing is more remarkable than the rapid expansion of his ambition; each new success seemed to supply him with a new starting-point for further schemes. His mind, in spite of its practical character, had a strong tendency towards romance; as in his youth he had been fired with the idea of a great Eastern monarchy, so now, as circumstances had been favourable to him, the idea of repeating the rôle of Charlemagne, and the re-establishment of the Empire of the West, seems to have been prominent in his mind. Already, in his dealings with the Pope, in the Confederation of the Rhine, and in the creation of vassal kingdoms, he had shown his wish to imitate the conduct of that great ruler. The idea was confirmed by the conquest of Prussia, and strengthened by a petition from one of his armies that he would take the title of Emperor of the West. Russia was the only opponent left upon the Continent. If Russia could be either conquered or won over, not only would he have been in truth the Western Emperor, but he would have the means, as he believed, of wreaking his vengeance upon his detested rival England, which still refused to yield to his ascendancy. Already in fact, he believed that this vengeance was in his grasp. The Berlin On the 21st of November he issued the extraordinary Decree. measure known as the Berlin Decree. Even during the negotiations with Fox he had insisted upon Prussia closing against English traffic the mouths of the Elbe and Weser. The measure had not been a success, 400 Prussian vessels had been seized in reprisal, and the mouths of the North German rivers declared in a state of blockade. That blockade had been real. But the Emperor now, as he said by a just use of the law of retaliation (while he was unable with safety to place a single ship upon the ocean), declared that the whole of the British Isles were in a state of blockade, forbad on the part of all his dependent countries any commerce or correspondence with them, declared every subject of England found in a country occupied by French troops a prisoner of war, and all English merchandise, even all private property of Englishmen, confiscated. Thus was

Nov. 21, 1806.

established what is known as the Continental system. It laboured

under three disadvantages. In the first place, it was absolutely impracticable, Europe could not be supplied without England, as Napoleon himself found in the course of the year when he authorized the clothing of his own army with English cloth; secondly, it enabled England by retaliatory measures to destroy every mercantile marine in Europe except its own; thirdly, it was so distressing and vexatious, and interfered so wantonly both with private property and the supply of necessaries for the people, that, more than anything else that Napoleon did, it excited popular indignation against him, and tended to his downfall. And yet it was not without a certain plausible excuse, which rested on the difference then existing between the laws of war as carried on by land and upon the sea. By land the property of an enemy was not considered lawful prize unless it belonged to the hostile government itself; by sea the property of peaceable merchants was liable to seizure and confiscation. By land no one was considered a prisoner of war unless taken with arms in his hand; by sea the crews of merchantmen were imprisoned as well as those of armed vessels. The second point which formed Napoleon's excuse was the extension given by England to the right of blockade. These two points afforded the pretext under which the Decree was promulgated, and was declared to be a fundamental law of the French Empire, till England should recognize the laws of war to be the same by sea and by land, and should consent to restrict the right of blockade to fortified towns actually invested by a sufficient force. In issuing his Decree, then, Napoleon put on a specious appearance of magnanimity, and took upon himself the part which he was fond of assuming, that of champion of the rights of nations against the tyranny of the English.

The necessity under which England as a belligerent lay of employing to the full the power which usage gave it of necessity inflicted considerable inconvenience upon neutral powers. The retaliatory measures which the Government thought it wise to take still further injured the neutrals, and threatened almost to

Orders in
Council.

annihilate the American trade. A series of orders in Council was issued, extending from January to November 1807. By the first of these orders vessels were forbidden to trade between any ports in the possession of France, or of he. allies if under her control. By the second, issued in November, after the extension of the Continental system to the Mediterranean, general reprisals were granted against the goods, ships, and inhabitants of Tuscany, Naples, Dalmatia, and the Ionian Islands. By the third,

1807]

THE ORDERS IN COUNCIL

1279

all ports from which the flag of England was excluded were declared in blockade, all trade in their produce unlawful, and their ships a prize, while all vessels carrying certificates of origin (a measure which Napoleon had insisted upon to prevent evasion of his system) were declared liable to capture. By the fourth, another plan of evasion was forbidden; the sale of ships by a belligerent to a neutral was declared illegal, because the French had managed to preserve much of their commerce by fictitious sales, enabling them to continue their business under neutral flags. The Americans were the chief sufferers by these orders, and the irritation already felt by them Their effect was so increased that it ultimately ripened into war. on America. Their two special grievances were the constant search of their vessels for deserters, and the refusal of the British authorities to recognize their customhouse arrangements. By the English law as then existing an English subject could not get rid of his nationality. But America was full of English and Irish emigrants and deserters from English ships, and the Americans had the constant mortification of seeing even their war-ships stopped and searched, and the asylum of their flag violated by the apprehension, under the rough justice of English naval officers, of many of their best seamen. By the neutral laws direct trading between the colony of a belligerent and its mother country was forbidden, but neutrals might trade for their own supply with the colonies. More than this, if they imported from the colonies more than they wanted they might re-export it even to the mother country; the proof of a bona fide interrupted voyage was the payment of the customhouse dues in the ports of the neutral. But these dues were in America paid not in money but in bonds, which were cancelled when the goods were re-exported. The payment of goods was therefore fictitious, and English officials refused to recognize them. The irritation produced by these two causes was but slightly allayed by negotiations in 1809, and, as will be subsequently mentioned, the people, especially the Southerners, forced the States into war in 1812.

To enable Napoleon to carry out his idea either of a Western Empire or of the complete annihilation of English trade it was necessary that war with Russia should continue. As a means for injuring that power he had already held out hopes of restoration of liberty to Poland, and in December he was received as a national saviour at Warsaw; but some remnant of the Prussian army had formed a junction with the forces of the Czar, and Benigsen, in command of the combined armies, refused to give the French a resting