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Home The Napoleonic War, 1803-1815 Growth of Napoleon's Power, 1805-1809, and the Continental System 1805-1809; Part 2 |
1805-1809; Part 2Great Britain alone remained to withstand Napoleon's power. But, if she could not be defeated, she might be starved. Napoleon, "if he found it impossible to strike this enemy at the heart, could cut off the supplies to the stomach"; if he could not invade Great Britain, he might ruin the trade on which her prosperity depended. If Great Britain's merchandise might be carried on the ocean, it might yet, in Napoleon's words, "be repelled by all Europe from the Sound to the Hellespont". Accordingly, at the end of 1806, he issued from Berlin his famous decrees declaring the British Isles to be in a state of blockade - though there was not one French ship-of-war within miles of any one of their ports. As a result of these decrees, no ship coming from Great Britain and Ireland or her colonies might be received in the ports of France or of allied powers, and any goods of British origin on land or sea might be seized. To the " Continental System", as the system under this decree was called, Austria and Prussia and Russia, and all the lands under Napoleon's influence, had to submit.But to be successful, the Continental System must be complete; one leak would allow British goods to enter anywhere on the Continent. And it was this necessity that largely accounted for Napoleon's policy with regard to Portugal and Spain. There were, however, other places which were suitable for evading Napoleon's decrees with regard to British goods. Heligoland was annexed by Great Britain, and made a convenient base of operations for smuggling goods into Germany (During the winter 1806-7, the French army, in spite of the Berlin decrees, was clad and shod with British goods imported by the French consul at Hamburg). The Dutch Government, under Napoleon's brother Louis, showed little vigilance in carrying out the Continental System, and ignored an extensive trade clandestinely carried on at her ports till, finally, Napoleon in 1810 had to annex Holland. Nor did Great Britain fail to reply to Napoleon's decrees. Her Government retaliated with various " Orders in Council", declaring all the ports from which the British flag was excluded to be in a state of blockade, and forbidding ships to sail to them except under a licence granted by Great Britain or when coming from a British port Yet Great Britain suffered greatly from Napoleon's measures, especially towards the close of the war. Undeterred by Napoleon's brilliant successes, Great Britain undertook various military operations against Napoleon and his allies. At various times between 1803 and 1811 she captured from the French the Mauritius and their islands in the West Indies, and from the Dutch their possessions in the East Indies. She anticipated Napoleon's intended seizure of the Danish fleet by bombarding Copenhagen (1807) and forcing the Danes to give up their fleet - an act for which Great Britain was bitterly attacked at the time, but which is now generally admitted to have been justifiable. Elsewhere Great Britain was not so successful. Expeditions sent in 1807 to South America to capture Buenos Ayres and to Constantinople to coerce the sultan were failures, as was another dispatched in 1809 to Walcheren with the object of destroying the ships and dockyards at Antwerp (The commanders of the fleet and the army - Sir Richard Strachan and the Earl of Chatham (Pitt's elder brother) - quarrelled, and, after the failure of the expedition, each accused the other of dilatoriness; hence the famous epigram - " Great Chatham, with his sabre drawn, Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan ; Sir Richard, longing to be at 'em, Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham"!). |
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