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Isolation of Great Britain-Hostility of Europe-Bonaparte's Continental System-His plans for becoming master of the Peninsula-French invasion of Portugal-The Regent of Portugal flies to the Brazils-Charles IV. of Spain abdicates-He, and Ferdinand his son, entrapped by Napoleon at Bayonne-Insurrection at Madrid-The Spanish Juntas ask the aid of England-Sympathy of the English people-Sir Arthur Wellesley sent with troops to Portugal-Successes of the Spaniards-Zaragoza-Victory of Wellesley at VimieroConvention of Cintra-Sir John Moore marches into Spain-Napoleon takes the command of his army in Spain-Moore's retreat-Battle of Corunna-Death of Sir John MooreSufferings of his army-National gloom-Charges against the duke of York-Parlia mentary inquiry-The Duke resigns-Lord Cochrane's enterprise in Aix Roads-Austria declares war against France-Sir Arthur Wellesley takes the command at LisbonPassage of the Douro. Intelligence of important events.

THE Royal Speech, delivered by Commissioners, on the opening of the Session of Parliament on the 21st of January, 180S, was of greater length, and bore upon more important points of Foreign Affairs, than any similar document during the most stirring years since 1793. The view of our posi tion with relation to the rest of the world was not cheering. Britain seemed to have reached that extremity of isolation which the Roman poet described, and which the French emperor desired to establish as a political fact. The treaty of Tilsit, said the Speech, confirmed the influence and control of France over the powers of the continent; and it was the intention of the enemy to combine those powers in one general confederacy against this kingdom. For

1808.]

HOSTILITY OF EUROPEAN POWERS.

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this purpose, the whole of the naval force of Europe was to be brought to bear upon various points of the British dominions, and specifically the fleets of Portugal and Denmark. It was an indispensable duty to place these fleets out of the reach of such a confederacy. Painful but necessary measures of force were successful with regard to Denmark. The fleet of Portugal had been secured from the grasp of France, and was then employed in conveying to its American dominions the hopes and fortunes of the Portuguese monarchy. The determination of France to excite hostilities between Great Britain and Russia, Austria, and Prussia, had been too successful. These powers had withdrawn their ministers from London. The machinations of the enemy had prevented the war with Turkey being brought to a conclusion. The king of Sweden alone had resisted every attempt to induce him to abandon our alliance. The government of the United States had refused to ratify a treaty of amity and commerce agreed upon in 1806, and was making pretensions inconsistent with our maritime rights. In consequence of the decree by which France declared the whole of the British dominions in a state of blockade, subjecting the manufactures and produce of the kingdom to seizure and confiscation, his majesty resorted to a measure of mitigated retaliation; but that being ineffectual, other measures of greater rigour had been adopted by Orders in Council. This was, indeed, a catalogue of ills. In spite however, said the Speech, of the difficulties endeavoured to be imposed by the enemy upon the commerce of this country, its resources had during the last year been so abundant as to produce a great increase of

revenue.

Gloomy as was the prospect arising out of this frank explanationEngland without one ally but the young king of Sweden, whom some deemed chivalrous and others deemed mad-France, whose territory was extended far beyond the wildest ambition of her old race of kings, under an emperor who was the real suzerain of Naples, of Italy, of Switzerland, of Holland, of Germany-America subject to the will of a President who had ever been a hater of England, and was now anxious for open war,-gloomy as was this prospect, was there any ray of hope to illumine the darkness? The historian of the French empire points to this single ray in a brief sentence. To the universal dominion of Napoleon there was only one thing to be desired-nothing more, than "the submission of peoples to this gigantic edifice."* During fifteen years of war, England, in her system of subsidies and coalitions, had seen only Kings as allies. The time was coming when she was to look upon Nations for her friends. During that year of 1808 she found out the chink in her enemy's armour, and she soon proved that he was not invulnerable.

The hatred of the people of many countries to the domination of Napoleon received an immense impulse from the tyrannical enforcement of the Decrees which constituted what is called his Continental System. The eulogists of Napoleon's glory, and the believers in the vocation of France to rule the world, are compelled to admit that the decay of his power may be dated from the attempt to destroy England by shutting out her commerce from every port of Europe. "If this interdict had been maintained some years, England would probably have been obliged to yield," says M. Thiers. "Unhappily,

* Thiers, "Le Consulat et l'Empire," tome xvii. p. 869.

494

BONAPARTE'S CONTINENTAL SYSTEM.

[1808. the continental blockade was to add to the exasperation of peoples obliged to bend to the exigencies of our policy." It was not enough to exasperate many populations by handing over ancient States to new masters; by creating kings out of the many sons of the lawyer of Ajaccio; by endeavouring to amalgamate communities wholly different in their laws, their customs, and their creeds; to play with the masses as if they were the pawns of the chessboard. He must cut off the sources of their industrial wealth; he must forbid to mankind, whether enemy, or subject, or allied, or neutral, that interchange of produce and manufactures which were necessary to the prosperity, and even to the existence, of producer and consumer. The defence of the continental blockade was, that it was the retaliation of a measure of the British government in May, 1806, when all the ports between Brest and the Elbe were declared in a state of blockade. Napoleon, in the preamble to the Berlin decree, proclaimed that the places declared by England in 1806 to be in a state of blockade were ports before which she had not a single vessel of war. This was wholly untrue. It was not a paper blockade—“ blocus sur le papier, imaginé par l'Angleterre.” † So far from being a paper blockade, there was a sufficient force to maintain it-a principle recognized by all publicists as constituting the validity of an interference with the right of neutrals to trade with a hostile country. On the contrary, the Berlin decree declared the British islands in a state of blockade, when France had no ships on the sea to make the blockade real instead of nominal. But this decree went much further. It not only prohibited all commerce and correspondence with the British islands, but it declared every English subject to be a prisoner of war who was found in a country occupied by the troops of France or of her allies. It declared all property belonging to an English subject to be lawful prize. It prohibited all trade in British manufactured goods. It declared all merchandize coming from Great Britain or her colonies to be lawful prize. It shut out every vessel that had touched at any port of Britain or her colonies. By the Milan decree of December, 1807, the British dominions in all parts of the world were declared to be in a state of blockade ; and all countries were prohibited from trading with each other, in any articles produced or manufactured in the countries thus placed under interdict. This latter decree was alleged to be in retaliation of the British Orders in Council of November, 1807. Of the impolicy of these Orders of the British government we shall have to speak in another chapter. We have at present to confine ourselves to that first decree of Napoleon, whose attempted enforcement upon Portugal in August, 1807, was the alleged cause of the French invasion of that kingdom. It thus led to the great series of events which terminated in the deliverance of Europe from the crushing despotism of the man who was at the height of his power, when he made the extravagant attempt by rash decrees to fetter the freedom of human action, in the indispensable supply of human wants-by decrees which, carrying with them a natural impossibility of execution, rendered the tyrannical machinery by which they were vainly attempted to be enforced, not only odious but despicable, and produced a conviction that the "gigantic edifice" was built upon the sands. Bourrienne, who in 1807 was the chargé d'affaires of

"Le Consulat et l'Empire," tome xvii. p. 868.

+ Ibid., tome vii. p. 223.

1808.] HIS PLANS FOR BECOMING MASTER OF THE PENINSULA.

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France at Hamburg, says that the emperor having ordered him to provide an immense supply of clothing for the armies in Prussia, he authorized a house at Hamburg, in spite of the Berlin decree, to bring cloth and leather from England. Had the decrees, he states, relative to English merchandize been observed, the French troops would have perished with cold. Licences, he tells us, for the disposal of English goods were procured at a high price by those who were rich enough to pay for them. Smuggling on a small scale was punished with death, whilst the government carried it on extensively. Under Davoust's rule at Hamburg a poor man had nearly been shot for having introduced a loaf of sugar for the use of his family, whilst Napoleon was perhaps signing a licence for the introduction of a million of sugar loaves. Bourrienne sums up many such instances, by saying, "It is necessary to witness, as I have, the numberless vexations and miseries occasioned by the unfortunate Continental System, to understand the mischief its author did in Europe, and how much that mischief contributed to Napoleon's fall."*

Whenever the emperor of the French was reposing after the fatigues of battle fields, the world might be assured that new schemes of aggrandizement were shaping themselves in his mind into some decided course of action. He was passing the summer of 1807 in the pleasant shades of Fontainebleau, revolving various devices for making himself master of Spain. The fate of Portugal was presumed to be determined by a secret treaty-the treaty of Fontainebleau-between Napoleon and Charles IV. of Spain, by which a partition was made of that kingdom, and by which Godoy, the favourite of the Spanish court, should be endowed with a portion of the spoil, and be prince

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of Algarves. But Napoleon had far higher objects in lending his ear to the petty intrigues and disgraceful quarrels of the king of Spain and his son

* See "Memoirs of Napoleon,"-translation published in 1830-vol. iii. chap. xxv.

496

FRENCH INVASION OF PORTUGAL.

[1808. Ferdinand-in propitiating Godoy, and pretending to make family alliances with the Spanish Bourbons. He intended to eject the House of Bourbon from their throne; but this project required to be worked by tentative approaches. Fraud was to go before violence. The dethronement of the House of Braganza was an easier process. It should precede the more difficult operation of entrapping the king of Spain and his son, and holding them in durance, before he could write to his brother Joseph, "I destine this crown for you." The ejection of the prince-regent of Portugal was to be accomplished by a simple exercise of military force.

On the 12th of August, 1807, the French ambassador at Lisbon presented a note to the Portuguese government, requiring, by the 1st of September, the prince-regent of Portugal to emancipate himself from English influence by declaring war, confiscating all English merchandize, closing his ports against English vessels, and uniting his squadrons to the navies of the Continental Powers. Unless he did so, the ambassador would demand his passports. Lord Strangford, our ambassador at Lisbon, knew the force that was put upon the Portuguese government, and did not resent the declaration of war that the prince-regent was compelled to make. The prince, however, refused to confiscate English property. Useless as he knew his remonstrances would be, they gave him a breathing time; and he advised the English merchants to sell their goods and depart the kingdom. On the 19th of October the French general Junot crossed the Bidassoa, with orders to march across Spain, and make himself master of Lisbon and of the fleet by the 30th of November. “On no account halt in your march even for a day," wrote Napoleon on the 2nd of November. The urgency of his orders made Junot disregard every obstacle presented by the violence of the rains, the badness of the mountain roads, and the difficulty of procuring subsistence. After crossing the Portuguese frontier, and before reaching Abrantes, this army was almost wholly disorganized. Its wretched condition was not known in Lisbon—a city of three hundred thousand inhabitants-or resistance would probably have been made before the court yielded to the fear of some impending calamity. The apathy of the government and the people has been stated as the result of the conviction that the army of Junot was only an advanced guard of the legions that were collected at Bayonne; and that another course than that of open resistance was necessarily determined upon. As the French advanced, the Portuguese government sequestrated, or made a show of sequestrating, the property of the few merchants that remained in Lisbon. Lord Strangford then withdrew on board the English fleet in the Tagus. It is generally stated by historians, French, Portuguese, and English, that our ambassador, having received a copy of the 'Moniteur' of the 13th of November, which contained these words, "The House of Braganza has ceased to reign," transmitted the newspaper to the prince-regent, who immediately decided on flight to the Brazils. M. Thiers maintains that no such words appear in any 'Moniteur' of that date, or near it. But he states that in the 'Moniteur' of the 13th of November is an article, evidently dictated by Napoleon, on the four English expeditions in 1807-those of Copenhagen, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Buenos Ayres--which article contains this passage: "After these four expe

* Letter of May 11, 1808.

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