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. 495 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 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. 6 THE REGENT OF PORTUGAL FLIES TO THE BRAZILS. 497 1808.] ditions, which so well determine the moral and military decline of England, let us speak of the situation in which they leave Portugal at this day. The prince-regent of Portugal loses his throne. He loses it, influenced by the intrigues of England. He loses it, because he has not been willing to seize the English merchandize at Lisbon. What does England do, this ally? She regards with indifference what is passing in Portugal. . . . The fall of the House of Braganza will remain a new proof that the destruction of whatever power attaches itself to England is inevitable."* There is little to choose between the meaning of the pithy sentence and of the lengthened argument. The prince-regent now took his resolution. The British ambassador returned on shore to aid him in carrying out his purpose. The sailors of our fleet made the most strenuous exertions to fit out the Portuguese fleet of eight sail of the line, three frigates, and twenty-three other vessels. On the 29th of November, the archives of Portugal, the treasure, the plate and other valuable effects, having been got on board, a train of carriages moved to the quay of Belem, conveying the prince-regent, his mother the queen who had been many years insane, and the two princesses of the family. A crowd of attendants and other court fugitives accompanied them. Altogether, fifteen thousand persons left Lisbon on the 29th of November. They were going to the great dependency which Portugal had held uninterrupted by any hostility for a hundred and two years—a land of vast natural riches, but one which the parent state governed upon the narrowest principles of monopoly. From the time when the seat of government was transferred from Lisbon to Brazil, the colony prospered in a new life. In 1815 it became a constituent part of the Portuguese empire. As the British fleet saluted the Portuguese squadron as it passed down the Tagus, the sun became eclipsed; and a superstitious dread came over the population. The French, as the last of the royal fleet cleared the bar, came within sight of the Tagus-a ragged and starving remnant of a great army. The prey that they were to seize was gone. They were enough for the occupation of the city-enough to levy contributions on the country-enough to induce the belief that Portugal would never be separated from its French masters. The delivery of Portugal from the thraldom of Napoleon was to turn upon the speedy manifestation of popular resistance to his fraud and oppression in Spain. Ferdinand, prince of Asturias, the heir of the Spanish crown, was just entering upon the twenty-fourth year of his age, when he addressed a letter to Napoleon which produced very memorable consequences. His wife had died in 1806-a woman of firm mind, who had endeavoured to rescue her imbecile husband from the wretched state of pupilage in which he had been kept by his infamous mother and her paramour Godoy. Ferdinand solicited the protection of Napoleon; described the humiliation to which his father and himself were reduced by the favourite; and expressed his wish to be united to a princess of Napoleon's family. Godoy discovered what was passing; and having persuaded Charles IV. that Ferdinand was conspiring against his life, the prince was arrested. With the weakness of his character, he was terrified into the acknowledgment of a conspiracy to dethrone his father—a confession for which it is believed there was no foundation, except in the "Le Consulat et l'Empire," tome viii. p. 340, note. 498 [1808. ABDICATION OF CHARLES IV. OF SPAIN-INSURRECTION. secret correspondence with Napoleon. Meanwhile, Portugal was in the occupation of Junot. French soldiers were constantly crossing the Bidasson, and planting themselves in frontier fortresses. The Court became alarmed; and Godoy persuaded the king to follow the example of the prince-regent of Por tugal, and seek in the rich possessions of Spain in the New World that security which the revolutions of the Old World denied to crowned heads. Ferdinand was hesitating what to do; when the people of Madrid, who had always felt a compassionate affection for the prince of Asturias, resolved that he should not be removed by force; and the guards at Aranjuez revolted, and would have taken the favourite's life had not the prince interfered to save him. This was on the 17th of March. On the 19th, Charles IV. abdicated in favour of his son, who took the title of king of Spain and the Indies. The king, in the decree which transferred the crown, asserted that his abdica tion was his spontaneous act. In a letter to Napoleon he said that he had been forced to abdicate, and had no hope but in the support of his magnanimous ally. The exiled emperor said to O'Meara, "When I saw those imbécilles quarrelling and trying to dethrone each other, I thought that I might as well take advantage of it, and dispossess an inimical family." * No Englishman would have thought it a calamity that this miserable race should have been set aside by the will of a misgoverned people. But that the father and the son should have been lured out of Spain by devices such as kidnappers could not have excelled, and then compelled to deliver up the proud Spanish people to the rule of an insolent foreigner, filled up the measure of the English wrath against the inordinate rapacity of the man who did not conquer this land of historic renown; but whom they regarded as "a cutpurse," "That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, On the 21st of April, Ferdinand was in the hands of the betrayer at Bayonne. On the 30th the old king and queen were in the same clutches. Godoy had been previously seized by Murat, and sent under guard to Napo leon, who had reached Bayonne on the 14th of April. On the 2nd of May there was an insurrection at Madrid, upon the people learning that Ferdinand was entrapped into the power of the French emperor. On the 6th of May Napoleon wrote to his brother Joseph, "King Charles has yielded up to me his right to the throne, and he is about to retire to Compiègne with the queen and some of his children. A few days before this treaty was signed, the prince of Asturias abdicated; I restored the crown to king Charles. . . . There was a great insurrection at Madrid on the 2nd of May; between thirty and forty thousand persons were collected in the streets and houses, and fired from the windows. Two battalions of fusileers of my guard, and four or five hundred horse, soon brought them to their senses. More than two thousand of the populace were killed."+ Five days after, he again writes to Joseph,-"The nation, through the Supreme Council of Castile, asks me for a king, I destine this crown for you." What the nation was really asking for was,-help from England. The insurrection at Madrid was quickly followed by popular agitations throughout the country. Provincial juntas |