“The interests of the two countries are the same:  it is the intention of France to shut every port to the English, from Holland to the Turkish dominions, to prevent the exportation of her merchandise, and to give a mortal blow to her commerce, for there she is most vulnerable.  Our joint forces may wrest from her hands the island of Malta.  The Sicilian navy may convoy and protect the French troops in the prosecution of such a plan, and the most happy result may be augured to their united exertions.”

Possibly the King and his spirited but whimsical consort, Queen Charlotte, might have bent before the threats which accompanied this alluring offer; but at the head of the Neapolitan administration was an Englishman, General Acton, whose talents and force of will commanded their respect and confidence.  To the threats of the French ambassador he answered that France was strong and Naples was weak; force might overthrow the dynasty; but nothing would induce it to violate its neutrality towards England.  So unwonted a defiance aroused Napoleon to a characteristic revenge.  When his troops were quartered on Southern Italy, and were draining the Neapolitan resources, the Queen wrote appealing to his clemency on behalf of her much burdened people.  In reply he assured her of his desire to be agreeable to her:  but how could he look on Naples as a neutral State, when its chief Minister was an Englishman?  This was “the real reason that justified all the measures taken towards Naples."[269] The brutality and falseness of this reply had no other effect than to embitter Queen Charlotte’s hatred against the arbiter of the world’s destinies, before whom she and her consort refused to bow, even when, three years later, they were forced to seek shelter behind the girdle of the inviolate sea.

Hanover also fell into Napoleon’s hands.  Mortier with 25,000 French troops speedily overran that land and compelled the Duke of Cambridge to a capitulation.  The occupation of the Electorate not only relieved the French exchequer of the support of a considerable corps; it also served to hold in check the Prussian Court, always preoccupied about Hanover; and it barred the entrance of the Elbe and Weser to British ships, an aim long cherished by Napoleon.  To this we retorted by blockading the mouths of those rivers, an act which must have been expected by Napoleon, and which enabled him to declaim against British maritime tyranny.  In truth, the beginnings of the Continental System were now clearly discernible.  The shores of the Continent from the south of Italy to the mouth of the Elbe were practically closed to English ships, while by a decree of July 15th any vessel whatsoever that had cleared from a British port was to be excluded from all harbours of the French Republic.  Thus all commercial nations were compelled, slowly but inevitably, to side with the master of the land or the mistress of the seas.