Yet they resolved to pit the resources of the outer world against the militarism of Napoleon; and, drawing the resources of the tropics to the new power-looms of Lancashire and Yorkshire, they might well hope to pour their unequalled goods into Europe from points of vantage such as Sicily, Gibraltar, the Channel Islands, and Heligoland.  There were many Englishmen who believed that the November Orders in Council brought nothing but harm to our cause.  They argued that our manufactured goods must find their way into the Continent in spite of the Berlin Decrees; and they could point to the curious fact that Bourrienne, Napoleon’s agent at Hamburg, when charged to procure 50,000 overcoats for the French army during the Eylau campaign, was obliged to buy them from England.[181]

The incident certainly proves the folly of the Continental System.  And if we had had to consult our manufacturing interests alone, a policy of laisser faire would doubtless have been the best.  England, however, prided herself on her merchant service:  to that she looked as the nursery for the royal navy:  and the abandonment of the world’s carrying trade to neutrals would have seemed an act of high treason.  Her acts of retaliation against the Berlin Decrees and the policy of Tilsit were harsh and high-handed.  But they were adopted during a pitiless commercial strife; and, in warfare of so novel and desperate a kind, acts must unfortunately be judged by their efficacy to harm the foe rather than by the standards of morality that hold good during peace.  Outwardly, it seemed as if England were doomed.  She had lost her allies and alienated the sympathies of neutrals.  But from the sea she was able to exert on the Napoleonic States a pressure that was gradual, cumulative, and resistless; and the future was to prove the wisdom of the words of Mollien:  “England waged a warfare of modern times; Napoleon, that of ancient times.  There are times and cases when an anachronism is fatal.”

Moreover, at the very time when the Emperor was about to complete his great experiment by subduing Sweden and preparing for the partition of Turkey, it sustained a fatal shock by the fierce rising of the Spanish people against his usurped authority.

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CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SPANISH RISING

The relations of Spain to France during the twelve years that preceded the rising of 1808 are marked by acts of folly and unmanly complaisance that promised utterly to degrade a once proud and sensitive people.  They were the work of the senile and spiritless King, Charles IV., of his intriguing consort, and, above all, of her paramour, the all-powerful Minister Godoy.  Of an ancient and honourable family, endowed with a fine figure, courtly address, and unscrupulous arts, this man had wormed himself into the royal confidence; and after bringing about a favourable peace with France in 1795, he was styled The Prince of the Peace.