But the great difficulty is Russia’s imperfect observation of the Continental System.  He begs the Czar to close his ports against English ships:  600 of them are wandering about the Baltic, after being repulsed from its southern shores, in the hope of getting into Russian harbours.  Let Alexander seize their cargoes, and England, now at her last gasp, must give in.  Five weeks later he returns to the charge.  It is not enough to seize British ships; the hated wares get in under American, Swedish, Spanish, and Portuguese, even under French flags.  Of the 2,000 ships that entered the Baltic in 1810, not one was really a neutral:  they were all charged with English goods, with false papers and forged certificates of origin manufactured in London.[246] Any other unit among earth’s millions would have been convinced of the futility of the whole enterprise, now that his own special devices were being turned against him.  It was not enough to conquer and enchain the Continent.  Every customs officer must be an expert in manufactures, groceries, documents, and the water-marks of paper, if he was to detect the new “frauds of the neutral flags.”

But Napoleon knew not the word impossible—­“a word that exists only in the dictionary of fools.”  In fact, his mind, naturally unbending, was now working more and more in self-made grooves.  Of these the deepest was his commercial warfare; and he pushed on, reckless of Europe and reckless of the Czar.  In the middle of December he annexed the North Sea coast of Germany, including Oldenburg.  The heir to this duchy had married Alexander’s sister, whose hand Napoleon had claimed at Erfurt.  The duke, it is true, was offered the district of Erfurt as an indemnity; but that proposal only stung the Czar the more.  The deposition of the duke was not merely a personal affront; it was an infraction of the Treaty of Tilsit which had restored him to his duchy.

A fortnight later, when as yet he knew not of the Oldenburg incident, Alexander himself broke that treaty.[247] At the close of 1810 he declined to admit land-borne goods on the easy terms arranged at Tilsit, but levied heavy dues on them, especially on the articles de luxe that mostly hailed from France.  Some such step was inevitable.  Unable to export freely to England, Russia had not money enough to buy costly French goods without disordering the exchange and ruining her credit.  While seeking to raise revenue on French manufactures, the Czar resolved to admit on easy terms all colonial goods, especially American.  English goods he would shut out as heretofore; and he claimed that this new departure was well within the limits of the Treaty of Tilsit.  Far different was Napoleon’s view:  “Here is a great planet taking a wrong direction.  I do not understand its course at all."[248] Such were his first words on reading the text of the new ukase.  A fatalistic tone now haunts his references to Russia’s policy.  On April 2nd he writes:  “If Alexander does