Chapter I.: Commercial War Before the Berlin Decree, Military War (1799-1802)

As everybody knows, the accession of Napoleon to power at the close of 1799 did not lead to general peace, certainly not to peace with Great Britain; and the tendencies which have been described above consequently continued on both sides. The principal novelty was an increased activity on the part of the neutrals, resulting in the organization of the League of Armed Neutrality in December, 1800, between Sweden, Denmark, and Russia, with Prussia as a somewhat reluctant fourth party. It was based on the same principles as the Armed Neutrality of 1780, but with further guaranties against capture under blockade, in the form of a provision for previous warning on the part of the war-ships on guard, and also of a prohibition against the searching of trading vessels under convoy. The impulse had been given by the fact that the Scandinavian convoys had been continued even after France had annulled the law of Nivôse in December 1799, as has already been mentioned; and consequently it is apparent that the new League was directed mainly against Great Britain. The consequence of this was a succession of encounters with British war-ships; and in September 1800 Great Britain was guilty of an act of unusually flagrant aggression, when British privateers just outside the port of Barcelona seized a Swedish vessel and, under the protection of its neutral flag, succeeded in capturing the Spanish ships lying there at anchor.

The League of the Neutrals thus became an extremely welcome moral and political support for Napoleon against Great Britain; and some of his earlier utterances concerning the cutting-off of the Continent from England are due to its short career. For instance, we have his pronouncement to his assistant, Roederer (December 1800), as to the necessity of 'blockading the English on their island' and 'turning to their confusion that insular position which causes their insolence, their wealth, and their supremacy'. Napoleon already posed as a champion of the freedom of the seas, and in a treaty with the United States, signed in 1800 and ratified in 1801, he laid down the same principles as had been championed by the Armed Neutrality. But, as is well known, the Armed Neutrality came to an end after some few months with the murder of the Czar Paul I and the Battle of the Baltic, in March and April 1801; and the only result of the action of the neutrals was an Anglo-Russian navigation convention (June 5/17 of the same year), with the belated and somewhat reluctant adhesion of Denmark and Sweden. By this convention Great Britain succeeded in establishing the principle that free ships should not make free goods, and that war-ships, but not privateers, should be allowed to search convoyed trading vessels, in return for the abandonment, in theory, of the paper blockade and for restrictions in the definition of contraband, which was further limited by an agreement with Sweden in 1803. Napoleon, however, followed up his plans of cutting off England in other quarters by means of what the English historian, Dr. Rose, making use of an expression of Napoleon himself, has called his 'coast system', that is to say, the adoption of the French policy of the 'nineties of excluding Great Britain from access to the mainland by making himself master of its coasts in some form or other. After Austria had concluded formal peace at Lunéville, in February 1801, therefore, first Naples and the Papal States, and later on in the year Great Britain's own ally, Portugal, had to acquiesce in the closing of their ports to the British.

This phase of the blockade policy came to an end fairly soon, however, owing to the fact that peace was at length concluded between Great Britain and France, namely, the preliminaries of London, in October 1801, and the formal Peace of Amiens, in March 1802.