Rees-bremen Barrier (Sch Nbrunn Decree of July 18, 1809)

Obviously this development did not escape the notice of Napoleon. On the contrary, he was kept informed by a veritable army of spies as to what was happening both within and without his empire, and it is clear that he did not wish to let it go on without taking steps to stop it. He did not even delay his counter-measures until the close of the Austrian campaign, but limited them in the main to the attempt to isolate Holland, which in his eyes was the most serious breach of all in the system. At the same time as he renewed, as has been mentioned above, the closing of the frontier against France, he suddenly ordered, by the decree of Schönbrunn on July 18, 1809, a corresponding closing of the frontier on the side of Germany and caused this to become operative at once without even informing the 'protected' princes in the Confederation of the Rhine who were affected by the blockade, viz., his brother Jerome, King of Westphalia, and the Grand Duke of Berg. The smuggled goods were considered by the French director-general of customs, Collin de Sussy, to go direct up the Rhine and the Ems, and then to go by land through the Grand Duchy of Berg, practically corresponding to the Ruhr district, to the whole Confederation of the Rhine. At the close of July, French customs officers were moved into the country, forming a chain from Bremen through Osnabrück down to the Rhine at Rees close to the Dutch frontier, which was thereby cut off from connexions eastward. This cordon was made threefold, consisting of troops, gendarmes and customs officers. According to one statement, one of the lines went along the Dutch frontier from Varel, near the beach of Jade, to Emmerich on the Rhine immediately north of Rees. The violence with which the whole thing was carried out, however, caused great confusion. The local authorities refused to assist the customs officers and protested against their movements; the gendarmes were at times positively hostile to them; and to crown all, the customs officials were sometimes corrupt, so that the blockade of the non-French part of the Continent still continued to be practically a failure on well-nigh all points. The unbroken severity of the action that Napoleon followed in Holland, especially by the incorporation of the region south of the Waal in March 1810, seems not to have borne any great fruit either. At any rate, as late as May of the same year King Louis wrote sourly to Marshal Oudinot, Duke of Reggio: 'I have received the letter in which you inform me that smuggling is going on to a great extent on the coast of my kingdom. Like you, I believe that it goes on wherever there are coasts, in Germany as in Holland, and even in France.' The complete annexation of Holland in July created a new situation here, but at the same time it made the barrier between Holland and Germany somewhat purposeless.

During the first half of the year 1810, therefore, the situation was not greatly changed. Frankfurt, in particular, could rejoice in an entirely undiminished trade in colonial goods, which came in through the ports of the North Sea and the Baltic, and were conveyed thence to northern Italy, southern France, and even to Holland and eastern France. The then minister of Prussia in this capital of the Confederation of the Rhine actually declared at the beginning of the year that the town had never before played such a part in the trade of Europe nor been so full of colonial goods; and the trade seems further to have increased in the course of the summer. As regards Leipzig, to be sure, it was stated before and during the Easter Fair in 1810 that the imports through the North Sea ports, especially of English yarn, had practically ceased. But to make up for this, the transfer of the trade to the Baltic ports was now definitive, helped with the best of good-will by Prussia, and also by Sweden and Mecklenburg, to circumvent the Continental System in every conceivable way, and, for that matter, with useful help from the corrupt French consuls in the ports. Königsberg above all, but to a great extent the other towns on the south coast of the Baltic—Rostock, Stralsund, Stettin, Memel, and even Riga—now took the place of the Hanse Towns and the Dutch ports; and there began a unique importation of American cotton, which attained its highest level during the summer. The whole of the Confederation of the Rhine, Austria, Switzerland, and even France, were provided from there at a time when spinning mills were springing up on the Continent like mushrooms from the ground. At the Michaelmas Fair in 1810 the value of the supplies of colonial goods in Leipzig was estimated at 65,500,000 francs; and although only a sixth part remained in the town, all cellars, vaults, and storehouses were full to overflowing, chiefly with cotton, but also with coffee, sugar, and indigo.