Autos-da-fé

What we have here dealt with are the colonial goods pure and simple. British industrial products, of course, according to the Fontainebleau decree were under all circumstances condemned to destruction; and from this rule Napoleon never, so far as is known, made an exception. But it would be a great mistake to conclude from this that the blockade was more effective in this point than in the other. On the contrary, quite the reverse is true, and the reason is the total absence of pecuniary interest, public and private, in obedience to the latter regulations. The public burning of goods, as ordered by the decree, was a genuine auto-da-fé (act of faith), which was performed publicly to the accompaniment of military music and in the presence of all the high dignitaries of the place. But the ceremony was just as great whatever was the real value of the goods burnt at the stake; and against the possibilities of malversation that this offered the virtue of Napoleon's officials could naturally make no resistance. It is improbable, indeed, that the autos-da-fé were 'comedies', as Darmstädter calls them, everywhere; but the fact that they were so in a large number of cases is shown by the accessible material, and was also admitted in cautious terms even by Napoleon himself. This was especially the case in Frankfurt, where at the first inventory, in November 1810, there was set to work an imperial commission consisting, among others, of French officers. When rolls of gold coins were placed in a drawer especially set apart for the purpose, the goods became Swiss or Saxon instead of British; and the goods which actually came to the stake were regarded as having a value of only 200,000 francs, although they were officially valued at 1,200,000 francs. At the renewed purgation at Frankfurt, after the Prussian certificates of origin had been condemned in the spring of 1811, one firm had a whole warehouse full of British goods; but here again the same story was repeated. A Jew from Friedberg by the name of Cassella was made a scapegoat, and only his British cottons were burnt. On this occasion the mayor wrote with refreshing candour: 'When they were spread out, there seemed to be a lot of cloth, and they could give the impression of a great quantity at the burning'—which, in his opinion, was all that was required, as the object must be 'to ward off unpleasantness from France, not to ruin our own population'. For other places we have less detailed statements, although a number of figures are available. It is, however, impossible to check these figures with reference to their authenticity for the autos-da-fé in North Germany. A number of them, which are given in Servières' account for the Hanse Towns and in M. Schäfer's account for Bremen, show the total value of goods burnt to be about 4,500,000 francs. But in addition to these many burnings took place for which we have no figures; and besides it is very difficult to determine the truth behind the official statements.

Nevertheless, these burnings of British goods formed the most striking and amazing feature of all in the new system, as the conflagrations, especially during the last months of 1810 and the beginning of 1811, blazed in hundreds of towns from one end to the other of the territory of Napoleon and his allies, with the sole exception of Denmark. Undoubtedly these blighting scenes produced a tremendous though altogether exaggerated impression of the Emperor's dogged determination to follow out his plans for the economic overthrow of England, regardless of anything else; and consequently they were a very cunning display of power. Even now it is impossible to read the Moniteur without being impressed by the incessantly recurring inventories and details concerning British goods committed to the flames, sometimes in a dozen different places on a single day. The French Chambers of Commerce and Industry naturally struck up what one of them appositely calls 'a concert of blessings' that the Emperor in this unusually direct way had freed them from an overwhelming competitor, although it is true, as the German historian Zeyss has shown, that some of these blessings were conferred in consequence of orders from high places.