and the workshop of European manufactures. While her mines, her looms,
her steam-engines, were giving her almost a monopoly of industrial
production, her merchant ships sufficed not only to spread her own
products through the world, but to carry to every part of it the
products of other countries. Though the war had already told on both
these sources of wealth, it was far from having told fatally. It had
long closed France indeed to English exports, while the waste of wealth
in so wide a strife had lessened the buying power of Europe at large.
But in Europe the loss was to some extent made up for the moment by the
artificial demand for supplies which war creates; the home market still
sufficed to absorb a vast quantity of manufactures; and America, which
was fast growing into the most important of English customers, remained
unaffected by the struggle. Industry had thus suffered but little loss,
while commerce believed itself to have greatly gained. All rivals save
one had in fact been swept from the sea; the carrying trade of France
and Holland alike had been transferred to the British flag, and the
conquest of their wealthier settlements had thrown into British hands
the whole colonial trade of the world.

[Illustration: EUROPE after the PEACE OF TILSIT, 1807]

[Sidenote: League of Neutrals.]

To strike at England's wealth had been among the projects of the
Directory: it was now the dream of the First Consul. It was in vain for
England to produce, if he shut her out of every market. Her carrying
trade must be annihilated if he closed every port against her ships. It
was this gigantic project of a "Continental System" that revealed itself
as soon as Buonaparte became finally master of France. From France
itself and its dependencies in Holland and the Netherlands English trade
was already excluded. But Italy also was shut against her after the
Peace of Luneville, and Spain not only closed her own ports but forced
Portugal to break with her English ally. In the Baltic Buonaparte was
more active than even in the Mediterranean. In a treaty with America,
which was destined to bring this power also in the end into his great
attack, he had formally recognized the rights of neutral vessels which
England was hourly disputing; and in her disregard of them he not only
saw the means of bringing the northern powers into his system of
exclusion, but of drawing on their resources for a yet more decisive
blow. He was set upon challe