d to be educated; the
constant drain of men for the wars and the increase in the price of
necessaries led to grumblings in the Press, which claimed the presence
of his Argus eye and the adoption of a very stringent censorship.[225]
But, above all, there was the commercial war with England. This could
be directed best from Paris, where he could speedily hear of British
endeavours to force goods into Germany, Holland, or Italy, and of any
change in our maritime code.

Important as was the war in Spain, it was only one phase of his
world-wide struggle with the mistress of the seas; and he judged that
if she bled to death under his Continental System, the Peninsular War
must subside into a guerilla strife, Spain thereafter figuring merely
as a greater Vendee. Accordingly, the year 1810 sees the climax of his
great commercial experiment.

The first land to be sacrificed to this venture was Holland. For many
months the Emperor had been discontented with his brother Louis, who
had taken into his head the strange notion that he reigned there by
divine right. As Napoleon pathetically said at St. Helena, when
reviewing the conduct of his brothers, "If I made one a king, he
imagined that he was _King by the grace of God_. He was no longer my
lieutenant: he was one enemy more for me to watch." A singular fate
for this king-maker, that he should be forgotten and the holy oil
alone remembered! Yet Louis probably used that mediaeval notion as a
shield against his brother's dictation. The tough Bonaparte nature
brooked not the idea of mere lieutenancy. He declined to obey orders
from the brother whom he secretly detested. He flatly refused to be
transferred from the Hague to Madrid, or to put in force the
burdensome decrees of the Continental System.

On his side, Napoleon upbraided him with governing too softly, and
with seeking popularity where he should seek control. After the
Walcheren expedition, he chid him severely for allowing the English
fleet ever to show its face in the Scheldt; for "the fleets of that
Power ought to find nothing but rocks of iron" in that river, "which
was as important to France as the Thames to England."[226] But the
head and front of his offending was that British goods still found
their way into Holland. In vain did the Emperor forbid that American
ships which had touched at English ports should be debarred from those
of Holland. In vain did he threaten to close the Scheldt and Rhine to
Dutch barges.