coast in a
state of blockade--a mere _brutum fulmen_ in point of fact, but
designed to give a show of legality to his Continental System. Yet,
apart from this thin pretext, he troubled very little about law.
Indeed, blockade is an act of war; and its application to this or that
part or coast depends on the will and power of the belligerents.
Napoleon frankly recognized that fact; and, however much his preambles
appealed to law, his conduct was decided solely by expediency. When he
wanted peace (along with Sicily) he said nothing about our maritime
claims: when the war went on, he used them as a pretext for an action
that was ten times as stringent.

The gauntlet thrown down by him at Berlin was promptly taken up by
Great Britain. An Order in Council of January 7th, 1807, forbade
neutrals to trade between the ports of France and her allies, or
between ports that observed the Berlin Decree, under pain of seizure
and confiscation of the ship and cargo. In return Napoleon issued from
Warsaw (January 27th) a decree, ordering the seizure in the Hanse
Towns of all English goods and colonial produce. By way of reprisal
England reimposed a strict blockade on the North German coast (March
11th); and after the Peace of Tilsit laid the Continent at the feet of
Napoleon, he frankly told the diplomatic circle at Fontainebleau that
he would no longer allow any commercial or political relations between
the Continent and England. "The sea must be subdued by the land." In
these words Napoleon pithily summed up his enterprise; and whatever
may be thought of the means which he adopted, the design is not
without grandeur. Granted that Britannia ruled the waves, yet he ruled
the land; and the land, as the active fruitful element, must overpower
the barren sea. Such was the notion: it was fallacious, as will appear
later on; but it appealed strongly to the French imagination as
providing an infallible means of humbling the traditional foe.
Furthermore, it placed in Napoleon's hands a potent engine of
government, not only for assuring his position in France, but for
extending his sway over North Germany and all coasts that seemed
needful to the success of the experiment.

Indirectly also it seems to have fed, without satisfying, his
ever-growing love of power. Here we touch on the difficult question of
motive; and it is perhaps impossible, except for dogmatists, to
determine whether the enterprises that led to his ruin--the partition
of Po