EMPIRE
ON
THE
SEVEN SEAS
hagen
was
bombarded
and
the
Danish fleet
was carried
off
to
Eng-
land,
never
to be
returned.
Like
many
other
acts,
its
only
justifi-
cation,
if it
had
any,
was
necessity.
It was
known
that
Napoleon
and
the
Czar
had
agreed
to
force Denmark
to
fight
Britain,
and
Napoleon's
hand
was
stretched
out
to
grab
the
fleet.
Canning
grabbed
it
first.
The
punctilios
of
diplomacy
or
the
drawing
room
would
have
been
wasted on
the French
dictator,
and
there
was
no
reason
to
believe,
as far
as the unfortunate Danish ruler
was
concerned,
that
when
faced
by
Napoleon's
threats
he
would
have
played
the
role of
an Albert
of
Belgium
a
century
later.
The
unsavory
Danish
episode
left
the
question
of
the
Portuguese
fleet
still
open.
When
Napoleon
demanded that
Portugal
declare
war
on
England, backing
the demand with force as the
British
had
in
Denmark,
that
state,
although friendly
to
England,
yielded
at
once.
Under
protection
of a British
fleet,
however,
the
Portuguese
navy
got
to
sea,
the
Russian
ships
not
having
arrived in
time
to
stop
it,
and,
convoyed
by
British,
sailed
to
Brazil
with
the
royal
family,
who set
up
their throne
in
the
New World.
By
1
809
new
mishaps
had
completely
ended
Napoleon's
dream of
conquering
Britain
by
any
means
except
those
commercial
measures
which
together
made
up
what has
been
known as
his
"Continental
System."
III.
FORCES
AGAINST
DICTATORSHIP
Before
speaking
of
that
we
may pause
a
moment to
note
that,
although
his
agreement
with
Alexander on
the raft
seemed to
have
made
him
all-powerful
and
impregnable,
and
Britain
was to
go
through
another
eight
years
of terrible
struggle,
the
dictator was
in
truth
not
nearly
as
powerful
as
he
seemed.
The
statue of the
iron
conqueror
had
feet
of
clay,
and
many
causes from
now
on
combined
to
bring
about
his
inevitable
downfall
if
only
England
could
hold
out
and
take
the
bludgeonings
still
to
come.
For
one
thing,
we
have
spoken
of how
the
fact
that he
had
given
good
gov-
ernment
to
peoples
who
as
yet
had
little or
no
national
feeling
had
made
his
conquests
easy.
This had
been
true
up
to
the
time
when
he
and
Alexander
discussed the
division
of
Europe
between
them
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