Lefebvre Georges. Napoleon

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export the wood, grain, hemp and ﬂ ax that had previously come from those

parts – and these were goods that did not lend themselves to contraband

dealings. For textiles, England now turned to Ireland. But wood supplies

were a very different matter. In 1808 the consumption rose to sixty

thousand loads, each load being roughly equivalent to a cubic metre and a

tenth. Although the British forests were denuded and a great deal of wood

was imported from Canada from 1804 onwards, England had in that year to

buy twenty thousand loads abroad. The House of Solly always managed to

send some from Danzig; but from now on, the supply dwindled – not more

than 3,319 poles and 2,500 loads in 1811, while Canada sent twenty-three

thousand poles, twenty-four thousand loads of oak and 145,000 of pine.

Previously, more had come from Sweden, and especially from the United

States; but in 1810 there was nothing at all from this quarter. There was a

search for new sources of supply; but the wood trade was not organised

anywhere else as it was in the Baltic, and freights often proved prohibitive.

There was particular difﬁ culty in obtaining supplies for the Malta docks, in

spite of the treaties signed with Adamitsch of Fiume and after 1809 with Ali

Tebelen. Once again it proved necessary to infringe the Navigation Acts by

arranging for the construction of ships – even warships – at Halifax and in

India. The merchant navy suffered in consequence. Instead of the ninety-ﬁ ve

thousand tons delivered in 1804, it received only ﬁ fty-four thousand in

1810. The year 1810 was a very hard one, and only forty-seven thousand

loads were used in construction, ten thousand of them coming from abroad.

Grain supplies required even more careful consideration. High prices had

led to a large increase in home production. Something like three hundred

thousand hectares were cleared for cultivation at this time, chieﬂ y in the

common lands. Ireland also provided important supplies. In her struggle

with Napoleon England’s trump card was the progress made by the capi-

talist system, which gave her industry an invincible superiority, though not

to the extent of making home-grown foodstuffs superﬂ uous. Nevertheless,

according to Young’s estimate imported food supplied a sixth of the total

consumption. Although prices never reached the 1801 level, corn remained

more expensive than on the Continent. A quarter rose to one hundred shil-

lings in 1805, then fell to sixty-six in 1807, and rose again to ninety-four in

1808–9. For these two reasons, opinion was always nervous about anything

that might hold up consignments. Three-quarters of the imported corn

came from the Baltic, the other quarter from the United States and Canada.

Now the Baltic ports were in Napoleon’s hands, and in spite of contraband,

England managed to get only sixty-ﬁ ve thousand quarters from the Continent

in 1808 as against 514,000 in 1807. On the other hand the United States

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only contributed six per cent to grain imports in 1808, instead of the four-

teen per cent of the previous year. Since the harvest was not a bad one, no

great harm was done; but in a poor season the result would have been very

different. Besides, there were Portugal and Spain to feed; and here America

came to the rescue and so indirectly gave help to England. But supposing

they were to declare war? Finally, there were the Antilles to consider. In

1808 the home country had to be responsible for feeding them too. If the

Baltic and the United States had failed simultaneously, there would have

been at least a two months’ deﬁ cit, and even more in a bad harvest season.

It has been said that England could have managed by introducing rationing,

by raising the extraction rate for milling and so on. Nonetheless, the psycho-

logical effect would have been tremendous.

In 1809, then, prospects for the Napoleonic blockade were uncertain; but

there was a tendency to be too complacent and to minimise its chances

of success. By itself, it would not have brought England to her knees.

Nevertheless, if applied rigorously and to the whole of Europe, it might

have so weakened her that at some moment or other she would have felt

unable to endure such stress, quite independently of Napoleon’s speciﬁ c

endeavours, but decisively enough to give him certain victory. Thus the

essential point for him was to extend his domination of the Continent and

at the same time maintain an unrelenting blockade. But he did just the

opposite – he relaxed its rigours.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONTINENTAL BLOCKADE

If strictly applied, the continental blockade, representing the Mercantile

Theory at its extreme, would have required Europe to live entirely on its

own resources. But as the vast majority of Europeans were still engaged in

agriculture, there was no need to be uneasy about food supplies. For the

same reason she was self-sufﬁ cient in fatty products and in textiles, apart

from cotton; nor was it impossible for her to supply her own needs in fuel

and mining products. On the other hand she was very hard hit by the disap-

pearance of colonial goods. Attempts were made to ﬁ nd substitutes – chicory

for coffee, honey and grape syrup for sugar, two thousand tons of which

were manufactured in France about 1811. More important still – at least for

the future – was the attention now paid to sugar-beet, which was isolated

by Margraf in 1757 and had been produced commercially in Silesia by a

German called Achard since the beginning of the century. For lack of indigo

and cochineal, recourse was had to woad and madder. Attempts were also

made to cultivate salt-wort – in the Papal States, for instance – and the

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chemical industry quickly popularised the product Nicolas Leblanc had

produced by breaking down sea salt. There were efforts also to acclimatise

cotton round Naples and Malaga, and they proved quite successful, since

France ended by obtaining a sixth of her whole consumption from these

sources, and managed to gain access to cotton from the Levant by way of

Illyria. Nevertheless, this remained a permanent difﬁ culty where cotton

supplies were concerned, and but for contraband imports, the looms would

have had to shut down, especially in Switzerland and Saxony. Napoleon’s

attitude to this industry shows most clearly of all his desire to reduce the

Continent to a position of economic self-sufﬁ ciency. He had never liked the

cotton industry just because it was dependent on supplies from abroad, and

quite early on he gave protection to Douglas in setting up in France the

manufacture of machinery for spinning wool. Moreover, he agreed to grant

loans to cotton manufacturers wishing to change over their machinery to a

different raw material, and offered a prize of a million francs to anyone who

could invent a machine for spinning ﬂ ax. In 1811 all cotton materials were

barred from the imperial palaces.

Even if Europe had been well supplied with raw materials, her troubles

would not have been at an end, for her manufacturing capacity was very

much smaller than her needs. It could only be hoped that as the blockade

became a more perfect instrument for establishing protection, production

would achieve the requisite advances. But time would be needed, for up till

then both machinery and skilled mechanics had come from England.

Moreover, there was nowhere an adequate amount of capital, and the situa-

tion was not such as to attract it. Industrial centres being few and the seas

closed to commerce, self-sufﬁ ciency required amongst other things a

general rearrangement of distribution and methods of transport. And so the

blockade upset people’s habits, interfered with the usual routines, and

damaged an untold number of interests. The shipowners, merchants and

industrialists in the seaports knew that their interests were disregarded out

of hand. Consumers – that is to say, everybody, alas! – felt that they were

expected to stand the racket. They did not like chicory and grape syrup, and

woollens and linens were much dearer than cottons. In a general way,

leading industrialists and even Napoleon himself were concerned to supply

the market without much concern for costs. The ideal of self-sufﬁ ciency

clashed at too many points with the producer’s and the consumer’s inde-

pendence, which was founded on individual liberty and free employment,

everywhere proclaimed by Napoleon to be one of the cardinal principles of

the new society. A conspiracy was bound to develop of its own accord

against the blockade, and nothing but the controls and pressures exercised

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by a military and police state would have succeeded in enforcing obedience

to the system.

The allied countries prevented by the blockade from exporting their agri-

cultural produce often lacked the industries that would have compensated

for this loss. Others again – like the Hanseatic towns – were nearly killed by

the veto on all sea trade, but they more or less openly contrived to get round

the regulations in proportion as they still enjoyed some measure of inde-

pendence. All they had to do was not to apply the measures relating to

neutrals. And so the blockade relaxed or tightened up according as

Napoleon’s military ascendancy decreased or increased. It had started by

being a symbol of the Grand Empire, but in the end became a reason for its

extension, and had an effect upon its structure, for the vassal states scarcely

behaved any more obediently than the allies of Napoleon.

Holland provides the most instructive example. In response to threats

from his brother, Louis closed the Dutch ports on 4 September 1807. But as

early as 1808 La Rochefoucauld, the French ambassador, pointing out the

importance of contraband, particularly in East Frisia, which had recently

been annexed, and in Walcheren, which gave access to Antwerp, was advising

the annexation of the country at least as far as the Meuse. A royal decree

authorised the export of butter and cheese; but Napoleon decided to close

his frontier to the Dutch on 16 September. Then on 23 October Louis

forbade all exports, and closed his ports to all ships. In French eyes, such

excessive measures showed the absurdity of the blockade; besides, these

regulations had no sooner been made than they were undermined by a

series of exceptions. In June 1809 Louis once more opened his ports to

American vessels on condition that they should consign their cargoes to the

state warehouses until peace was signed – from which place it was mere

child’s play to remove them. On 18 July Napoleon replied by setting up a

customs cordon from the Rhine to the Trave, and Louis had once again to

give way. A dogged repetition of these efforts ﬁ nally provoked Napoleon

into annexing his kingdom in 1810.

Murat was already pursuing the same tactics. Sovereigns like the king of

Saxony and the grand duke of Frankfurt, who had no contact with the sea,

were in an even better position to ignore vetoes on contraband. Since

Western Germany had been at peace, Frankfurt had recovered its prosperity

by acting as a clearinghouse on the French frontier, and in 1810 the Prussian

representative stated that there had never been so many colonial goods in

transit. Leipzig continued to be a big English market providing goods for

Central and Eastern Europe. At the Michaelmas fair of 1810 there were more

than 65½ million talers ’ worth of colonial goods on sale; and Switzerland

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was a regular buyer of all the yarn she needed – 190,000 pounds in 1807–8,

430,000 in 1808–9, 950,000 in 1809–10; and it was through her territory

that British exports reached Italy. The blockade thus became one of the

factors pointing to the superiority of an Empire organised on a unitary,

rather than on a federative, basis.

Even where Napoleon was in sole command, it was not easy to get the

better of contraband trafﬁ c. At no period had it been so ﬂ ourishing, thanks

to the enormous proﬁ ts reaped from it and the universal connivance at the

system. In 1810 the emperor himself gave some idea of the excellence of his

arrangements in detailing his various agents, such as the entrepreneurs , the

assureurs , the intéressés , the chefs de bande , the porteurs . For goods intended for

France, Basle and Strasbourg were the busiest centres, and fortunes were

made there by this trade. Customs ofﬁ cials were not sufﬁ cient for keeping

watch over such an extent of coastline and more particularly of land fron-

tiers; military occupation alone could be effective. When Napoleon needed

to withdraw troops, as in 1809, there were breaches in the system every-

where. In 1811 he had to exclude Dalmatia and Croatia from the imperial

customs domain because he could not keep an adequate watch on them.

Nor could the emperor rely completely upon his ofﬁ cials. Consuls became

corrupt – like Bourrienne at Hamburg and Clérambault at Königsberg:

Masséna had put up licences for sale in Italy. Customs ofﬁ cials could be

bribed too, including their chiefs, as we learn from what took place at

Strasbourg. These disadvantages would have been best overcome by reducing

the size of the sectors controlled from each centre; from which it seemed

obvious – as always – that the whole of Europe should be annexed to the

Empire – an argument that was by no means displeasing to Napoleon.

There would thus have been no inducement to modify his policy if the

blockade had not involved consequences that seemed to be dangerous to

him personally. Decrès was not long in complaining that the navy could not

get its vital supplies, which usually came from the Baltic. The cotton manu-

facturers, who had at ﬁ rst rejoiced in the exclusion of English cotton goods

and had extended their factories, began to change their tune because raw

material was running short: if this was to be the result of the blockade, then

they had no use for it. However impatient the emperor might be at their

complaints, he was forced to take note of them because there was nothing

he so much dreaded as unemployment. Moreover, the Empire’s exports

were going down. In spite of the war, they had steadily risen up to 1806,

when they were valued at 456 million francs; in 1807 they dropped to

376 million; in 1808 and 1809 they were hardly more than 330 million.

Certain industries showed a decline, particularly silk manufacture, and in

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the West, textiles, so that there was a further threat of unemployment from

this direction too. The salt reﬁ ners on the coasts, the vine-growers, and the

peasants in the provinces adjacent to the Channel and the North Sea were

equally loud in complaint. There were difﬁ culties in disposing of butter and

cheese, fruit and vegetables, and – what was more important – wines and

brandy. When there was a glut in the corn market the situation grew even

worse. Under the Consulate, corn had been dear, which had had no small

part in making Bonaparte popular with the landowners and large-scale

farmers. In Year X and Year XI the average price had been more than twenty-

four francs a hectolitre. Since 1804 a series of good harvests had brought

the price down below twenty francs; in 1809 it even went as low as ﬁ fteen

francs, and in the Paris Basin and in Brittany it actually fell to eleven or

twelve francs, and in the Vendée to less than ten. Napoleon became disturbed:

though he did not want bread to be dear, neither did he wish slumps to

spread discontent among the growers and make it difﬁ cult to collect the tax.

In such cases he would give previous authorisation for corn export on a

provisional basis, as was the custom under the ancien régime . On 23 November

1808 a trader in Le Havre had asked for permission to export, and England

would have been delighted to be able once more to buy from France.

Again, the question of export had more general implications, for it also

affected the balance of trade. Napoleon would have made a distinction

between this and the balance of account which Colbert would hardly have

allowed, for though France in his time did not possess the resources derived

from freightage and tourism, her capitalists did at least conduct certain

speculative operations in the conquered countries, and war provided signif-

icant quantities of specie. Nevertheless, his ideas were too traditional not to

insist at all costs on giving the precedence to export. Up to 1808 he did not

succeed, although the deﬁ cit fell from eighty-three million francs in 1803

to seventeen million in 1807. Among its other advantages, the continental

blockade seemed to Napoleon to have the merit of redressing this whole

situation. Imports went down from 477 million francs in 1806 to 289

million in 1809. From 1808 onwards, there was a favourable balance of

trade, leaving a cash balance of forty-three million francs in 1809. In the

emperor’s eyes, this was the essential thing; but the result would have been

even more satisfactory if exports, instead of going down, had also main-

tained their level. Since the war blockade as he saw it was aimed at England’s

currency, it did not contradict his mercantile theories: the essential point

was to go on selling to the English, while not buying from them, so as to

rob them of their coin. When he heard in 1808 that Louis was issuing

export licences for Great Britain, he forgave him on condition that nothing

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should be bought from her in exchange: ‘They must pay in cash, but never

in goods – never, do you understand?’

For him, however, there was no relaxing the rigorous attitude to neutrals.

When he heard of Jefferson’s embargo, he announced in the Bayonne decree

of 17 April 1808 that it must now be assumed in principle that American

navigation had ceased to exist, and that any vessels claiming United States

allegiance must be deemed fraudulent, and might therefore be taken as

lawful prize. Napoleon had them sequestrated, and by the Rambouillet

decree of 23 March 1810 ordered them to be sold together with their

cargoes. When neutral vessels were excluded, French exporters ran short

of shipping, and there was bound to be a fall in the quantity of goods

despatched. It is possible that to begin with, Napoleon may not have noticed

this contradictory state of affairs, seeing that his gaze was ﬁ xed above all on

France, and that he was quite indifferent to the fate of the agricultural coun-

tries’ export trade – the Baltic states, for example. Even if he had conquered

the whole of Europe, France would nevertheless have remained the essential

port of the Empire, the centre to which money must ﬂ ow. Since the blockade

gave her the continental market (he argued), she had only to seize it to

maintain, and even to increase, her sales. But were French resources really

sufﬁ cient to replace the goods from England? And could overland porterage

and canal trafﬁ c be so greatly increased that transport by sea would become

unnecessary? Events were to prove that these hopes could not be realised,

and even if they had been, there would still have been the problem of what

to do with the superﬂ uous corn.

Most of the men who served Napoleon did not really approve of the new

character he was giving to the blockade and wanted to return to the system

in force before 1806. Chaptal made no secret of his opinion; Crétet and

Montalivet at the Ministry of the Interior were in touch with the cotton

manufacturers and seaport traders, and would have liked to meet their inter-

ests. They could not go so far as to ask that the Berlin and Milan decrees

should be repealed, but they insinuated that it would be proﬁ table to follow

the English example and issue export licences, and that it would be as well

to allow the neutrals to have them too, though without giving them back

complete freedom. In order to meet the needs of the army and navy, certain

goods would be delivered in return; all other outgoings would be only

against payment in money, which would ensure a comfortable cash balance.

Did not Coquebert de Montbret recommend in 1802 that there should be

exchanges on a compensatory basis? And in 1807 did not Napoleon himself

consider at a certain point issuing import licences on condition that an

equivalent amount of goods was exported to keep the balance? Contrary to

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what he relates in his memoirs, Mollien opposed this plan, pointing out that

exporters, even if refused authority to exact payment in kind, would never-

theless not fail to take on a return cargo – even if fraudulently – and that

they would moreover be compelled by the English to do so; and in this way,

Mollien reckoned, the exchange with Britain would be equalised. Coquebert

de Montbret likewise pointed out that if corn was sent to the English, this

would spoil the chance of starving them out. These results could not be

reconciled with the theory of an offensive blockade.

They were right: but another argument advanced by Gaudin and Collin

de Sussy, the head of the customs, won Napoleon over. By reducing imports,

they argued, he would curtail the customs revenue, which went down from

sixty million francs in 1808 to 11½ million in 1809. On the eve of the

campaign against Austria, it was important to restore the level of receipts;

moreover, the export of corn would enable the peasants to pay the land tax.

In March 1809 Napoleon did in fact dictate a plan for licensing. A conﬁ den-

tial circular from Crétet announced on 14 April that it was a question of an

exceptional and temporary expedient which would not be publicised. These

licences – later called ‘the old-type licences’ – would allow the export of

wines and brandies, fruit and vegetables, grain and salt against the import

of wood, hemp, iron and cinchona or against payment in coin, plus the

customs dues and a tax of from thirty to forty louis for each licence. Crétet

issued forty of these; but Fouché, who succeeded him as the intermediate

authority, was much more generous, for by 5 October he had issued two

hundred. However, Gaudin and Montalivet insisted on the needs of industry

being also considered, and so a second type of licence was brought out on

4 December 1809, incorporated subsequently in a decree of 14 February

1810. This measure reserved three-quarters of each cargo exported for agri-

cultural produce – to which were now added oils and textile raw materials;

the rest of the cargo could be taken up by manufactured products.

As was to be expected, the conditions governing re-import and payment

in coin clashed with the English requirements, and there was not as great a

demand for licences as might be imagined. In June 1810 it was reported to

the emperor that 351 had been issued, exports being valued at ten million

francs against six million of imports. Nevertheless, the export of grain is still

shrouded in obscurity. According to the English ﬁ gures, the Empire and its

allies sent Great Britain in 1809 and 1810 nearly 1,500,000 quarters, and

this was said to have been paid for in gold, involving a transfer of £1,400,000

sterling. The value of English imports did in fact rise in 1809 to

£75.5 million, and in 1810 to £89.7 million, whereas the famine of 1801

had only made the ﬁ gure go up to £73.7. It therefore seems likely that corn

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was exported not only under imperial licence. Since the end of September

1809 England had been issuing licences to go and fetch corn from the

Continent, even as ballast; and it looks as though Napoleon closed his eyes

and allowed the enemy ships to load as freely as they liked, until it came to

the poor harvest of 1810, when he stopped exports at the end of the

summer. The glut in corn had been cleared; but the vine-growers, the indus-

trialists and the treasury had little cause for satisfaction. During the ﬁ rst half

of 1810 the emperor became convinced that this ﬁ rst attempt was not

enough. In the course of his northern journey, the manufacturers’ griev-

ances were more and more loudly voiced, and on 12 January he gave

permission for selling prize goods, in spite of the veto against them – except

for certain cottons – subject to a duty of forty per cent. These were called

products ‘of permitted origin’. In other words, he authorised certain

imports. Where exports were concerned, he organised ofﬁ cial relationships

with the English smugglers at Dunkirk, and in 1811 their base was moved

to Gravelines. On 6 June a traders’ and manufacturers’ council was set up,

and at the end of the month the emperor began to work out with them a

general rearrangement of the blockade.

A new motive was also urging him in that direction. On 1 May 1810 the

American Congress authorised the president in the Macon Bill to forbid

imports by belligerents who had not repealed the measures directed against

the neutrals before 3 March 1811. If England persisted in maintaining them,

Napoleon would, while giving the United States favoured treatment, urge

them to break off relations with her. By the decree of Milan, neutrals who

stood up for their rights would be exempt from these provisions. Through a

diplomatic device it was arranged to advance the date of their coming into

force, an event of considerable importance, since it would reinforce the

effectiveness of the blockade.

On 3 July 1810 the decree of Saint-Cloud made licences an ofﬁ cial insti-

tution. They were subsequently granted to Italy, and the Hanseatic cities; and

to Danzig out of consideration for the Poles. By a further decree of 25 July

the French Empire’s maritime trade was put under state control. It was now

forbidden to enter or leave Empire ports without a licence signed by the

emperor in person. These licences were called ‘normal licences’, and were

only issued to French subjects. Thus Napoleon had in effect promulgated a

navigation act, like the one passed by the Convention. But as his ships could

not sail, it was inoperative. And so an exception studied by the Trade Council

in an important session on 25 June was made in favour of the Americans.

On 5 July they were granted by decree permission to import, provided

that they re-exported the equivalent. But as Madison had forbidden his

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countrymen to ask for licences, which in his view implied an authorisation

contrary to the freedom of the seas and his country’s sovereignty, his veto

was evaded by calling them ‘permits’ when they applied to seamen of the

United States. The truth was that France could not do without them; but –

diplomatically – this concession was much publicised, and on 6 August

Champagny gave notice that the emperor would repeal the Berlin and Milan

decrees in November, if the English on their side would revoke the Orders

in Council. Montalivet at once proposed that these permits should be

granted to all allied or neutral vessels; but the emperor refused, and even

impounded some Danish ships. It must therefore be realised that he had

most adroitly turned his absolute need for neutral vessels into a diplomatic

manoeuvre likely to put the United States at loggerheads with Great Britain.

The decree of 25 July stipulated that all imports must be balanced by an

equivalent export of certain designated goods, which varied from port to

port, but always contained from a third to a half in silks. If the general

prohibitions and those relating to English manufactures had been observed,

imports ought only to have consisted of foodstuffs and raw materials from

the United States or the Continent; but in actual fact, colonial goods were

once more admitted, although known to be of enemy origin. Thus the

method put forward by Coquebert de Montbret in 1802 had in effect been

adopted – state regulation of all maritime trade, and a compulsory minimum

export to balance the imports. Napoleon gave up demanding that the former

must be paid for in money in order to revive the export trade and especially

to provide industry with the necessary raw materials, and consumers with

their sugar and coffee. He had had the same inspiration as the Committee of

Public Safety; yet in Year II France, though obliged to import at all costs,

agreed if need be to pay in coin. Now, in Napoleon’s time, the position was

reversed, and France expected the foreigner to pay her in cash. Nonetheless,

it was clear that the emperor, by consenting to purchases which would

partly be to the enemy’s advantage, was in fact diminishing the rigour of the

continental blockade.

The treasury also took its share, for each licence cost a thousand francs.

The customs tariff had been revised, and on 1 August the Trianon decree was

published, increasing the tax on colonial goods to a formidable degree. The

American colonist, who had paid one franc per quintal in 1804 and sixty

francs since 1806, would in future have to pay eight hundred. The duty on

indigo was raised from ﬁ fteen to nine hundred, and on coffee from 150 to

four hundred. There seemed to be a ﬂ at contradiction between the policy of

obtaining raw materials for the manufacturers and the imposition of this

overwhelming level of duty. But in thus striking a blow at cotton Napoleon