THE WAR AND FLUCTUATIONS IN MARITIME INTERCOURSE 685 
The condition of the less favoured members of the system AD 
was even worse; their interests were entirely subordinated 
to those of France, while their commerce was diverted, or 
interrupted, in a way that caused serous trouble in all parts 
of the continent, and did comparatively little harm to England. 
Her colonial and distant commerce increased and gave ample 
employment to shipping that would otherwise have been 
engaged in European waters; English manufactures were so and a large 
far indispensable’, that a large contraband trade sprang up at on 
once, and quantities of goods were also imported by officials #™" *- 
who had licences permitting them to engage in the prohibited 
sraffic’. Napoleon, in the hope of doing something for native 
manufactures, at last determined to confiscate and destroy all 
English goods; and large bonfires were lighted in Antwerp, 
Nantes, Ratisbon, Leipsic, Civita Vecchia and many other 
places. This was the beginning of the end ; the loss mcurred, 
following as it did on a long period of uncertain and speculative 
trade, brought about a collapse of business everywhere; even 
the favoured French manufacturers were in despair, and the 
other members of the Continental System, who had been 
obliged to join in the exclusion of English products, became 
utterly disaffected by the tyranny imposed on them in the 
name of commercial liberty. Russia suffered especially, and 
the military expedition to Moscow? was rendered necessary by 
Napoleon's determination to maintain the Continental System; 
the weapon which he had forged in the hope of dealing 
a fatal blow at English prosperity* was turned against himself, 
stated, was his creed. At that time, wheat fetched more than £5 the quarter; and 
sur great enemy, imagining the drain of our gold to be a greater loss to us than 
the incoming of new life was gain, pursued the very policy which enabled us to 
survive that year of scarcity without a serious strain. In 1811-1812 those precious 
exports of corn from the Napoleonic States ceased, but only because there was not 
enough for their own people. 
“In the latter year, especially, the bread-stuffs of Prussia and Poland were 
drawn into the devouring vortex of Napoleon's Russian expedition; and this 
purely military reason explains why the best Danzig sold at Mark Lane at £9 the 
quarter, and why England was on the brink of starvation. There is not a shred 
of evidence to prove that the autocrat himself ever framed that notion of cutting 
off our food supplies, which our Continental friends now frankly tell us would be 
:heir chief aim in case of a great war.” p. 74. 
! Rose, Eng. Hist. Rev., 1893, p. 722. 2 Rose, Life of Napoleon, mw. 222. 
} Ib, mw. 235. 4 7b. rr. 103 and 211—216.