The Hanseatic League in the Early Modern Period 121
Accordingly, the demands of the so called Berlin Decree (Berliner Dekret)
of November twenty-first were also enacted with difficulty. Nevertheless, the
regulations appeared suited to lastingly block the trade with England. This
decree included a ban on trade and correspondence, a confiscation of English
books and the arrest of British subjects as well as the stoppage of ship traffic
between England, its colonies and the continent. While the British blockade of
the Elbe had merely impaired the commerce of Hamburg, the measures of the
Continental Blockade also had an effect on the exchange trade and, to a greater
extent, on the insurance business because these measures also concerned cor-
respondence with Great Britain.
Above all, the move to neutral (Danish) Altona offered one alternative.
Otherwise, the representation of the “honorable businessmen”, the so called
Commerce Deputation, attempted to prevent the worst. First of all, an assess-
ment of the English wares in the magazines of Hamburg’s merchants and then
of English property in Hamburg was obtained. This was acquired by civic means
in order to forestall confiscation and also in order to avoid the eventual seizure
of Hamburg’s property in Great Britain.35 The interruption of the transactions
trade constituted an additional concern in that debt moratoria were declined,
as these had led to chain reactions with regard to the debtors. The main prob-
lem was created by the English wares in the possession of Hamburg, which
wares, according to the Berlin Decree, were declared “goodly prizes” and the
confiscation of them would have meant a considerable loss of Hamburg’s own
properties. Political means were then attempted (the delegation to Posen for an
audience with Napoleon on the fourteenth of December) to raise awareness of
the fact that the retroactive application of the decree would ruin the Hamburg
Community, while a ban on correspondence only benefited the English debt-
ors at the expense of Hamburg’s lenders. With regards to Napoleon, the people
of Hamburg were met by deaf ears and only the French envoy to Hamburg,
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, could dodge Napoleon’s demands to
ship many of the wares located in the Hanseatic city to France. Hamburg was
therefore drawn into informal contacts via Altona, through which correspon-
dence between England and Hamburg traveled. As a result, the smuggling
between Hamburg and Altona could hardly be controlled.
Furthermore, Tönning was also an important distribution center of wares
bound for Hamburg, which then made their way to the Leipzig trade fairs. From
there they reached Poland and Russia by land, while the English wares depot in
Helgoland (since 1807) was connected with Northern Germany by smugglers.36
This was important, as Denmark had joined the Continental Blockade in 1808
35 Vogel, Die Hansestädte, 19f.
36 Heckscher, The Continental System, 178f.