Statistics are eloquent on this point: France had over 1,500 ocean-going
merchant vessels in 1801 but only 179 in 1812. Thirdly, as smuggling
inevitably sprang up to fill the entrepreneurial gap left by the embargo,
by controlling island entrepots Britain could maintain a steady flow of
colonial goods into Napoleon's Empire.
It was contraband that allowed the British economy to survive
Napoleon's assaults. In the North Sea, Heligoland, occupied by the
British in September 1807, became fr om the following April the centre of
a connived-at trade with Germany which exchanged manufactures and
continental produce for food and grain. In one seven-day period in 1809,
£3oo,ooo worth of goods was shipped out for European destinations, and
by April 1813 2.5 million pounds of sugar and coffee was going to
German ports. In the Baltic trade went on as normal under flags of
convenience, either Swedish or Danish as circumstances dictated. In the
Mediterranean, Trieste, Gibraltar, Salonika, Sicily and, above all, Malta,
were the centres of contraband. The British followed a shrewd
Mediterranean policy: after the abandonment of the ill-considered
Egyptian expedition in 1807 to keep Turkey out of the French camp,
they limited their ambitions to holding the islands of Malta and Sicily
and threatening eastern Spain from there.
Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to write as some jingoistic British
historians have done and insinuate the idea that the Royal Navy's
triumph was cost-free. To maintain supremacy on the high seas often
means literally that: to battle against the high seas themselves. Out of
shipping losses of 317 in the period 1803-15, 223 were wrecked or
fo undered because of calamitous seas or freak waves. The worst storms
took a frightful toll: in March 1810 winds of near-hurricane strength sank
five Spanish and Portuguese ships of the line and twenty other craft; in
December 1805 eight transports carrying troops to Germany went down
in high seas, with the loss of 664 drowned and 1,552 others who were
washed on to the French coast and made prisoner. Three Royal Navy
ships lost in a storm in the North Sea in December 1811 accounted for
more than 2,ooo dead, more than the total losses in dead and wounded
(1,690) sustained by the British at Trafalgar.
Among the factors over which France had little or no control were
levels of corruption, levels of local resistance by allies and local
populations and the impact of war on neutrals. Holland was a sore point
with Napoleon while Louis was King, as he curried favour with his
subjects by conniving at contraband with England. The smuggling trade
between Britain and Holland was worth £4.5 millions in 1807-09, but
when the Emperor ousted Louis and applied stricter controls, the trade
marcin
(Marcin)
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