along with the best statues and pictures of the
galleries of Berlin and Potsdam, thus dealt with according to the
example of Lombardy and Venice.

[Footnote 53: Published 27th July, 1806.]

[Footnote 54: Afterwards third Marquis of Hertford.]

[Footnote 55: Afterwards sixth Earl of Carlisle.]

CHAPTER XXI

The Decrees of Berlin--Napoleon renews the campaign--Warsaw
taken--Enthusiasm of the Poles--Retreat of the Russians--Battle of
Pultusk--The French go into winter quarters--Battle of
Preuss-Eylau--Taking of Dantzick--Battle of
Friedland--Armistice--Expeditions of the English to Calabria,
Constantinople, Egypt, and Buenos Ayres--Peace of Tilsit.

Napoleon had achieved the total humiliation of the Prussian monarchy in
a campaign of a week's duration: yet severe as the exertions of his army
had been, and splendid his success, and late as the season was now
advanced, there ensued no pause of inaction: the Emperor himself
remained but a few days in Berlin.

This brief residence, however, was distinguished by the issue of the
famous _decrees of Berlin_; those extraordinary edicts by which
Buonaparte hoped to sap the foundations of the power of England--the one
power which he had no means of assailing by his apparently irresistible
arms.

Napoleon declared the British Islands to be in a state of blockade: any
intercourse with that country was henceforth to be a crime; all her
citizens found in any country in alliance with France to be prisoners;
every article of English produce or manufacture, wherever discovered, to
be confiscated. In a word, wherever France had power, the slightest
communication with England was henceforth to be treason against the
majesty of Napoleon; and every coast of Europe was to be lined with new
armies of _douaniers_ and _gens-d'armes_, for the purpose of carrying
into effect what he called "the continental system."

He had long meditated the organisation of this system, and embraced, as
a favourable opportunity for its promulgation, the moment which saw him
at length predominant in the North of Germany, and thus, in effect,
master of the whole coasts of Europe from the mouth of the Oder round to
the Adriatic Gulf. The system, however, could not be carried into
effect, because from long habit the manufactured goods and colonial
produce of Britain had come to be necessaries of life among every
civilised people of the world; and consequently every privat