Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/375

 NAPOLEON, FIRST CONSUL AND EMPEROR 363 British commerce was to be ruined and Britain herself was doomed to perish. As a matter of fact, no sea-borne commerce being possible except in British ships, and all Europe having become largely dependent on goods procurable only from overseas, the Continental System would have been doomed tinental to failure, even if Russia had not withdrawn from System, 1807. it and England had not secured a port of entry for herself through the action of Spain and Portugal. The British answered the treaty of Tilsit by seizing the Danish fleet after a bombardment of Copenhagen, although Britain and Denmark were not at war. Napoleon replied by requiring Portugal to join the Continental System. French troops marched on Portugal, when she protested ; and Napoleon took the oppor- tunity to bring about the abdication both of the King isos, of Spain and his son, and to bestow the Spanish Portugal and Crown on his own brother Joseph, whose kingdom of Naples was handed over to Murat, one of Napoleon's marshals. The Spanish people rose in arms against the usurpation, and the British resolved to support Spain and Portugal with all their military force. Thus began the Peninsular War. The rising in Spain was a spontaneous popular insurrection, without organisation, without an effective head; but for that very reason it was not to be suppressed. Spain was 3. The Penin- flooded with French troops, which could hardly sular War - help being victorious in the field, but wherever they were not present, the bands of insurgents were breaking in upon their communications. There was no fleet to stop British troops from entering Portugal, when Sir Arthur Wellesley, best known by his later title of Duke of Wellington, defeated the French commander and forced him to evacuate the country altogether. In the winter, the masterly operations of Sir John Moore prevented Napoleon from completing the subjugation of Southern Spain j and from that time, the Peninsula was left to the French marshals, for each of whom Wellington was fully a match, while their jealousies prevented their effective co-operation. For five years, the attempt to conquer Spain kept a quarter of a million French soldiers locked up in the