Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/747

Rh into a new state, called the Kingdom of Westphalia, with Napoleon's brother, Jerome, as its king, and added to the Confederation of the Rhine; while Prussian Poland, reorganized and clumsily christened the " Grand Duchy of Warsaw," was given to Saxony. What was left of Prussia became virtually a dependency of the French empire.

The Continental System: the Berlin and Milan Decrees.— While Napoleon was carrying on his campaigns against Prussia and Russia, he was all the time meditating vengeance upon England, his most uncompromising foe, and the leader or the instigator of the coalitions which were constantly being formed for the overthrow of his power. We have seen how the destruction of his fleet at Trafalgar dashed all his hopes of ever making a descent upon the British shores. Unable to reach his enemy directly with his arms, he resolved to strike her through her commerce. By two celebrated imperial edicts, called from the cities whence they were issued the Berlin and the Milan decree, he closed all the ports of the continent against English ships, and forbade any of the European nations from holding any intercourse with Great Britain, all of whose ports he declared in a state of blockade.

So completely was Europe under the domination of Napoleon, that England's trade was by these measures very seriously crippled, and great loss and suffering were inflicted upon her industrial classes. We shall have occasion a little later to speak of the disastrous effects of the system upon the French empire itself.

Beginning of the Peninsular Wars (1808).—One of the first consequences of Napoleon's " continental policy " was to bring him into conflict with Portugal. The prince regent of that country presuming to open its ports to English ships, Napoleon at once deposed him, and sent one of his marshals to take possession of the kingdom. The entire royal family, accompanied by many of the nobility, fled to Brazil, and made that country the seat of an empire which has endured to the present day.

Having thus gained a foothold in the Peninsula, Napoleon now resolved to possess himself of the whole of it. Insolently