Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/543

 Etirope and Napoleon 505 directed to England, or to an Englishman, or written in the English language, shall not pass through the mails and shall be seized. III. Every individual who is an English subject, of what- ever state or condition he may be, who shall be discovered in any country occupied by our troops or by those of our allies, shall be made a prisoner of war. IV. All warehouses, merchandise, or property of what- ever kind belonging to a subject of England shall be re- garded as a lawful prize. V. Trade in English goods is prohibited, and all goods belonging to England or coming from her factories or her colonies are declared a lawful prize. VII. No vessel coming directly from England or from the English colonies, or which shall have visited these since the publication of the present decree, shall be received in any port. VIII. Any vessel contravening the above provision by a false declaration shall be seized, and the vessel and cargo shall be confiscated as if it were English property. X. The present decree shall be communicated by our minister of foreign affairs to the kings of Spain, of Naples, of Holland, and of Etruria, and to our other allies whose subjects, like ours, are the victims of the unjust and bar- barous maritime legislation of England. (Signed) Napoleon. On November 11, 1807, after news of the Treaty of Tilsit had reached the English government, it replied by an order in council establishing an undisguised "paper" blockade. This, in spite of some alleged merciful excep- tions, was almost a prohibition of neutral trading such as that carried on by the United States, and President Jefferson ordered the first embargo, December 22, 1807, as a retaliatory measure. Napoleon replied to England's measures by issuing his brief and cogent Milan Decree.