=404. War and peace in the nineteenth century.=—Although, for the convenience of a round number, the date 1800 has been chosen in this book to fix the beginning of the recent period, the great changes which marked the passing of previous conditions began with the French Revolution of 1789. The effects of the revolution were soon felt outside the country in which it started. In a few years the powers of Europe were engaged in a war which, with slight intermission, endured for almost the period of a generation, and ceased finally only with the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. Since 1815 commerce has enjoyed singular freedom from the vexation of war, and our attention will be occupied in this chapter mainly with the commercial policy of states at peace. The convulsive struggle, however, in which the century began, has such importance, commercial as well as political, that it demands more than passing comment. =405. French privateers and English commerce.=—The commercial interest of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars centers in the contest between France and England. These two powers were the greatest commercial states of Europe, and France still retained important colonial possessions. England, however, had specialized in the development of sea power, while France now followed the course to which she had long been tending and sought to win the victory by the development of her power on land. After 1795 France abandoned the policy of maintaining great fleets to oppose the British, sacrificed the merchant vessels flying the French flag, and sought to destroy the commerce on which the life of England depended by sending out innumerable privateers to prey upon it. France enjoyed, apparently, an extraordinarily favorable position for making this policy effective. The port of London carried on more than half of British foreign trade; of the ships which contributed to its annual record of thirteen or fourteen thousand entries and departures, two thirds had to pass through the English Channel; and French privateers, sailing at sundown from a home port, could reach their cruising ground before it was light again. Some of the French privateers inflicted very serious loss on the British. A large one, captured in 1799, is said to have taken 160 prizes in four years, and to have cleared for her owners in Bordeaux five million dollars. English ships were forced to gather in convoys, sailing under the protection of ships of war. Fleets of 200 or 300 vessels were not unusual, and sometimes 500 or 1,000 were seen together, in dangerous places like the Chops of the Channel or the entrance to the Baltic. This system consumed the time and money of English merchants, and did not entirely prevent losses, which amounted perhaps to 2 per cent or more of the total volume of British trade. Still, the effort of France to crush her enemy by this means was clearly futile. France, on the other hand, saw her commerce decline until, as a literal fact, not