a single merchant vessel flying the French flag was on the seas. In 1800 France received directly from Asia, Africa, and America less than $300,000 worth of goods altogether, and exported to those continents only $56,000. =406. Napoleon and the Continental System.=—A new period in the war against commerce can be dated from the reopening of hostilities, after a brief interval of peace, in 1803. Napoleon, now the ruling spirit in France, found that a direct contest with the English on their own element, the sea, was hopeless. His schemes for the conquest of his great enemies may be summarized as follows: first, direct invasion, from which he was always deterred by the English sea power; second, a blow at England through her eastern empire, to which the Egyptian expedition was preparatory; and finally, the “commercial strangulation” of England by the exclusion of her goods from Europe. This last scheme, to which his efforts finally narrowed themselves, simply continued a policy which had already been applied in France, of excluding the wares and ships of British commerce. Napoleon was able, however, by his extraordinary successes on land, to extend the system of prohibition far beyond the bounds of France, and make it truly deserving of its name of Continental System. By 1809 he had closed to English trade all Europe except Turkey, Sicily, and Portugal. Decrees named from the place at which they were issued (Berlin, Milan), sought with savage thoroughness to stop all openings through which the English might carry on their trade and recruit their resources for the war against him. Commerce with Europe, according to Napoleon’s plan, was to be carried on exclusively by his allies or by neutrals like the Americans; and the English, by being totally excluded, were to be starved into submission. =407. English reprisals; the position of neutrals.=—To these measures England replied with various Orders in Council which matched in spirit Napoleon’s decrees. As Napoleon sought to exclude England from European commerce, so England sought to drive the commerce of Napoleon’s allies from the sea, and, furthermore, to make neutral commerce aid her in her measures against him. An order of 1807 required any neutral trading with the Continent to stop at a British station both going and coming, to land and reship the cargo, and to pay certain duties. Its purpose was to make England the center and warehouse of the world’s commerce. Neutrals were placed between the upper and the nether millstone. In obeying the orders of either belligerent they exposed themselves to the punishment of the other. The merchants of the United States, who had profited by the early stages of the war to extend their commerce greatly, were forced into the seclusion of the embargo (to be described later), and were led in 1812 to the declaration of open war with England.