The Trafalgar victory did not indeed reduce France to terms, and it thus illustrates the limitations of naval power against an enemy not primarily dependent upon the sea. But it freed England from further threat of invasion, clinched her naval predominance, and opened to her the prospect of taking a more aggressive part in the land war. Even this prospect was soon temporarily thrust into the background. On the very day of Trafalgar Napoleon's bulletins announced the surrender of 60,000 Austrians at Ulm, and the Battle of Austerlitz a month later crushed the Third Coalition. The small British contingents in Germany and southern Italy hastened back to their transports. It was only later, when France was approaching exhaustion, that British forces in the Spanish peninsula and elsewhere took a conspicuous part in the Continental war. _The Continental System_ England's real offensive strength lay not in her armies but in her grip on Europe's intercourse with the rest of the world. And on the other hand, the only blow that Napoleon could still strike at his chief enemy was to shut her from the markets of Europe--to "defeat the sea by the land." This was the aim of his Continental System. It meant a test of endurance--whether he could force France and the rest of Europe to undergo the tremendous strain of commercial isolation for a sufficient period to reduce England to ruin. The Continental System came into being with Napoleon's famous Berlin Decree of November, 1806, which, declaring a "paper" blockade of the British Isles, put all trade with England under the ban. Under this decree and later supplementary measures, goods of British origin, whatever their subsequent ownership, were confiscated or destroyed wherever French agents could lay hands on them; and neutral vessels were seized and condemned for entering British ports, accepting British convoy, or even submitting to British search. England's chief retaliatory measure was the Orders in Council of November, 1807. Her object in these orders and later modifications was not to cut off trade with the Continent, but to control it to her own profit and the injury of the enemy--in short, "no trade except through England." The orders aimed to compel the aid of neutrals by excluding neutral ships from the Continent unless they should first enter British ports, pay British dues, and (as would be an inevitable consequence) give covert assistance in carrying on British trade.