Some weeks after the dispersal of the French fleet at Toulon, Collingwood was lying very ill on board his flagship, the City of Paris, when the signal officer expressed fears of a coming tempest, which would be exhausting to the invalid: "Nothing in this world will now trouble me," said the veteran; "I am dying." He was not yet sixty years of age, but since his childhood he had constantly given to the English navy the noblest example of courage and virtue. In England all eyes and all thoughts were directed towards Spain. The old king, George III., had finally become hopelessly insane. The grief caused by the death of his daughter, the Princess Amelia, had brought about that final relapse that the physicians declared incurable. The Prince of Wales accepted the Regency, with the conditions prescribed in 1788 by Mr. Pitt. Notwithstanding the constant opposition of Mr. Perceval and his friends, the Regent decided to retain the Tory Cabinet, without providing any places for his friends or Whig partisans. The haughty tone of Lord Grenville and of Lord Grey towards him, had, it was said, decided the Prince to this generally popular measure. Resolved, in common with the rest of the royal family, to obstinately pursue the war, but without military ardor or personal incentive, the Regent gave no direction to the national movement which sustained in England the terrible burden of that great European struggle, which became each day more violent against England. A decree of the Emperor, on the 27th of August, 1810, ordered that all English merchandise in any port, wherever smuggled since the declaration of the continental blockade, should be burned. Sweden, the last maritime power in Europe remaining neutral, after a revolution which had dethroned the foolish and incompetent King Gustavus IV., had formed an alliance with France and Russia. Swedish ports were henceforth closed to the English. {434}