The cessation of all commercial intercourse prevented France from keeping pace with the improvements making in England; yet, singularly enough, at the beginning of the nineteenth century more net was manufactured in France than in England. At the time of the Peace of Amiens (1802) there were 2,000 frames in Lyons and Nîmes, while there were scarcely 1,200 in England; but the superiority of the English net was incontestable, so, to protect the national manufacture, Napoleon prohibited the importation. This of course increased its demand; the net was in request in proportion as it was prohibited. The best mart for Nottingham was the French market, so the Nottingham net trade took every means to pass their produce into France. {452}Hayne, one of the proprietors of the "barley-corn" net, had gone to Paris to make arrangements for smuggling it over, when the war broke out, and he was detained. Napoleon proposed that he should set up a machine in France; but he preferred continuing his illicit trade, which he carried on with great success until 1809, when his own agent informed against him, his goods were seized and burned, and having in one seizure lost £60,000 (1,500,000 fr.), he was completely ruined, and fled to England.[1253] The French manufacturers took out various patents for the improvement of their "Mechlin" machines, and one was taken, in 1809, for making a crossed net called "fond de glace"; but the same year Heathcoat producing the bobbin net machine, the inventors could not sustain the competition. Every attempt was made to get over bobbin net machines; but the export of English machinery was punished by transportation, and the Nottingham manufacturers established at their own expense a line of surveillance to prevent the bobbin net machines from going out. In spite of all these precautions, Cutts, an old workman of Heathcoat's, contrived to elude their vigilance, and, in 1815, to import a machine to Valenciennes, whence he removed it to Douai, where he entered into partnership with M. Thomassin. In 1816 they produced the first bobbin net dress made in France. It was embroidered by hand by a workwoman of Douai, and presented by the makers to the Duchesse d'Angoulême. About the end of the year 1816 James Clark introduced a machine into Calais, which he passed in pieces by means of some French sailors. These two were the first bobbin net machines set up in France. It is not within our limits to follow the Calais lace manufacturers through their progress; suffice it to say that it was in 1817 that the first bobbin net machine worked, concealed from all eyes, at Saint-Pierre-lez-Calais, now, if not the rival of Nottingham, at least the great {453}centre of the bobbin net and machinery lace manufactures in France.[1254] St. Quentin, Douai, Cambrai, Rouen, Caen, have all in turn been the seats of the tulle manufacture. Some of these fabrics are extinct; the others have a very limited trade compared with Saint-Pierre and Lyons.