The shipowners and merchants of London, after what had taken place, heard the news of the formal declaration of war with tumultuous exultation; indeed war seemed then more acceptable than peace had been eighteen months before. Nelson was appointed to take charge of the Channel fleet, and a force of volunteers was speedily embodied, sufficient to convince Bonaparte that the invasion of England was not so easy as he had anticipated, even “although all France rallied around the hero which it admired.”[259] The English government, not waiting for the formal declaration of war, seized upon all the French merchant vessels they could meet with. Indeed, the news reached Paris, just after Lord Whitworth left that capital, that two English frigates had captured in the bay of Audierne some French merchantmen which were endeavouring to get into Brest. The intelligence of other captures soon followed. There had been an agreement between France and the United States on the subject of such captures (30th of September, 1800); but, strangely enough, the treaty of Amiens was silent upon this subject; hence the English government, viewing the prodigious military preparations of Bonaparte on land, retaliated in the only way they could retaliate effectively, by claiming the supremacy of the ocean. In seizing the French merchantmen before war had been formally declared, England adhered to her invariable practice when war, though unproclaimed, existed de facto. But the ruler of France was unprepared for this blow, and, in the first impulse of his resentment, he issued a decree arresting as prisoners of war all Englishmen then travelling in France. Nor was he induced till after long solicitation to limit the action of this decree to persons holding the king’s commission.[260] [Sidenote: Effect of the war on shipping.]