On the death of Mr. Pitt, January the 23rd, 1806, his great political and rival successor, Mr. Fox, endeavoured to make peace with France, but in vain. Indeed before his own death, which took place the 13th of September the same year, he had become satisfied that any lasting peace with Napoleon was impossible. Having vanquished and humbled two of the greatest powers of Europe, the ambition of the ruler of France grew in proportion to his conquests; his arrogance being only qualified by the reflection that he could not reach England by land, and could not therefore crush her, as he had done so many other European states; in fact, she had proved to be the one stumbling-block between him and universal empire. Unable to reach her with his armies, and frustrated in every attempt to overcome her fleets at sea, he attempted her ruin by means which appeared at the moment more within the reach of one who had overrun Europe with his armies. Thus, he declared to the European Powers that he would not restore any of their territories till England had restored the colonies she had taken during the previous war from France and other countries. Allowing only a brief armistice to the Prussians, and having arranged everything in his own mind, he proclaimed the whole of their ports to be blockaded, and closed those of Hanover against the ships of England and her manufacturers. Defeated by this country in every action at sea, he resolved, if an alliance with all the leading European powers could be secured, to destroy her commerce by a gigantic but impracticable scheme, known as his “continental system,” the one object of which was the exclusion of British ships from every port in Europe. [Sidenote: English Order in Council, April 8, 1806.] Conduct so outrageous was not to be endured by even the mild government of Mr. Fox, which, on receipt of the intelligence of the exclusion of the English flag from the harbours of the Elbe, recalled the British ambassador from Berlin, declared the rivers Ems, Weser, Elbe, and Trave, and all Prussian harbours to be in a state of blockade; laid an embargo on every ship of that nation then in British ports, and issued an Order in Council [April 8, 1806] authorizing the seizure of all vessels navigating under Prussian colours, so that before many weeks had elapsed four hundred of its merchant vessels were laid up in the harbours of Great Britain. [Sidenote: Berlin Decree, Nov. 10;] These stringent measures were the forerunners of Napoleon’s famous decrees.[264] The redoubtable Berlin decree issued at that city on the 10th of November, 1806, was meant, we must presume, to be only applicable to the countries actually occupied by his armies, including France, Holland, Spain, Italy, and the whole of Germany, although it declared the British Islands to be in a state of blockade. [Sidenote: Its terms.]