As Foreign Secretary under the spiritless premiership of the Duke of Portland, Canning was allowed free hand. The two years and a half during which he directed the foreign office were marked by a succession of moves which gave a new aspect to the contest with Napoleon. Canning entered upon his duties just as the Fourth Coalition was being hammered to pieces, on the same anvil which had destroyed the others. By the Treaty of Tilsit (July, 1807), Napoleon prepared to unite the northern nations in his war on British commerce. Hearing or divining his purpose to further this project by seizing the fleet of Denmark, Canning dispatched an armed force to Copenhagen with a demand for the surrender of the Danish ships. The order was executed, and the Danish vessels were brought back to England, though at the cost of a bombardment of the Danish capital. The French Emperor's eye was fastened on the fleet of Portugal as another auxiliary, and when the Regent refused to accede to his request, Napoleon dispatched Marshal Junot to drive him from his kingdom and hold its ports and fortresses against England. England now stood almost alone, and Napoleon hoped to complete her ruinous isolation by destroying her trade with Europe. His "Continental System," which was to make the continent commercially independent of Great Britain, was foreshadowed in his Berlin Decrees. Fresh decrees were now met by fresh Orders in Council, "shutting out from the continent all vessels which had not touched at a British port." It was Canning whose genius caught at the strategic possibilities of a war in the peninsula (Spain-Portugal) as a practical opening on the French flank for a final blow at the Napoleonic power. Napoleon's interference in the government of Spain by dethroning its monarchs and giving the crown to his brother Joseph had exasperated that proud nation and provoked the spirited people to arm against the intruder. The Portuguese were scarcely less bitter against the French conqueror. Canning perceived the possibility of gaining a foothold in these kingdoms, which were easily accessible by sea, and by utilizing the spirit and resources of the aroused nations to consolidate a power there which would threaten France itself, whose borders the great soldier had thus far kept inviolate. How ably Sir Arthur Wellesley fulfilled Mr. Canning's desire the life of Wellington has already shown.