The early days of the nineteenth century were overshadowed by a storm-cloud which burst with sudden fury and dispersed almost as rapidly, giving place to a short-lived peace followed by twelve years of incessant tempest. So far back as 1780 Russia, Sweden and Denmark had entered into a league of Armed Neutrality by which, in the terse summing-up of Laughton, they had “bound themselves to resist the right of ‘visit and search’ claimed by the belligerents, and to enforce the acceptance of certain principles of so-called international law; among others, the security of a belligerent’s property under a neutral flag,--‘a free ship makes free goods’; that a blockade to be binding must be maintained by an adequate force; and that ‘contraband of war’ must be distinctly defined beforehand. As these principles, if admitted by England, amounted to the import by France of naval stores,--masts, hemp, tar--from the Baltic, to be paid for by French exports, the English Government was resolved to contest them.” From 1793 to 1800 Sweden and Denmark were neutral, but Great Britain, secure in her maritime supremacy, had continued to search merchant-ships, whether convoyed by a vessel of war or not. Matters were brought to a crisis by the capture of the Danish frigate _Freya_ on the 25th July 1800, and the subsequent passage of the Sound by a British squadron. At the moment Denmark was not prepared for hostilities, and entered into a convention with Great Britain, which admitted the right of search. When, a little later, the half-crazy Czar, Paul I., dissatisfied with England as an ally, and led on by specious promises on the part of Napoleon, definitely renewed the League, the two Baltic Powers willingly joined him. He laid an embargo on all British ships in Russian ports, and generally showed that it was a case of “off with the old love and on with the new.”