neutrals to trade between the ports of France and her allies, or between the ports of nations which should observe the Berlin decree, on pain of the confiscation of the ship and cargo. On the 27th another decree, issued at Warsaw, ordered the seizure in the Hanse Towns of all British goods and colonial produce. The reply of Great Britain was a stricter blockade of the North German coast. The accession of Russia to Napoleon's commercial policy at Tilsit seemed to have brought the combination against British trade to its furthest development, and it was answered by new orders in council, treating any port from which the British flag was excluded as if actually blockaded, and further limiting the carriage by neutral vessels of produce from hostile colonies. The Milan decree issued on December 17, and further orders in council published during the same winter, carried to greater extremes, if possible, this intolerable form of commercial warfare, under which neutral commerce was gradually crushed out of existence. Great Britain, owing to her command of the sea, was more independent of this kind of commerce than her rival, and both the decrees and the orders in council inflicted far more damage on France and her allies than on Great Britain. But neither party was able to enforce completely its policy of commercial exclusion. Europe could not dispense with British goods or colonial produce carried in British vessels. The law was deliberately set aside by a regular licensing system, and evaded by wholesale smuggling; neutral ships continued to ply between continental ports, and Napoleon did not disdain to clothe his troops with 50,000 British overcoats during the Eylau campaign. Still, Great Britain was enabled to cripple, if not to destroy, the merchant shipping of all other countries, and the interests of consumers all over Europe were enlisted against the author of the continental system. On the other hand, a heavy blow was dealt to friendly relations between Great Britain and the United States, the chief victim of these belligerent pretensions.[36] [Pageheading: _FRUITLESS EXPEDITIONS._]