Napoleon at St. Helena-The Briars-Longwood-Charges against the English Government respecting his accommodations and treat- ment at St. Helena-Charges against the Governor, Sir Hudson Lowe --Napoleon's mode of life at Longwood-His health falls off-His LIFE OF NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. CHAPTER XXI. The Decrees of Berlin-Napoleon renews the Campaign-Warsaw taken-Enthusiasm of the Poles-Retreat of the Russians-Battle of Pultusk-The French go into Winter Quarters-Battle of Preuss Eylau-Taking of Dantzic-Battle of Friedland-ArmisticeExpeditions of the English to Calabria, Constantinople, Egypt, and Buenos Ayres-Peace of Tilsit. NAPOLEON had achieved the total humiliation of the Prussian monarchy in a campaign of a week's duration: yet severe as the exertions of his army had been, and splendid his success, and late as the season was now advanced, there ensued no pause of inaction: the emperor himself remained but a few days in Berlin. This brief residence, however, was distinguished by the issue of the famous decrees of Berlin: those extraordinary edicts by which Buonaparte hoped to sap the foundations of the power of England-the one power which he had no means of assailing by his apparently irresistible arms. Napoleon declared the British islands to be in a state of blockade: any intercourse with that country was henceforth to be a crime; all her citizens found in any country in alliance with France to be prisoners; every article of English produce or manufacture, wherever discovered, to be confiscated. In a word, wherever France had power, the slightest communication with England was henceforth to be treason against the majesty of Napoleon; and every coast of Europe was to be lined with new armies of douaniers and gens d'armes, for the purpose of carrying into effect what he called "the continental system.' He had long meditated the organization of this system, and embraced, as a favourable opportunity for its promulgtaion, the moment which saw him at length predominant in the north of Germany, and thus, in effect, master of the whole coasts of Europe from the mouth of the Oder round to the Adriatic Gulf. The system, however, could not be carried into effect, because from long habit the manufactured goods and colonial produce of Britain had come to be necessaries of life among every civilized people of the world: and consequently every private citizen found his own domestic comforts invaded by the decree, which avowedly aimed only at the revenues of the English crown. Every man, therefore, was under continual temptation, each in his own sphere and method, to violate the decrees of Berlin. The custom-house officers were exposed to bribes which their virtue could not resist. Even the most attached of Napoleon's own functionaries connived at the universal spirit of evasion-his brothers themselves, in their respective dominions, could not help sympathizing with their subjects, and winking at the methods of relief to which they were led by necessity, the mother of invention. The severe police, however, which was formed every where as a necessary part of the machinery for carrying these edicts into execution-the insolence of the innumerable spies and informers whom they set in motion-and the actual deprivation of usual comforts, in so far as it existed-all these circumstances conspired to render the name of the Berlin decrees odious throughout Europe and in France itself. It may be added that the original conception of Napoleon was grounded on a mistaken opinion, to which, however, he always clung-namely, that England derives all her strength from her foreign commerce. Great as that commerce was, and great as, in spite of him, it continued to be, it never was any thing but a trifle when compared with the internal traffic and resources of Great Britain-a country not less distinguished above other nations for its agricultural industry than for its commercial. Napoleon received at Berlin a deputation of his senate, sent from Paris to congratulate him on the successes of his campaign. To them he announced these celebrated decrees: he made them the bearers of the trophies of his recent victories, and, moreover, of a demand for the immediate levying of 80,000 men, being the first conscription for the year 1808 that for the year 1807 having been already anticipated. The subservient senate recorded and granted whatever their master pleased to dictate; but the cost of human life which Napoleon's ambition demanded had begun, ere this time, to be seriously thought of in France. He, meanwhile, prepared, without further delay, to extinguish the feeble spark of resistance which still lingered in a few garrisons of the Prussian monarchy, beyond the Öder; and to meet, ere they could reach the soil of Germany, those Russian legions which were now advancing, too late, to the assistance of Frederick William. That unfortunate prince sent Lucchesini to Berlin, to open, if possible, a negotiation with the victorious occupant of his capital and palace: but Buonaparte demanded Dantzic, and two other fortified towns, as the price of even the briefest armistice; and the Italian envoy returned, to inform the king that no hope remained for him except in the arrival of the Russians. Napoleon held in his hands the means of opening his campaign with those allies of Prussia, under circumstances involving his enemy in a new, and probably endless, train of difficulties. The partition of Poland-that great political crime, for which |