B R I T A I N. 



087 



negotiate a capitulation. The capitulation was not 

 ' signed till three days after, when the British army 

 I. took possession of the citadel, dock yards, and bat- 

 teries, dependent upon them. The British admiral 

 immediately began rigging and fitting out the ships 

 that filled the spacious basons, and were there laid 

 up in ordinary. These, at the expiration of the 

 term limited by the capitulation, were, together with 

 the stores, timber, and every other article of naval 

 equipment found in the arsenals, conveyed to Eng- 

 land, where, with the exception of one ship of the 

 line, that was stranded or destroyed on the island 

 of Huen, they all arrived safely in the end of Oc- 

 tober. 



The natural humanity of the British public, ex- 

 acting cited by the horrible details of this siege, gave a po- 

 iicge of p u ] ar a id t o the outcry of the opponents of govern- 

 ment at this proceeding. Ministers, too, in their own 

 defence, were anxious to impress the public with a 

 belief that specific information of the intentions of 

 Denmark to throw herself into the scale of France, 

 or, more properly speaking, to submit to her, had 

 been received from their foreign agents. It was even 

 pretended, that Denmark had been forced to be a 

 secret party to the treaty of Tilsit, although it was 

 afterwards proved that the date of our resolution 

 against Copenhagen had been long anterior to any 

 communications that could be made respecting the 

 treaty of Tilsit. The most tenable grounds of de- 

 fence which ministers exhibited, were, first, the ge- 

 neral probability of Denmark being unable or un- 

 willing to make a last stand against France ; and, 

 secondly, the express overtures which had been made 

 to the Prince Regent of Portugal, and which he had 

 communicated to the British ministry. In these, the 

 adherence of Denmark to the French interests was 

 announced, both as the means and the motive for 

 obtaining that of Portugal. It has been stated with 

 confidence, that the Danish minister himself admit- 

 ted the impossibility of defending Holstein, Sleswig, 

 and Jutland, from French invasion. The only doubt 

 that remains, is, what the Danish court, driven to 

 the solitary possession of Zealand, would have done? 

 Whether they would have stood, with passive hero- 

 ism, faithful to alliance with us, as their defenders, 

 or purchased their political, though still dependent 

 existence, by submission to the power who could 

 still g;ve them much, and take every thing except 

 Zealand and their fleet ? We think the weight of 

 probability lies heavily against such an hypothesis. 



But the system on which the Danish war was com- 

 menced, if justifiable, was not improved to the ex- 

 tent of which it was capable ; and the abandonment 

 of the island of Zealand, left the acquisition of the 

 object which would have best justified the expedi- 

 tion, to the mercy of a French army, as soon as the 

 Danes should have a fleet worth seizing. 



The treaty of Tilsit was hardly concluded, when 

 Bonaparte turned his eyes towards the west of Eu- 

 r P e " allc ^ resolved on the subjugation of Portugal 

 and Spain. He demanded of the court of Lisbon, to 

 shut up the ports of Portugal against England ; to 

 detain all Englishmen residing in that country ; to 

 confiscate all English property ; denouncing war in 

 case of refusal : And, without waiting for an answer, 

 he gave orders for detaining all Portuguese merchant 



2 



ships that were in the ports of I''i.in. e. 'I'he Prince ' 

 Regent of Portugal, hoping to ward off the storm, 

 acceded to the shutting up nf his port*; I. ut refused 

 to comply with the two other demands, a being con- 

 trary to the law of nations, and to the treaties that 

 subsisted between the two countries. The court of 

 Portugal then began to adopt measures for securing 

 its retreat to the Portuguese dominions in South 

 America. Fr that purpose, the Pnnce Regent or- 

 dered ail ships of war fit to keep the sea to be fitted Conduct e 

 out ; and also gave warning of what was intended to JJ 1 ''" 1 

 the English, directing them to sell their property, 

 and to leave Portugal, in order thus to avoid an effu- 

 sion of blood, which, in all probability, would have- 

 proved useless. He resolved also to comply, if pos- 

 sible, with the views of the French Emperor, in case' 

 he should not be softened to more moderate t".r. 

 But Bonaparte peremptorily insisted, not only on the 

 shutting up of the ports, but on the imprisonment 

 of all British subjects, the confiscation of their pro- 

 perty, and a dereliction of the project of retiring to 

 America. The Prince Regent, when he had reason 

 to believe that all the English not naturalized in the 

 country had taken their departure from Portugal, 

 and that all English property had been sold, adopt- 

 ed the resolution of shutting his ports against Eng- 

 land, and even of complying with the other demands 

 of France : Declaring, however, at the same time, 

 that should the French troops enter Portugal, he 

 was resolved to remove the seat of government to 

 Brazil, the most important and best defended part of 

 his dominions. 



It had been frequently stated to the cabinet of 

 Lisbon, by the English ambassador Lord Strang- 

 ford, that his Britannic majesty, in agreeing not to 

 resent the exclusion of British commerce from the 

 ports of Portugal, had gone to the utmost extent of 

 forbearance ; that, in making this concession to the 

 peculiar circumstances of the prince regent's situa- 

 tion, his majesty had done all that friendship could 

 justly require, and that a single step beyond this line 

 of -modified hostility must lead to the extremity of 

 actual war. Nevertheless the prince regent, in the 

 fond hope of preserving Portugal by conciliating 

 France, on the 8th of November signed an order for November, 

 detaining the few British subjects, and of the very 

 inconsiderable portion of British property that yet 

 remained in Lisbon. On the publication of this or- 

 der, Lord Strangford removed the arms of England 

 from the gates of his residence ; demanded his pass- 

 ports ; presented a final remonstrance against the re- 

 cent conduct of the court of Lisbon ; and retired 

 to a British squadron, commanded by Sir Sydney 

 Smith, who immediately established a most rigorous 

 blockade at the mouth of the Tagus. A few days 

 after, the intercourse between the court of Lisbon and 

 the British ambassador was renewed. , Lord Strang- 

 ford, under due assurance of protection and security, 

 proceeded to Lisbon on the 27th, when he found the. 

 prince regent wisely directing all his apprehensions to 

 a French army which had entered Portugal, and was 

 on its march to Lisbon, and all his hopes to an 

 English fleet. The object of this march he was at 

 no loss to understand ; for Bonaparte had declared in 

 his journals, that the house of B aganza had ceased 

 to reign. Lord Strangford promised to the prince 



