The national feeling ran strongly in favour of commercial prohibition.

In 1787 Arthur Young found the cotton-workers of the north furious at the recent inroads of Lancashire cottons, while the wine-growers of the Garonne were equally favourable to the enlightened Anglo-French commercial treaty of 1786.
It was Napoleon's lot to win the favour of the rigid protectionists, while not alienating that of the men of the Gironde, who saw in him the champion of agrarian liberty against the feudal nobles.

Moreover, the nation still cherished the pathetic belief that the war was due to Albion's perfidy respecting Malta, and burned with a desire to chastise the recreant islanders.

For these reasons, Frenchmen endured the drain of men and money with but little show of grumbling.
They were tired of the wars.

_We have had enough glory_, they said, even in the capital itself, and an acute German observer describes the feeling there as curiously mixed.