By way of reprisal England reimposed a strict blockade on the North German coast (March 11th); and after the Peace of Tilsit laid the Continent at the feet of Napoleon, he frankly told the diplomatic circle at Fontainebleau that he would no longer allow any commercial or political relations between the Continent and England.

"The sea must be subdued by the land." In these words Napoleon pithily summed up his enterprise; and whatever may be thought of the means which he adopted, the design is not without grandeur.

Granted that Britannia ruled the waves, yet he ruled the land; and the land, as the active fruitful element, must overpower the barren sea.

Such was the notion: it was fallacious, as will appear later on; but it appealed strongly to the French imagination as providing an infallible means of humbling the traditional foe.
Furthermore, it placed in Napoleon's hands a potent engine of government, not only for assuring his position in France, but for extending his sway over North Germany and all coasts that seemed needful to the success of the experiment.
Indirectly also it seems to have fed, without satisfying, his ever-growing love of power.

Here we touch on the difficult question of motive; and it is perhaps impossible, except for dogmatists, to determine whether the enterprises that led to his ruin--the partition of Portugal, which slid easily into the occupation of Spain, together with his Moscow adventure--were prompted by ambition or by a semi-fatalistic feeling that they were necessary to the complete triumph of his Continental System.