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The Continental Blockade (French: Blocus continental), or Continental System, was a large-scale embargo by French emperor Napoleon I against the British Empire from 21 November 1806 until 11 April 1814, during the Napoleonic Wars.
Berlin fell 15 days after the beginning of the war. The French Emperor Napoleon entered the city after three days, from which he issued his Berlin Decree implementing his Continental System. Large-scale plundering of Berlin took place. [2]
The Milan Decree was issued on 17 December 1807 by Napoleon I of France to enforce the 1806 Berlin Decree, which had initiated the Continental System, the basis for his plan to defeat the British by waging economic warfare. The Milan Decree stated that no country in Europe was to trade with the United Kingdom. [1]
The Continental System eventually led to economic ruin for France and its allies. Less damage was done to the economy of Britain, which had control of the Atlantic Ocean trade. [ 6 ] Other European nations removed themselves from the Continental System, which led in part to the downfall of Napoleon.
The Fall of Berlin marked a high point in the success of Napoleon and he issued the Berlin Decree from the city, implementing the Continental System aimed at strangling European trade with the United Kingdom. Meynier was a contemporary of Jacques-Louis David, and painted a number of French patriot scenes.
The French Emperor Napoleon I attempted to force Emperor Alexander I of Russia into rejoining his unpopular Continental System by invading Russia on 24 June 1812 with around 685,000 troops, and eventually entered Moscow in late 1812, following the bloody, yet indecisive Battle of Borodino.
However, it was Napoleon's invasion of Russia in the same year, again in part to enforce his continental system, that proved to be the turning point of the war. He was never able to recover militarily from that defeat. The economic warfare ended with Napoleon's final defeat in 1815.
The loss of the North American markets could have been a decisive blow. As it was by the time the United States declared war, the Continental System [of Napoleon] was beginning to crack, and the danger correspondingly diminishing. Even so, the war, inconclusive though it proved in a military sense, was an irksome and expensive embarrassment ...