William Pitt died in January, 1806, heart-broken by the news of
Austerlitz, the ruin of all his hopes. Charles James Fox, the gifted
Whig, who thereupon became British foreign secretary, was foiled in a
sincere attempt to negotiate peace with Napoleon, and died in September
of the same year, despairing of any amicable settlement.
The brilliant French victory at Jena in October, 1806, seemed to fill
the British as well as the Prussian cup to overflowing. The very next
month Napoleon followed up his successes by inaugurating a
thoroughgoing campaign against his arch-enemy, Great Britain herself;
but the campaign was to be conducted in the field of economics rather
than in the purview of military science. England, it must be
remembered, had become, thanks to the long series of dynastic and
colonial wars that filled the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the
chief commercial nation of the world: she had a larger number of
citizens who made their living as ship-owners, sailors, and traders
than any other country in the world.
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