ABSTRACT
In promulgating the decrees of 1810, Napoleon’s aims had been threefold – in the first place, to profit from a trade that he could not stop; second, to boost French industry; and, third, to secure France a monopoly not just of industrial production, but also of the distribution of colonial goods. Speculation in colonial imports having become rife, the events of 1810 brought general ruin, with French merchants undercut by the new imports and foreign ones stripped of their stocks. As for Napoleon’s defeat in Germany, it is quite clear that nationalism had played very little role in his downfall. Superficially, at least, the evidence for a Russian ‘people’s war’ seems quite compelling. In consequence, as late as 1813 Napoleon was remarkably complacent about the situation on the home front, evidently believing that he had nothing to fear from resistance.
