Shortly after Riou had left the scene the Danes began to fire more slowly, while the British kept up as well as ever. But, the Trekroner forts that had hammered Riou now turned their guns on the _Monarch_ and _Defiance_, making the battle in that part of the line as hot as before; while some Danes so lost their heads as to begin firing again from ships that had surrendered to the British. This was more than Nelson could stand. So he wrote to the Danish Crown Prince: "Lord Nelson has been commanded to spare Denmark when she no longer resists. The line of defence which covers her shores has struck to the British flag. Let firing cease, then, that he may take possession of his prizes, or he will blow them into the air along with the crews who have so nobly defended them. The brave Danes are the brothers, and should never be the enemies, of the English."
Nelson refused the wafer offered him to close up the letter, saying, "this is no time to look hurried"; and, sending to his cabin for a candle, wax, and his biggest seal, he folded and sealed the letter as coolly as if writing in his house at home instead of in a storm of shot and shell. After arranging terms the Danes gave in; and the whole Armed Neutrality of the North came to nothing. For the second time Nelson had beaten Napoleon.
This defeat did not really harm the Northern Powers; for, though they liked their own shipping to do all the oversea trading it could, they were much better off with the British, who _could_ take their goods to market, than with Napoleon, who could _not_. Besides, the British let them use their own shipping so long as they did not let Napoleon use it; while Napoleon had to stop it altogether, lest the British, with their stronger navy, should turn it to their advantage instead of his. In a word: it was better to use the sea under the British navy than to lose it under Napoleon's army.
Both sides now needed rest. So the Peace of Amiens was signed in March 1802. With this peace ended Napoleon's last pretence that he was trying to save the peoples of the world from their wicked rulers. Some of them did need saving; and many of the French Revolutionists were generous souls, eager to spread their own kind of liberty all over Europe. But British liberty had been growing steadily for a good many hundreds of years, and the British people did not want a foreign sort thrust upon them, though many of them felt very kindly toward the French. So this, with the memory of former wars, had brought the two countries into strife once more. All might then have ended in a happy peace had not Napoleon set out to win the overlordship of the world, like Philip and Louis before him and the German Kaiser since. France, tired of revolutionary troubles and proud of the way her splendid army was being led to victory, let Napoleon's dreams of conquest mislead her for twelve years to come. Hence the new war that began in 1803 and ended on the field of Waterloo.