had been ceded to Russia. The Crown Prince was aware of its difficulty for reasons of the desperate situation of the state finance and the reluctance of the Finnish people to return to Sweden. Even if Finland was regained, he thought, it would put Sweden into a new cycle of conflicts with a powerful neighbor because there was no guarantee Russia would accept the loss as final. Therefore, he made up his mind to make a united Scandinavian peninsula, which was easier to defend, by taking Norway (intentionally without the ancient and remote provinces of Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands) from Denmark and uniting her to Sweden. He tried to divert public opinion from Finland to Norway, by arguing that to create a compact peninsula, with sea for its natural boundary, was to inaugurate an era of peace, and that waging war with Russia would lead to ruinous consequences. Soon after Charles John's arrival in Sweden, Napoleon compelled him to accede to the Continental System and declare war against Great Britain; otherwise, Sweden would have to face the determination of France, Denmark and Russia. This demand would mean a hard blow to the national economy and the Swedish population. Sweden reluctantly declared war against the UK, which was treated by both countries as merely nominal, although Swedish imports of British goods decreased from £4,871 million in 1810 to £523 million in the following year. In January 1812, French troops suddenly invaded Swedish Pomerania and the island of Rügen. Officially, the French claimed that Sweden had repeatedly violated the Continental System and that the occupation of Stralsund and Swedish Pomerania was closing an entrepôt for illegal British goods. Napoleon, before marching to Moscow, also had to secure his rear and dared not allow a Swedish continental foothold behind him as he did not trust Charles John. Charles John believed that Napoleon scheduled the occupation to occur on the Crown Prince's birthday, and ordered Charles John's old rival Marshal Davout to execute the operation, as a personal insult, adding another dimension of personal enmity to the incident. As a result, the initially amicable relationship which Charles John had with Napoleon, following his election as Crown Prince, soon changed because of the invasion. The invasion was a clear violation of international law as well as an act of war and public opinion in Sweden was outraged. Moreover, it antagonized the pro-French faction