French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy. Therefore, the British invested all the money and energy it could raise into the Napoleonic Wars.
Napoleon, who came to power in 1799, threatened invasion of Great Britain itself, and with it, a fate similar to the countries of continental Europe that his armies had overrun. With the execution of King Louis XVI in 1793, the French Revolution became a contest of ideologies between the conservative, royalist Kingdom of Great Britain and its allies and radical Republican France. Through its command of the sea, financial subsidies to allies on the European mainland, and active military intervention in the Peninsular War, Britain played the central role in Napoleon's downfall even as all the other major powers switched back and forth. Between 17, under the rule of King George III, the Kingdom of Great Britain (later the United Kingdom) was the most constant of France's enemies.
