A new French charge d’affaires, Desaugiers, arrived in Stockholm on 8 April, 1810, to ensure the complete extension of the Continental Blockade to the Swedish ports. The Swedish Ambassador Brinkman was recalled from London, although his departure was delayed until May by the dilatoriness of the new Foreign Secretary, Lord Wellesley. Whether this was deliberate or just his natural behaviour it is difficult to say since he soon became notorious for his reluctance to make use of his considerable intellect. A letter between his two brothers in March complained ‘[that] he hardly does any business at his Office, that nobody can procure access to him, and that his whole time is passed with Moll [a well-known courtesan]’. His clerk took advantage of a period when he was away sick to reduce the pressure on him by destroying all except six of 70 boxes awaiting attention since they were by then too outdated to require any action. Wellington's comment on his elder brother was ‘I wish that Wellesley was castrated; or that he would like other people attend to his business and perform too. It is lamentable to see Talents and character and advantages such as he possesses thrown away upon Whoring.’

In Stockholm on 6 June, the Swedish government asked Foster, the British charge d’affaires, to depart at 40 hours’ notice to meet French objections. Saumarez was now the sole official British personage in the Baltic. George Foy, an English businessman resident in Sweden, remained as an unofficial link, and the two consuls – Fenwick in Halsingborg and Smith in Gothenburg – stayed on in their private capacity, as did the agent Heinrich Hahn (Louis Drusina) until his death later that year. For Sweden, the former ambassador Rehausen, who had married an English woman and lived in London, performed a similar unofficial link role.

Saumarez had 19 ships of the line under his command when he sailed from England on 8 May 1810. His instructions from Barrow for the Admiralty dealt only with the immediate military concerns. He was to protect British trade and those neutral ships with British government licences; to keep cruisers off Gotland, Danzig and the southern coast of the Baltic, and to interrupt any trade between enemy ports; to watch the Russians and attack their fleet if an opportunity offered; to observe the Swedish fleet similarly; and to ‘transmit without delay to our secretary, for our information, all the intelligence you may be able to obtain on these subjects’.