In May 1810 Napoleon I tried to stop English cotton fabrics from entering the continent of Europe and offered a reward of one million francs to any inventor who could devise the best machinery for the spinning of flax yarn. After only a short period Philippe de Girard took out a French patent for important inventions for both dry and wet methods of spinning flax. He was not awarded the prize money and failed to gain the recognition he felt was deserved. He had been counting on the prize money to pay the expenses of his invention, and he got into serious financial difficulties. So he accepted, when in 1815 he was invited by the Austrian government to establish a spinning mill in Hirtenberg near Vienna, which employed his spinning frames. However, it failed to prove a commercial success.