A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878Fyffe, Charles Alan
History
A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878
Fyffe, Charles Alan
Europe -- History -- 1789-1900
Such were the stipulations contained in the formal Treaties of Peace
between the three Powers. These, however, contained but a small part of the
terms agreed upon between the masters of the east and of the west.
A secret Treaty of Alliance, distinct from the Treaty of Peace, was also
signed by Napoleon and Alexander. In the conversations which won over the
Czar to the cause of France, Napoleon had offered to Alexander the spoils
of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. Finland and the Danubian provinces were
not too high a price for the support of a Power whose arms could paralyse
Austria and Prussia. In return for the promise of this extension of his
Empire, Alexander undertook, in the event of Great Britain refusing terms
of peace dictated by himself, to unite his arms to those of Napoleon, and
to force the neutral maritime Powers, Denmark and Portugal, to take part in
the struggle against England. The annexation of Moldavia and Wallachia to
the Russian Empire was provided for under the form of a French mediation.
In the event of the Porte declining this mediation, Napoleon undertook to
assist Russia to liberate all the European territory subject to the yoke of
the Sultan, with the exception of Roumelia and Constantinople. A partition
of the liberated territory between France and Russia, as well as the
establishment of the Napoleonic house in Spain, probably formed the subject
rather of a verbal understanding than of any written agreement. [140]
Such was this vast and threatening scheme, conceived by the man whose whole
career had been one consistent struggle for personal domination, accepted
by the man who among the rulers of the Continent had hitherto shown the
greatest power of acting for a European end, and of interesting himself in
a cause not directly his own. In the imagination of Napoleon, the national
forces of the western continent had now ceased to exist. Austria excepted,
there was no State upon the mainland whose army and navy were not
prospectively in the hands of himself and his new ally. The commerce of
Great Britain, already excluded from the greater part of Europe, was now to
be shut out from all the rest; the armies which had hitherto fought under
British subsidies for the independence of Europe, the navies which had
preserved their existence by neutrality or by friendship with England, were
soon to be thrown without distinction against that last foe. If even at
this moment an English statesman who had learnt the secret agreement of
Tilsit might have looked without fear to the future of his country, it was
not from any imperfection in the structure of Continental tyranny. The
fleets of Denmark and Portugal might be of little real avail against
English seamen; the homes of the English people might still be as secure
from foreign invasion as when Nelson guarded the seas; but it was not from
any vestige of political honour surviving in the Emperor Alexander. Where
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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