It was not simply war, the making of kingdoms, the directions of his new-made kings; minor affairs of the greatest variety occupied him. While at Boulogne, tormented by the failure of the English invasion and the war against Austria, he ordered that horse races should be established “in those parts of the empire the most remarkable for the horses they breed; prizes shall be awarded to the fleetest horses.” The very day after the battle of Friedland, he was sending orders to Paris about the form and site of a statue to the memory of the Bishop of Vannes. He criticised from Poland the quarrels of Parisian actresses, ordered canals, planned there for the Bourse and the Odeon Theatre. The newspapers he watched as he did when in Paris, reprimanded this editor, suspended that, forbade the publication of news of disasters to the French navy, censured every item honorable to his enemies. To read the bulletins issued from Jena to Friedland, one would believe that the writer had no business other than that of regulating the interior affairs of France. This care of details went, as Pasquier says, to the “point of minuteness, or, to speak plainly, to that of charlatanism;” but it certainly did produce a deep impression upon France. That he could establish himself five hundred leagues from Paris, in the heart of winter, in a country encircled by his enemies, and yet be in daily communication with his capital, could direct even its least important affairs as if he were present, could know what every person of influence, from the Secretary of State to the humblest newspaper man, was doing, caused a superstitious feeling to rise in France, and in all Europe, that the emperor of the French people was not only omnipotent, but omnipresent. CHAPTER XIV THE BERLIN DECREE—WAR IN THE PENINSULA—THE BONAPARTES ON THE SPANISH THRONE When Napoleon, in 1805, was obliged to abandon the descent on England and turn the magnificent army gathered at Boulogne against Austria, he by no means gave up the idea of one day humbling his enemy. Persistently throughout the campaigns of 1805–1807 his despatches and addresses remind Frenchmen that vengeance is only deferred.