The inhabitants of Prussia, subdued and oppressed, could not be supposed tranquil: the secret societies, that, under the name of Tugenbunde, Gymnasiasts, and other denominations, have since been persecuted by those who were then glad to avail themselves of such assistance, were just beginning to disclose their force and plans. A baron de Nostiz, Stein, the Prussian counsellor of state, generals Sharnhost and Gneizenau, and colonel Schill, appear to have been the principal contrivers and patrons of these societies, so characteristic of Germans, who, regular and plodding, even to a proverb in their actions, possess the most extravagant imaginations of any people on the face of the earth. Whatever the ulterior views of these associations may have been, at this period they were universally inimical to the French, their intent was to drive the latter over the Rhine, and they were a source of peril to the emperor, the more to be feared, as the extent of their influence could not be immediately ascertained. Russia also, little injured by her losses, was more powerful perhaps from her defeats, because more enlightened as to the cause of them: Napoleon felt, that the hostility of such a great empire would require all his means to repel, and that, consequently, his Spanish operations must be confined in a manner unsuitable to the fame of his arms. Of a long-sighted policy he had, however, prepared the means of obviating this danger, by drawing the emperor of Russia into a conference at Erfurth, whither the French monarch repaired, confident in the resources of his genius for securing the friendship of the czar. At this period, it may be truly said, that Napoleon supported the weight of the world; every movement of his produced a political convulsion; yet so sure, so confident was he, of his intellectual superiority, that he sought but to gain one step, and doubted not to overcome all resistance, and preserve his ascendancy. Time was to him victory; if he gained the one, the other followed. Sudden and prompt in execution, he prepared for one of those gigantic efforts which have stamped this age with the greatness of antiquity.