With a court so situated, angry negotiations once commenced rendered war inevitable, and the more especially that the Russian cabinet, which had long determined on hostilities though undecided as to the time of drawing the sword, was well aware of the secret designs and proceedings of Austria in Italy, and of Murat’s discontent. The Hollanders were known to desire independence, and the deep hatred which the people of Prussia bore to the French was a matter of notoriety. Bernadotte, who very early had resolved to cast down the ladder by which he rose, was the secret adviser of these practices against Napoleon’s power in Italy, and he was also in communication with the Spaniards. Thus Napoleon, having a war in Spain which required three hundred thousand men to keep in a balanced state, was forced, by resistless circumstances, into another and more formidable contest in the distant north, when the whole of Europe was prepared to rise upon his lines of communication, and when his extensive sea-frontier was exposed to the all-powerful navy of Great Britain. A conqueror’s march to Moscow, amidst such dangers, was a design more vast, more hardy, more astounding than ever before entered the imagination of man; yet it was achieved, and solely by the force of his genius. For having organised two hundred thousand French soldiers, as a pretorian guard, he stepped resolutely into the heart of Germany, and monarchs and nations bent submissively before him; secret hostility ceased, and, with the exception of Bernadotte, the crowned and anointed plotters quitted their work to follow his chariot-wheels. Dresden saw the ancient story of the King of Kings renewed in his person; and the two hundred thousand French soldiers arrived on the Niemen in company with two hundred thousand allies. On that river four hundred thousand troops, I have seen the imperial returns, were assembled by this wonderful man, all disciplined warriors, and, notwithstanding their different, national feelings, all proud of the unmatched genius of their leader. Yet, even in that hour of dizzy elevation, Napoleon, deeply sensible of the inherent weakness of a throne unhallowed by time, described by one emphatic phrase the delicacy of his political situation. During the passage of the Niemen, twelve thousand cuirassiers, whose burnished armour flashed in the sun while their cries of salutation pealed in unison with the thunder of the horses’ feet, were passing like a foaming torrent towards the river, when Napoleon turned and thus addressed Gouvion St. Cyr, whose republican principles were well known, “No monarch ever had such an army?” “No, sire.” “The French are a fine people; they deserve more liberty, and they shall have it, but, St. Cyr, no liberty of the press! That army, mighty as it is, could not resist the songs of Paris!”