But as such reflections had not prevented Napoleon from raising the fabric of supreme power, to the summit of which he had ascended, so they did not now prevent him from surrounding and strengthening it with such additional bulwarks as he could find materials for erecting, at the expense of the foes whom he subdued. Sensible of the difficulty, or rather the impossibility, of retaining all power in his own hands, he now bent himself so to modify and organise the governments of the countries adjacent, that they should always be dependent upon France; and to ensure this point, he determined to vest immediate relations of his own with the supreme authority in those states, which, under the name of allies, were to pay to France the same homage in peace, and render her the same services in war, which ancient Rome exacted from the countries which she had subdued. Germany, Holland, and Italy, were each destined to furnish an appanage to the princes born of the Imperial blood of Napoleon, or connected with it by matrimonial alliances. In return for these benefits, Buonaparte was disposed to subject his brothers to the ordinary monarchical restrictions, which preclude princes nearly connected with the throne from forming marriages, according to their own private inclinations, and place them in this respect entirely at the devotion of the monarch, and destined to form such political alliances as may best suit his views. They belonged, he said, in the decree creating them, entirely to the country, and must therefore lay aside every sentiment of individual feeling, when the public weal required such a sacrifice.[199]