Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume IV.Scott, Walter
History
Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume IV.
Scott, Walter
France -- History -- 1789-1815; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
Denmark, so powerful was the voice which France had in her councils,
might almost be accounted humbled to one of the federative
principalities.
Sweden had but a moderate and second-rate degree of power. She felt, as
other German nations, the withering blight of the Continental, or
Anti-social System; but, circumstanced as she was, with the possession
of Swedish Pomerania dependent on French pleasure, she had no other
remedy than to wait her opportunity.
Still more was this the case with Prussia, through all her provinces the
mortal enemy of the French name, but whom the large garrisons which
France had planted in her dominions, and the numerous forces which she
maintained there, compelled for the time to be as submissive as a
handmaiden. It was true that the court were as noiselessly as possible,
endeavouring to revive their military establishment; that they were
dismissing the villains who had sold and betrayed their country, and
replacing them by age which had been tried, or youth which had witnessed
the agony of their country, and been trained up in thinking, that to
avenge her was their dearest duty. True it was, also, that the people in
Prussia, and many other parts of Germany, waited as for the day dawning,
for the hope of winning back their freedom; but outward appearances
indicated nothing of these smothered hopes, wishes, and preparations;
and the general eye saw in Prussia only a nation resigned to her
bondage, without, apparently, any hope of redemption.
Austria, besides the terrible losses which the last war had brought upon
her, was now fettered to Napoleon by a link which gave the proud House
of Hapsburg an apology for the submission, or at least the observance,
which she paid to the son-in-law of her Emperor.
Turkey, though she would have had her turn, had the tide of fortune
continued to keep the course in which it had so long flowed, was not yet
in the way of being comprehended in Napoleon's plan of politics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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