At last the Russian winter dissolved and Napoleon moved his forces. On February 8th came the news of Eylau, “a battle more or less won,” Talleyrand says. Von Gagern found him in good spirits because he was empowered to offer moderate terms to Prussia, but the negotiations fell through, and he had to wait for the decisive overthrow of Russia. It was about this time that Napoleon once fell asleep in the room with him, and Talleyrand remained in his chair the whole night so as not to awake him. Then came Friedland (June 14th), and Talleyrand, who had left Warsaw in May, made a stirring appeal to the Emperor for peace. He trusts it is his “last victory” and a “guarantee of peace.” But the disappointment of the preceding year was to be repeated, and he was to see Napoleon’s soaring ambition take a flight that he could not follow. The Tsar, though he knew Austria was preparing for action and Tartar reinforcements were on the way, arranged an armistice with Napoleon, and Prussia had to do the same. The proceedings that followed when the two Emperors met at Tilsit completed Talleyrand’s repugnance to Napoleon’s policy. Victory was once more made the step to a further war. The whole of Europe was now to be enlisted against England in the long dreamed of “continental system.” Alexander was exasperated against England for her failure to support him, and listened eagerly to the new idea of sharing the world between France and Russia (Napoleon’s “new Europeans” of nine months ago). Whether or no it is true that Alexander’s first words to Napoleon, as he stepped on to the raft in the middle of the Niemen (which fitted so well in “the poem of his life,” says Talleyrand), were: “I hate the English as much as you do, and I will second you in all your projects against them,”[45] the whole arrangement concluded was directed against England. Prussia and Russia were forced into the continental system. Prussia was humbled to the dust, and reduced from nine to four million inhabitants. Talleyrand says Alexander thought he had “done all that friendship required for the King of Prussia in nominally preserving half his kingdom.” He saw the Tsar’s eyes sparkle when Napoleon, on receiving news of the deposition of the Sultan, spoke to him, “with an air of submitting to the decrees of Providence,” of an inevitable dismemberment of Turkey. But Napoleon told Talleyrand privately that not a word must be said in the treaty about Turkey, or about Moldavia and Wallachia, which also he had dangled before the eyes of the Tsar. [Illustration: ALEXANDER I., EMPEROR OF RUSSIA.]