Still, however, he carefully pursued the course towards which there appeared at that time to be a general bent in Europe. In the beginning of the year 1811, certain symptoms appeared to indicate to the court of Vienna that a rupture was about to take place between France and Russia, and these suspicions were changed ere long into certainty: M. Otto, the French ambassador at Vienna, opened his mind completely to Metternich, and, acting on the principle of the late alliance, he proposed they should form a kind of league of offence and defence in the war Napoleon was about to commence against Russia. The French emperor only required a detached corps of 40,000 Austrian auxiliaries as an active force, who were to attack the eastern extremity of Gallicia, at the same time that the French army should proceed to the Vistula. This treaty farther stipulated that the Austrian possessions in Poland should remain untouched, and certain territorial cessions in favour of Austria were agreed upon, in the event of the war against Russia proving successful; thus Metternich began to reap the advantages of the French alliance. The campaign of 1812 began. The Austrian corps of 30,000 auxiliaries was posted on the Vistula, and, if not required to take an active part in the operations, it still was a check upon the Russian army, which already threatened the flanks of Napoleon's troops. Metternich watched with extreme anxiety the movements of the invading army in Russia; its disastrous retreat was an appalling and unlooked-for catastrophe, and Prince Schwartzenberg went to oppose the Russian troops.