Where the blame or merit for the renewal of hostilities rests will ever remain a matter of opinion. Amid the tangles of negotiation, it must be remembered that on March twenty-fourth, 1812, Russia and Sweden began the coalition; that Russia and Prussia were forced into union on February twenty-eighth, 1813, by the element of interest common to Alexander's dynasty and the Prussian people; that Great Britain entered on the scene in her commercial agreement with Sweden on March third, 1813; and that English diplomacy combined with the interests of Austrian diplomacy to complete and cement the coalition with the necessary subsidies. If we view the negotiations of Poischwitz and Prague in connection with Napoleon's whole career, they appear to have run in a channel prepared by his boundless ambition; if we isolate them and scrutinize their course, we must think him the moral victor. Whatever he may have been before, he was now eager for peace, and sincere in his professions. Believing himself to have acted generously when Austria was under his feet, he was outraged when he saw that he had been duped by her subsequent course. The concessions to which he was forced appear to have been made slowly, because what he desired was not a continental peace in the interests of the Hapsburgs, but a general peace in the interest of all Europe as represented by the Empire and the dynasty which he had founded. At this distance of time, and in the light of intervening history, some credit should be given to his insight, which convinced him that strengthened nationality, as well as renewed dynastic influence, might retard the liberalizing influences of the Revolution, which he falsely believed himself still to represent. For the duration of the Holy Alliance this was to a certain extent true. It will be noticed that throughout the closing negotiations no mention was made of the "Continental System." That malign concept of the revolutionary epoch perished in Napoleon's decline, and history knows its name no more. END OF VOLUME III