In addition to these considerations there was that of immediate safety. The last two campaigns had seen Napoleon a victor, once over Austria and Russia combined, again over Prussia and Russia combined; but in each there had been moments when the coalition of the three would have overwhelmed him. For this reason he would gladly have declared at Tilsit that the house of Hohenzollern had ceased to reign, in order thereby to preclude any future danger from a triple alliance. This idea he had abandoned for the time in order to gratify Alexander. His ally secure, he now returned or pretended to return to it. Prussia was regaining her strength too rapidly; her embittered hostility was an ever-increasing menace. On the plea that she could never pay the promised indemnity, and was therefore to be treated as a bankrupt, Napoleon declared at last that Russia could have the Danube provinces if France could take Silesia for the grand duchy of Warsaw. "Prussia," ran Napoleon's despatch on this subject--"Prussia would have but two millions of inhabitants; but would not that be enough for the welfare of the royal family, and is it not in their interest to place her without delay and with perfect resignation among the inferior powers, since all their efforts to restore the position she has lost merely serve to distress their subjects and cherish idle regrets?" "What the Emperor would prefer," said this same memorandum, "is that the Turks should remain in peaceable possession of Wallachia and Moldavia; still he would hand over these provinces to the Czar in return for a just compensation from Prussian lands; and finally, though far from wishing a complete partition of Turkey, he desires you not to condemn utterly the plan, but rather to dwell on the motives for postponing it. This ancient project of Russian ambition is a tie which can bind Russia to France."