On that same day the peace Congress was opened at Prague.  Its proceedings were farcical from the outset.  Only Anstett and Humboldt, the Russian and Prussian envoys, were at hand; and at the appointment of the former, an Alsatian by birth, Napoleon expressed great annoyance.  The difficulties about the armistice also gave him the opportunity, which he undoubtedly sought, of further delaying negotiations.  In vain did Metternich point out to the French envoy, Narbonne, at Prague, that these frivolous delays must lead to war if matters were not amicably settled by August 10th, at midnight.[333] In vain did Narbonne and Caulaincourt beg their master to seize this opportunity for concluding a safe and honourable peace.  It was not till the middle of July that he appointed them his plenipotentiaries at the Congress; and, even then, he retained the latter at Dresden, while the former fretted in forced inaction at Prague.  “I send you more powers than power,” wrote Maret to Narbonne with cynical jauntiness:  “you will have your hands tied, but your legs and mouth free so that you may walk about and dine."[334] At last, on the 26th, Caulaincourt received his instructions; but what must have been the anguish of this loyal son of France to see that Napoleon was courting war with a united Europe.  Austria, said his master, was acting as mediator:  and the mediator ought not to look for gains:  she had made no sacrifice and deserved to gain nothing at all:  her claims were limitless; and every concession granted by France would encourage her to ask for more:  he was disposed to make peace with Russia on satisfactory terms so as to punish Austria for her bad faith in breaking the alliance of 1812.[335]

Such trifling with the world’s peace seems to belong, not to the sphere of history, but to the sombre domain of Greek tragedy, where mortals full blown with pride rush blindly on the embossed bucklers of fate.  For what did Austria demand of him?  She proposed to leave him master of all the lands from the swamps of the Ems down to the Roman Campagna:  Italy was to be his, along with as much of the Iberian Peninsula as he could hold.  His control of Illyria, North Germany, and the Rhenish Confederation he must give up.  But France, Belgium, Holland, and Italy would surely form a noble realm for a man who had lost half a million of men, and was even now losing Spain.  Yet his correspondence proves that, even so, he thought little of his foes, and, least of all, of the Congress at Prague.

Leaving his plenipotentiaries tied down to the discussion of matters of form, he set out from Dresden on July 24th for a visit to Mainz, where he met the Empress and reviewed his reserves.  Every item of news fed his warlike resolve.  Soult, with nearly 100,000 men, was about to relieve Pamplona (so he wrote to Caulaincourt):  the English were retiring in confusion:  12,000 veteran horsemen from his armies in Spain would soon be on the Rhine; but they could not be on the Elbe before September.  If the allies wanted a longer armistice, he (Napoleon) would agree to it:  if they wished to fight, he was equally ready, even against the Austrians as well.[336]