Meanwhile Frederick William, accompanied by his grief-stricken consort, was striving to draw together an army in his eastern provinces.  Some overtures with a view to peace had been made after Jena; but Napoleon finally refused to relax his pursuit unless the Prussians retired beyond the Vistula, and yielded up to him all the western parts of the kingdom, with their fortresses.  Besides, he let it be known that Prussia must join him in a close alliance against Russia, with a view to checking her ambitious projects against Turkey; for the Czar, resenting the Sultan’s deposition of the hospodars of the Danubian Principalities, an act suggested by the French, had sent an army across the River Pruth, even when the Porte timidly revoked its objectionable firman.[119] The Eastern Question having been thus reopened, Napoleon suggested a Franco-Prussian alliance so as to avert a Russian conquest of the Balkan Peninsula.  But now, as ever, his terms to Prussia were too exacting.  The King deigned not to stoop to such humiliation, but resolved to stake his all on the courage of his troops and the fidelity of the Czar.

The Russians, though delayed by their distrust of Haugwitz, and by their insensate war with Turkey, were now marching, 73,000 strong, into Prussian Poland, but were too late to save the Silesian fortresses, most of which surrendered to the French.  The fighting in the open also went against the allies, though at Pultusk, a town north of Warsaw, the Russians claimed that the contest had been drawn in their favour.

At the close of the year the armies went into winter-quarters.  It was high time.  The French were ill supplied for a winter campaign amid the desolate wastes of Poland.  Snow and rain, frosts and thaws had turned the wretched tracks into muddy swamps, where men sank to their knees, horses to their bellies, and carriages beyond their axles.  The carriage conveying Talleyrand was a whole night stuck fast, in spite of the efforts of ten horses to drag it out.  The opinion of the soldiery on Poland and the Poles is well expressed by that prince of raconteurs, Marbot:  “Weather frightful, victuals very scarce, no wine, beer detestable, water muddy, no bread, lodgings shared with cows and pigs.  ‘And they call this their country,’ said our soldiers.”

Yet Polish patriotism had been a mighty power in the world; and Napoleon, ever on the watch for the weak places of his foes, saw how effective a lever it might be.  This had been his constant practice:  he had pitted Italians against Austrians, Copts against Mamelukes, Druses against Turks, Irish against English, South Germans against the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, and for the most part with success.  But, except in the case of the Italian people and the South German princes, he rarely, if ever, bestowed boons proportionate to the services rendered.  It is very questionable whether he felt more warmly for Irish nationalists than for Copts and Druses.[120] Except in regard to his Italian kindred, none of the nationalist aspirations that were to mould the history of the century touched a responsive chord in his nature.  In this, as in other affairs of state, he held “true policy” to be “nothing else than the calculation of combinations and chances.”