Why this refinement of cruelty to his former ally?  Why not have annexed Prussia outright?  Probably there were two reasons against annexation:  first, that his army could live on her in a way that would not be possible with his own subjects or allies; second, that the army of occupation would serve as a guarantee both for Russia’s good faith and for the absolute exclusion of British goods from Prussia.[157] This had long been his aim.  He now attained it, but only by war that bequeathed a legacy of war, and a peace that was no peace.

Napoleon’s behaviour at Tilsit has generally been regarded, at least in England, as prompted by an insane lust of power; and the treaty has been judged as if its aim was the domination of the Continent.  But another explanation, though less sweeping and attractive, seems more consonant with the facts of the case.

He hoped that, before so mighty a confederacy as was framed at Tilsit, England would bend the knee, give up not only her maritime claims but her colonial conquests, and humbly take rank with Powers that had lived their day.  The conqueror who had thrice crumpled up the Hapsburg States, and shattered Prussia in a day, might well believe that the men of Downing Street, expert only in missing opportunities and exasperating their friends, would not dare to defy the forces of united Europe, but would bow before his prowess and grant peace to a weary world.  In his letter of July 6th, 1807, to the Czar, he advised the postponement of the final summons to the British Government, because it would “give five months in which the first exasperation will die down in England, and she will have time to understand the immense consequences that would result from so imprudent a struggle.”  Neither Napoleon nor Alexander was deaf to generous aspirations.  They both desired peace, so that their empires might expand and consolidate.  Above all, France was weary of war; and by peace the average Frenchman meant, not respite from Continental strifes that yielded a surfeit of barren glories, but peace with England.  The words of Lucchesini, the former Prussian ambassador in Paris, on this subject are worth quoting: 

“The war with England was at bottom the only one in which the French public took much interest, since the evils it inflicted on France were felt every moment:  nothing was spoken of so decidedly among all classes of the people as the wish to have done with that war; and when one spoke of peace at Paris, one always meant peace with England:  peace with the others was as indifferent to the public as the victories or the conquests of Bonaparte."[158]

If the French middle classes longed for a maritime peace so that coffee and sugar might become reasonably cheap, how much more would their ruler, whose heart was set on colonies and a realm in the Orient?  In Poland he had cheered his troops with the thought that they were winning back the French colonial empire; and, as we have seen, he was even then preparing the ground in Persia for a future invasion of India.  These plans could only be carried out after a time of peace that should rehabilitate the French navy.  Humanitarian sentiment, patriotism, and even the promptings of a wider ambition, therefore bade him strive for a general pacification, such as he seemed to have assured at Tilsit.