not quickly stop the impetus which has been given, he will be carried away by it next year; and thus war will take place in spite of him, in spite of me, in spite of the interests of France and Russia....  It is an operatic scene, of which the English are the shifters.”  What madness!  As if Russia’s craving for colonial wares and solvency were a device of the diabolical islanders.[249] As if his planetary simile were anything more than a claim that he was the centre of the universe and his will its guiding and controlling power.

Nevertheless, Russia held on her way.  In vain did Alexander explain to his ally the economic needs of his realm, protest his fidelity to the Continental System, and beg some consideration for the Duke of Oldenburg.  It was evident that the Emperor of the West would make no real concession.  In fact, the need of domination was the quintessence of his being.  And Maret, Duc de Bassano, who was now his Foreign Minister, or rather, we should say, the man who wrote and signed his despatches, revealed the psychological cause of the war which cost the lives of nearly a million of men, in a note to Lauriston, the French ambassador at St. Petersburg.  Napoleon, he wrote, cared little about interviews or negotiations unless the movements of his 450,000 men caused serious concern in Russia, recalled her to the Continental System as settled at Tilsit, and “brought her back to the state of inferiority in which she was then."[250]

This was, indeed, the gist of the whole question.  Napoleon saw that Alexander was slipping out of the leading strings of Tilsit, and that he was likely to come off best from that bargain, which was intended to confirm the supremacy of the Western Empire.  For both potentates that treaty had been, at bottom, nothing more than a truce.  Napoleon saw in it a means of subjecting the Continent to his commercial code, and of preparing for a Franco-Russian partition of Turkey.  The Czar hailed it as a breathing space wherein he could reorganize his army, conquer Finland, and stride towards the Balkans.  The Erfurt interview prolonged the truce; for Napoleon felt the supreme need of stamping out the Spanish Rising and of postponing the partition of Turkey which his ally was eager to begin.  By the close of 1811 both potentates had exhausted all the benefits likely to accrue from their alliance.[251] Napoleon flattered himself that the conquest of Spain was wellnigh assured, and that England was in her last agonies.  On the other hand, Russia had recovered her military strength, had gained Finland and planted her foot on the Lower Danube, and now sought to shuffle off Napoleon’s commercial decrees.  In fine, the monarch, who at Tilsit had figured as mere clay in the hands of the Corsican potter, had proved himself to be his equal both in cunning and tenacity.  The seeming dupe of 1807 now promised to be the victor in statecraft.