It was an idle display.  In return for secret assurances that he might eventually regain his Illyrian provinces, the Emperor Francis had pledged himself by treaty to send 30,000 men to guard Napoleon’s flank in Volhynia.  But everyone at St. Petersburg knew that this aid, along with that of Prussia, was forced and hollow.[255] The example of Spain and the cautious strategy of Wellington had dissolved the spell of French invincibility; and the Czar was resolved to trust to the toughness of his people and the defensive strength of his boundless plains.  The time of the Macks, the Brunswicks, the Bennigsens was past:  the day of Wellington and of truly national methods of warfare had dawned.

Yet the hosts now moving against Alexander bade fair to overwhelm the devotion of his myriad subjects and the awful solitudes of his steppes.  It was as if Peter the Hermit had arisen to impel the peoples of Western and Central Europe once more against the immobile East.  Frenchmen to the number of 200,000 formed the kernel of this vast body:  147,000 Germans from the Confederation of the Rhine followed the new Charlemagne:  nearly 80,000 Italians under Eugene formed an Army of Observation:  60,000 Poles stepped eagerly forth to wrest their nation’s liberty from the Muscovite grasp; and Illyrians, Swiss, and Dutch, along with a few Spaniards and Portuguese, swelled the Grand Army to a total of 600,000 men.  Nor was this all.  Austria and Prussia sent their contingents, amounting in all to 50,000 men, to guard Napoleon’s flanks on the side of Volhynia and Courland.  And this mighty mass, driven on by Napoleon’s will, gained a momentum which was to carry its main army to Moscow.

After reviewing his vassals at Dresden, and hurrying on the arrangements for the transport of stores, Napoleon journeyed to the banks of the Niemen.  On all sides were to be seen signs of the passage of a mighty host, broken-down carts, dead horses, wrecked villages, and dense columns of troops that stripped Prussia wellnigh bare.  Yet, despite these immense preparations, no hint of discouragement came from the Czar’s headquarters.  On arriving at the Niemen, Napoleon issued to the Grand Army a proclamation which was virtually a declaration of war.  In it there occurred the fatalistic remark:  “Russia is drawn on by fate:  her destinies must be fulfilled.”  Alexander’s words to his troops breathed a different spirit:  “God fights against the aggressor.”

Much that is highly conjectural has been written about the plans of campaign of the two Emperors.  That of Napoleon may be briefly stated:  it was to find out the enemy’s chief forces, divide them, or cut them from their communications, and beat them in detail.  In other words, he never started with any set plan of campaign, other than the destruction of the chief opposing force.  But, in the present instance, it may be questioned whether he had not sought by his exasperating provocations to drive Prussia