He was equally determined not to give up Holland.  On the possession of this maritime and industrious community he had always laid great stress.  He once remarked to Roederer that the ruin of the French Bourbons was due to three events—­the Battle of Rossbach, the affair of the diamond necklace, and the victory of Anglo-Prussian influence over that of France in Dutch affairs (1787).  He even appealed to Nature to prove that that land must form part of the French Empire.  “Holland,” said one of his Ministers in 1809, “is the alluvium of the Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt—­in other words, one of the great arteries of the Empire.”  Before the last battle at Leipzig he told Merveldt that he could not grant Holland its independence, for it would fall under the tutelage of England.  And even while his Empire was crumbling away after that disaster, he wrote to his mother:  “Holland is a French country, and will remain so for ever."[394]

Russia, Prussia, and Britain were equally determined that the Dutch should be independent; and if Metternich wavered on the subject of Dutch independence, his hesitation was at an end by the middle of December, for a memorandum of the Russian diplomatist, Pozzo di Borgo, states that Metternich then regarded the Rhine boundary as ending at Duesseldorf:  “after that town the river takes the name of Waal."[395] Such juggling with geography was surely superfluous; for by that time the Frankfurt terms had virtually lapsed, owing to Napoleon’s belated acceptance; and Metternich had joined the other allied Governments that now demanded a more thorough solution of the boundary question.

In fact, the allies were now able to make political capital out of their recent moderation.[396] On December 1st they issued an appeal to the French nation to the following effect:  “We do not make war on France, but we are casting off the yoke which your Government imposed on our countries.  We hoped to have found peace before touching your soil:  we now go to find it there.”

If the sovereigns hoped by means of this declaration to separate France from Napoleon, they erred.  To cross the Rhine was to attack, not Napoleon, but the French Revolution.  Belgium and the Rhine boundary had been won by Dumouriez, Jourdain, Pichegru, and Moreau, at a time when Bonaparte’s name was unknown outside Corsica and Provence.  France had looked on wearily at Napoleon’s wars in Germany, Spain, and Russia:  they concerned him, not her.  But when the “sacred soil” was threatened, citizens began to close their ranks:  they ceased their declamations against the crushing taxes and youth-slaying conscription:  they submitted to heavier taxes and levies of still younger lads.  In fact, by doffing the mask of Charlemagne, the Emperor became once more the Bonaparte of the days of Marengo.