as a necessary part of the machinery for carrying these edicts into execution—­the insolence of the innumerable spies and informers whom they set in motion—­and the actual deprivation of usual comforts, in so far as it existed—­all these circumstances conspired to render the name of the Berlin decrees odious throughout Europe and in France itself.  It may be added that the original conception of Napoleon was grounded on a mistaken opinion, to which, however, he always clung—­namely, that England derives all her strength from her foreign commerce.  Great as that commerce was, and great as, in spite of him, it continued to be, it never was anything but a trifle when compared with the internal traffic and resources of Great Britain—­a country not less distinguished above other nations for its agricultural industry, than for its commercial.

Napoleon received at Berlin a deputation of his Senate, sent from Paris to congratulate him on the successes of his campaign.  To them he announced these celebrated decrees:  he made them the bearers of the trophies of his recent victories, and, moreover, of a demand for the immediate levying of 80,000 men, being the first conscription for the year 1808—­that for the year 1807 having been already anticipated.  The subservient Senate recorded and granted whatever their master pleased to dictate; but the cost of human life which Napoleon’s ambition demanded had begun, ere this time, to be seriously thought of in France.  He, meanwhile, prepared, without further delay, to extinguish the feeble spark of resistance which still lingered in a few garrisons of the Prussian Monarchy, beyond the Oder:  and to meet, before they could reach the soil of Germany, those Russian legions which were now advancing, too late, to the assistance of Frederick William.  That unfortunate Prince sent Lucchesini to Berlin, to open, if possible, a negotiation with the victorious occupant of his capital and palace; but Buonaparte demanded Dantzick, and two other fortified towns, as the price of even the briefest armistice; and the Italian envoy returned to inform the King, that no hope remained for him except in the arrival of the Russians.

Napoleon held in his hands the means of opening his campaign with those allies of Prussia, under circumstances involving his enemy in a new, and probably endless train of difficulties.  The Partition of Poland—­that great political crime, for which every power that had a part in it has since been severely, though none of them adequately punished—­had left the population of what had once been a great and powerful kingdom, in a state of discontent and irritation, of which, had Napoleon been willing to make full use of it, the fruits might have been more dangerous for the Czar than any campaign against any foreign enemy.  The French Emperor had but to announce distinctly that his purpose was the restoration of Poland as an independent state, and the whole mass, of an eminently gallant and warlike population would have risen instantly