to a vast extent, and had, by a recent law, acquired the means of drawing on her population unlimitedly, after the method of Napoleon’s own conscription code.  She professed pacific intentions towards France, and intimated that her preparations were designed for the protection of her Turkish frontier; but the Emperor Francis positively declined to acknowledge Joseph Buonaparte as King of Spain; and this refusal was quite sufficient for Napoleon.  In Prussia, meantime, and indeed all over Germany, a spirit of deep and settled enmity was manifesting itself in the shape of patriotic clubs (the chief being called the Tugend-bund, or Alliance of Virtue), which included the young and the daring of every class, and threatened, at no distant period, to convulse the whole fabric of society with the one purpose of clearing the national soil of its foreign oppressors.  Napoleon affected to deride, but secretly estimated at its true importance, the danger of such associations, if permitted to take firm root among a people so numerous, so enthusiastic, and so gallant.  Lastly, there is every reason to believe that, cordial as the Czar’s friendship had seemed to be at Tilsit, Buonaparte appreciated the unpopularity of his “continental system” in Russia, and the power of the aristocracy there, far too accurately, not to entertain some suspicion that Alexander himself might be compelled to take the field against him, should England succeed in persuading Austria and Germany to rise in arms during his own absence in Spain.  For these reasons he had requested the Czar’s presence at Erfurt; and this conference was apparently as satisfactory to either as that of Tilsit had been.  They addressed a joint letter to the King of England, proposing once more a general peace; but as they both refused to acknowledge any authority in Spain save that of King Joseph, the answer was of course in the negative.  Buonaparte, however, had obtained his object when he thus exhibited the Czar and himself as firmly allied.  He perceived clearly that Austria was determined on another campaign; gave orders for concentrating and increasing his own armies, accordingly, both in Germany and Italy; and—­trusting to the decision and rapidity of his own movements, and the comparative slowness of his ancient enemy—­dared to judge that he might still bring matters to an issue in Spain, before his presence should be absolutely necessary beyond the Rhine.

On the 14th of October the conferences of Erfurt terminated; on the 24th Napoleon was present at the opening of the Legislative Session in Paris; two days after he left that capital, and reached Bayonne on the 3rd of November, where he remained, directing the movements of the last columns of his advancing army, until the morning of the 8th.  He arrived at Vittoria the same evening:  the civil and military authorities met him at the gates of the town, and would have conducted him to a house prepared for his reception, but he leapt from his horse, entered the first inn that he