And, indeed, had there been no cause of quarrel between these powers, except what appeared on the face of their negotiations, it is hardly to be doubted that an accommodation might have been effected.  The simple truth was, that the Czar, from the hour of Maria Louisa’s marriage, felt a perfect conviction that the diminution of the Russian power in the north of Europe would form the next great object of Napoleon’s ambition.  His subsequent proceedings, in regard to Holland, Oldenburg, and other territories, and the distribution of his troops, in Pomerania and Poland, could not fail to strengthen Alexander in this view of the case; and if war must come, there could be no question as to the policy of bringing it on before Austria had entirely recovered from the effects of the campaign of Wagram, and, above all, while the Peninsula continued to occupy 200,000 of Buonaparte’s troops.

Before we return to the war in Portugal (the details of which belong to the history of Wellington, rather than of Napoleon), we may here notice very briefly one or two circumstances connected with the exiled family of Spain.  It affords a melancholy picture of the degradation of the old king and queen, that these personages voluntarily travelled to Paris for the purpose of mingling in the crowd of courtiers congratulating their deceiver and spoiler on the birth of the king of Rome.  Their daughter, the queen of Etruria, appears to have been the least degenerate of the race; and she accordingly met with the cruellest treatment from the hand which her parents were thus mean enough to kiss.  She had been deprived of her kingdom at the period of the shameful scenes of Bayonne in 1807, on pretext that that kingdom would afford the most suitable indemnification for her brother Ferdinand on his cession to Buonaparte of his rights in Spain, and with the promise of being provided for elsewhere.  This promise to the sister was no more thought of afterwards than the original scheme for the indemnification of the brother.  Tuscany became a French department.  Ferdinand was sent a prisoner to the castle of Valencay—­a seat of Talleyrand—­and she, after remaining for some time with her parents, took up her residence, as a private person, under surveillance, at Nice.  Alarmed by the severity with which the police watched her, the queen at length made an attempt to escape to England.  Her agents were discovered, tried by a military commission, and shot; and the unfortunate lady herself confined in a Roman monastery.  A plan for the liberation of Ferdinand was about the same time detected by the emissaries of the French police:  the real agent being arrested, a pretender, assuming his name and credentials, made his way into Valencay, but Ferdinand was either too cunning, or too timid to incur this danger; revealing to his jailers the proposals of the stranger, he escaped the snare laid for him, and thus cheated Napoleon of a pretext for removing him also to some Italian cell.