Austria was bound by treaty to assist Napoleon with 30,000 men, whenever he chose to demand them; but this same treaty included Buonaparte’s guarantee of Austria’s Polish provinces.  Could he have got rid of this pledge, he distinctly perceived the advantages which he might derive from the enthusiasm of the Poles; to proclaim their independence would have been, he well knew, to array a whole gallant nation under his banners; and of such objections to their independence as might be started by his own creature, the Grand Duke of Warsaw, he made little account.  But Austria would not consent to give up his guarantee of Galicia, unless he consented to yield back the Illyrian territory which she had lost at Schoenbrunn; and this was a condition to which Napoleon would not for a moment listen.  He would take whatever he could gain by force or by art; but he would sacrifice nothing.  The evil consequences of this piece of obstinacy were twofold.  Austria remained an ally indeed, but at best a cold one; and the opportunity of placing the whole of Poland in insurrection, between him and the Czar, was for ever lost.

But if Napoleon, in the fulness of his presumption, thus neglected or scorned the timely conciliation of foreign powers-some of whom he might have arrayed heartily on his side, and others at least retained neutral-he certainly omitted nothing as to the preparation of the military forces of his own empire.  Before yet all hopes of an accommodation with St. Petersburg where at an end, he demanded and obtained two new conscriptions in France; and moreover established a law by which he was enabled to call out 100,000 men at a time, of those whom the conscriptions had spared, for service at home.  This limitation of their service he soon disregarded; and in effect the new system-that of the Ban, as he affected to call it-became a mere extension of the old scheme.  The amount of the French army at the period in question (exclusive of the Ban) is calculated at 850,000 men; the army of the kingdom of Italy mustered 50,000; that of Naples, 30,000; that of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, 60,000; the Bavarian, 40,000; the Westphalian, 30,000; the Saxon, 30,000; Wirtemberg, 15,000; Baden, 9,000; and the minor powers of the Rhenish League, 23,000.  Of these armies Napoleon had the entire control.  In addition, Austria was bound to furnish him with 30,000, and Prussia with 20,000 auxiliaries.  The sum-total is 1,187,000.  Deducting 387,000—­a large allowance for hospitals, furloughs, and incomplete regiments-there remained 800,000 effective men at his immediate command.  The Spanish peninsula might perhaps occupy, even now, 150,000; but still Napoleon could bring into the field against Russia, in case all negotiation failed, an army of 650,000 men; numbers such as Alexander could have no chance of equalling; numbers such as had never before followed an European banner.