There was, however, one person who appealed to the Emperor on other grounds.  His uncle, the Cardinal Fesch, had been greatly afflicted by the treatment of the Pope, and he contemplated this new war with dread, as likely to bring down the vengeance of Heaven on the head of one who had dared to trample on its vicegerent.  He besought Napoleon not to provoke at once the wrath of man and the fury of the elements; and expressed his belief that he must one day sink under the weight of that universal hatred with which his actions were surrounding his throne.  Buonaparte led the churchman to the window, opened it, and pointing upwards, said, “Do you see yonder star?” “No, sire,” replied the Cardinal.  “But I see it,” answered Napoleon; and abruptly dismissed him.

Trusting to this star, on which one spot of fatal dimness had already gathered, Napoleon, without waiting for any formal rupture with the Russian diplomatists at Paris, now directed the march of very great bodies of troops into Prussia and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw.  Alexander’s minister was ordered, in the beginning of April, to demand the withdrawal of these troops, together with the evacuation of the fortresses in Pomerania, in case the French government still entertained a wish to negotiate.  Buonaparte instantly replied that he was not accustomed to regulate the distribution of his forces by the suggestions of a foreign power.  The ambassador demanded his passports, and quitted Paris.

On the 9th of May, Napoleon left Paris with his Empress, and arrived on the 16th at Dresden, where the Emperor of Austria, the Kings of Prussia, Naples, Wirtemberg, and Westphalia, and almost every German sovereign of inferior rank, had been invited, or commanded, to met him.  He had sent to request the Czar also to appear in this brilliant assemblage, as affording a last chance of an amicable arrangement; but the messenger could not obtain admission to Alexander’s presence.

Buonaparte continued for some days to play the part of undisputed master amidst this congregation of royalties.  He at once assumed for himself and his wife precedence over the Emperor and Empress of Austria; and, in the blaze of successive festivals, the King of Saxony appeared but as some chamberlain, or master of the ceremonies, to his imperious guest.

Having sufficiently indicated to his allies and vassals the conduct which they were respectively to adopt, in case the war should break out, Napoleon, already weary of his splendid idleness, sent on the Abbe de Pradt to Warsaw, to prepare for his reception among the Poles, dismissed Maria Louisa on her return to Paris, and broke up the Court in which he had, for the last time, figured as “the King of Kings.”  Marshal Ney, with one great division of the army, had already passed the Vistula; Junot, with another, occupied both sides of the Oder.  The Czar was known to be at Wilna, his Lithuanian capital, there collecting the forces of his immense empire, and entrusting the general arrangements of the approaching campaign to Marshal Barclay de Tolly.[61] The season was advancing; and it was time that the question of peace or war should be forced to a decision.