As to the subsidy which Sweden required of him, he answered, as he had done to Turkey, “that if the war was to be carried on with money, England would always be sure to outbid him;” and above all, “that there was weakness and baseness in triumphing by corruption.”  Reverting by this to his wounded pride, he terminated the conference by exclaiming, “Bernadotte impose conditions on me!  Does he fancy then that I have need of him?  I will soon bind him to my victorious career, and compel him to follow my sovereign impulse.”

But the active and speculative English, who were out of his reach, made a judicious estimate of the weak points of his system, and found the Russians ready to act upon their suggestions.  They it was who had been endeavouring for the last three years to draw the forces of Napoleon into the defiles of Spain, and to exhaust them; it was they also who were on the watch to take advantage of the vindictive enmity of the prince of Sweden.

Knowing that the active and restless vanity of men newly risen from obscurity is always uneasy and susceptible, in the presence of ancient parvenus, George and Alexander were lavish of their promises and flattery, in order to cajole Bernadotte.  It was thus that they caressed him, at the time that the irritated Napoleon was threatening him; they promised him Norway and a subsidy, when the other, forced to refuse him that province of a faithful ally, took possession of Pomerania.  While Napoleon, a monarch deriving his elevation from himself, relying on the faith of treaties, on the remembrance of past benefits, and on the real interests of Sweden, required succours from Bernadotte, the hereditary monarchs of London and Petersburgh required his opinion with deference, and submitted themselves by anticipation to the counsels of his experience.  Finally, while the genius of Napoleon, the grandeur of his elevation, the importance of his enterprise, and the habit of their former relations, still classed Bernadotte as his lieutenant, these monarchs appeared already to treat him as their general.  How was it possible for him not to seek to escape on the one hand from this sense of inferiority, and on the other to resist a mode of treatment, and promises so seductive?  Thus the future prospects of Sweden were sacrificed, and her independence for ever laid at the mercy of Russian faith by the treaty of Petersburgh, which Bernadotte signed on the 24th of March, 1812.  That of Bucharest, between Alexander and Mahmoud, was concluded on the 28th of May.—­Thus did we lose the support of our two wings.

Nevertheless, the emperor of the French, at the head of more than six hundred thousand men, and already too far advanced to think of retreating, flattered himself that his strength would decide every thing; that a victory on the Niemen would cut the knot of all these diplomatic difficulties, which he despised, probably too much; that then all the monarchs of Europe, compelled to acknowledge his ascendancy, would be eager to return into his system, and that all those satellites would be drawn into its vortex.