History of the Expedition to Russia | Page 9

orders the latter had not concluded the offensive alliance dictated to
him by France; but while the marshal was tracing the few marches
necessary for this operation, he received intelligence that the treaty of
the 21st of February, 1812, had been ratified.
This submission did not altogether satisfy Napoleon. To his strength he
added artifice; his suspicions still led him to covet the occupation of the
fortresses, which he was ashamed not to leave in Frederick's hands; he
required the king to keep only 50 or 80 invalids in some, and desired
that some French officers should be admitted into others; all of whom
were to send their reports to him, and to follow his orders. His
solicitude extended to every thing. "Spandau," said he, in his letters to
Davoust, "is the citadel of Berlin, as Pillau is that of Königsberg;" and
French troops had orders to be ready to introduce themselves at the first
signal: the manner he himself pointed out. At Potsdam, which the king
had reserved for himself, and which our troops were interdicted from
entering, his orders were, that the French officers should frequently
show themselves, in order to observe, and to accustom the people to the
sight of them. He recommended every degree of respect to be shown,
both to the king and his subjects; but at the same time he required that
every sort of arms should be taken from the latter, which might be of
use to them in an insurrection; and he pointed out every thing of the
kind, even to the smallest weapon. Anticipating the possibility of the
loss of a battle, and the chances of Prussian vespers, he ordered that his
troops should be either put into barracks or encampments, with a
thousand other precautions of the minutest description. As a final
security, in case of the English making a descent between the Elbe and
the Vistula, although Victor, and subsequently Augereau, were to
occupy Prussia with 50,000 men, he engaged by treaty the assistance of
10,000 Danes.
All these precautions were still insufficient to remove his distrust; when

the Prince of Hatzfeld came to require of him a subsidy of 25 millions
of francs to meet the expenses of the war which was preparing, his
reply to Daru was, "that he would take especial care not to furnish an
enemy with arms against himself." In this manner did Frederick,
entangled as it were in a net of iron, which surrounded and held him
tight in every part, put between 20 and 30,000 of his troops, and his
principal fortresses and magazines, at the disposal of Napoleon[2].
[Footnote 2: By this treaty, Prussia agreed to furnish two hundred
thousand quintals of rye, twenty-four thousand of rice, two million
bottles of beer, four hundred thousand quintals of wheat, six hundred
and fifty thousand of straw, three hundred and fifty thousand of hay, six
million bushels of oats, forty-four thousand oxen, fifteen thousand
horses, three thousand six hundred waggons, with harness and drivers,
each carrying a load of fifteen hundred weight; and finally, hospitals
provided with every thing necessary for twenty thousand sick. It is true,
that all these supplies were to be allowed in deduction of the remainder
of the taxes imposed by the conquest.]

CHAP. III.
These two treaties opened the road to Russia to Napoleon; but in order
to penetrate into the interior of that empire, it was necessary to make
sure of Sweden and Turkey.
Military combinations were then so much aggrandized, that in order to
sketch a plan of warfare, it was no longer necessary to study the
configuration of a province, or of a chain of mountains, or the course of
a river. When monarchs, such as Alexander and Napoleon, were
contending for the dominion of Europe, it was necessary to regard the
general and relative position of every state with a universal _coup
d'oeil_; it was no longer on single maps, but on that of the whole globe,
that their policy had to trace its plans of hostility.
Russia is mistress of the heights of Europe; her flanks are supported by
the seas of the north and south. Her government can only with great

difficulty be driven into a straight, and forced to submit, in a space
almost beyond the imagination to conceive: the conquest of which
would require long campaigns, to which her climate is completely
opposed. From this, it follows, that without the concurrence of Turkey
and Sweden, Russia is less vulnerable. The assistance of these two
powers was therefore requisite in order to surprise her, to strike her to
the heart in her modern capital, and to turn at a distance, in the rear of
its left, her grand army of the Niemen,--and not merely to precipitate
attacks on a part of her