ic. The Czar could not weaken his force on
the Danube, lest he should lose the coveted provinces, and he dared
not withdraw troops from Poland, for the French were still in Silesia.
With the understanding that Bernadotte should be their active
auxiliary, the Russian forces had rashly crossed the Swedish border
with inadequate numbers; and in reality the marshal did set out to
join them, but half-way on his march, for some unexplained reason, he
had paused. Caulaincourt said it was because of the difficulties
encountered in crossing the Belt; but the halt was, of course, one
move in Napoleon's game. On April twenty-fifth the latter wrote to
Talleyrand: "Was I to send my soldiers so lightly into Sweden? There
was nothing for me there." Simultaneously the French forces in both
Poland and Prussia were compacted and strengthened, while at the
confluence of the Bug and the Vistula, in the grand duchy of Warsaw,
over against the Russian frontier, were steadily rising the walls of a
powerful fort above which waved the tricolor. What a plight was this
for the White Czar, the grandson of Catherine II, the philosophic
monarch educated by Laharpe, the beneficent despot! Behind him a
disgusted nation, before him illimitable warfare; bound by the letter
of an ambiguous treaty, occupied in a doubtful conquest, thwarted in
his ambitions; in short, if not checkmated, put into a position very
much like that known in the noble game of chess as stalemate!

Napoleon's treatment of the Czar makes the whole situation in northern
Europe and Austria easily comprehensible; it is necessary to examine
from the same standpoint, also, what occurred in the southern states
of Europe, remote as they were; otherwise the course of affairs at
the opposite extremities of Europe seems utterly mysterious. If the
path followed at St. Petersburg was tortuous, what shall be said of
the policy pursued in the Papal States, in Tuscany, in Portugal and in
Spain? During the diplomatic reconnaissance led by Caulaincourt, the
statesmen of these countries had been busy at Fontainebleau. What
Cardinal Bayanne seemed anxious to obtain for Pius VII--namely, the
inviolability of his territories--had been lost even before the
concessions demanded from the Pope were made. The trembling prelate
had consented to join the federation against England, to drive out the
monks, to accept an increased French representation in the College of
Cardinals, and to admit Venetia to the Conc