been mentioned, stormed Ciudad
Rodrigo; on April sixth Badajoz fell. On April eighteenth Napoleon
offered terms of peace, Spain to be kept intact under Joseph, Portugal
to be restored to the house of Braganza, Sicily to remain under
Ferdinand, and Naples under Murat. Considering all the circumstances,
the offer was worthy of consideration; but the English cabinet refused
it. The possibility of peace with Great Britain being thus
extinguished, Napoleon considered what course he should pursue toward
the other great Protestant land, which also felt itself to be
struggling for life. Some well-informed persons asserted that at first
the Emperor contemplated destroying the Hohenzollern power utterly. If
so, he quickly dismissed the idea as involving unnecessary risk. With
the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg successfully accomplished, with
her educational system completed and her army reorganized, with her
people electrified at last into true patriotism, Prussia was again a
redoubtable power. Her influence permeated all Germany, and the
secret associations which ramified everywhere labored for German
unity, their members already dreaming of the Jura, Vosges, and
Ardennes as the western frontier of their fatherland. At first
Frederick William made overtures to the Czar, offering an army of a
hundred thousand men. Alexander, desiring a purely defensive war, was
cold; but late in 1811 he agreed, in case of an attack on Prussia, to
advance as far as the Vistula, "if possible."

Meantime Austria had at first contemplated neutrality, but she
abandoned the policy when convinced that, whichever side should be
victorious, Prussia would be dismembered. Francis saw Alexander's
continued successes on the Danube with growing anxiety, and, learning
that Napoleon would put four hundred thousand men into the field, made
up his mind that France must win. Accordingly, in March, 1812, a
treaty was executed which put thirty thousand Austrian troops under
Napoleon's personal command, and stipulated for Austria's enlargement
by Galicia, Illyria, and even Silesia, in certain contingencies.
During these negotiations Frederick William had learned how stupendous
Napoleon's preparations were, and, with some hesitancy, he finally
sent Scharnhorst to sound Austria. The result was determinative, and
on February twenty-fourth, 1812, a treaty between France and Prussia
was signed, which gave Prussia nothing, but exacted from her twenty
thousand men for act