rm a coalition against England,
such, henceforth, are his means, which are as violent as the end in
view, while the means, like the end, are given by his character. Too
imperious and too impatient to wait or to manage others, he is
incapable of yielding to their will except through constraint, and his
collaborators are to him nothing more than subjects under the name
of allies.--Later, at St. Helena, with his indestructible imaginative
energy and power of illusion, he plays on the public with his
humanitarian illusions.[12112] But, as he himself avows, the
accomplishment of his retrospective dream required beforehand the
entire submission of all Europe; a liberal sovereign and pacificator,
"a crowned Washington, yes," he used to say, "but I could not reasonably
attain this point, except through a universal dictatorship, which I
aimed at."[12113] In vain does common sense demonstrate to him that such
an enterprise inevitably rallies the Continent to the side of England,
and that his means divert him from the end. In vain is it repeatedly
represented to him that he needs one sure great ally on the
Continent;[12114] that to obtain this he must conciliate Austria; that
he must not drive her to despair, but rather win her over and compensate
her on the side of the Orient; place her in permanent conflict with
Russia, and attach her to the new French Empire by a community of vital
interests. In vain does he, after Tilsit, make a bargain of this kind
with Russia. This bargain cannot hold, because in this arrangement
Napoleon, as usual with him, always encroaching, threatening, and
attacking, wants to reduce Alexander to the role of a subordinate and
a dupe.[12115] No clear-sighted witness can doubt this. In 1809,
a diplomat writes: "The French system, which is now triumphant, is
directed against the whole body of great states,"[12116] not alone
against England, Prussia, and Austria, but against Russia, against
every power capable of maintaining its independence; for, if she
remains independent, she may become hostile, and as a precautionary step
Napoleon crushes in her a probable enemy.

All the more so because this course once entered upon he cannot stop;
at the same time his character and the situation in which he has
placed himself impels him on while his past hurries him along to his
future.[12117] At the moment of the rupture of the treaty of Amiens he
is already so strong and so aggressive that his neighbors are obliged,