England made peace
with France. With this aim in view, Napoleon accepted Alexander's
mediation for the conclusion of a treaty of peace with England,
provided that she accepted that mediation within one month of the
ratification of the present treaty.

On his side, the Czar now recognized the recent changes in Naples,
Holland, and Germany; among the last of these was the creation of the
Kingdom of Westphalia for Jerome Bonaparte out of the Prussian lands
west of the Elbe, the Duchy of Brunswick, and the Electorate of
Hesse-Cassel. Holland gained East Frisia at the expense of Prussia. As
regards Turkey, the Czar pledged himself to cease hostilities at once,
to accept the mediation of Napoleon in the present dispute, and to
withdraw Russian troops from the Danubian Provinces as soon as peace
was concluded with the Sublime Porte. Finally, the two Emperors
mutually guaranteed the integrity of their possessions and placed
their ceremonial and diplomatic relations on a footing of complete
equality.

Such were the published articles of the Treaty of Tilsit. Even if this
had been all, the European system would have sustained the severest
blow since the Thirty Years' War. The Prussian monarchy was suddenly
bereft of half its population, and now figured on the map as a
disjointed land, scarcely larger than the possessions of the King of
Saxony, and less defensible than Jerome Bonaparte's Kingdom of
Westphalia; while the Confederation of the Rhine, soon to be
aggrandized by the accession of Mecklenburg and Oldenburg, seemed to
doom the House of Hohenzollern to lasting insignificance.[153]

But the published treaty was by no means all. There were also secret
articles, the chief of which were that the Cattaro district--to the
west of Montenegro--and the Ionian Islands should go to France, and
that the Czar would recognize Joseph Bonaparte as King of Sicily when
Ferdinand of Naples should have received "an indemnity such as the
Balearic Isles, or Crete, or their equivalent." Also, if Hanover
should eventually be annexed to the Kingdom of Westphalia, a
Westphalian district with a population of from three to four hundred
thousand souls would be retroceded to Prussia. Finally, the chiefs of
the Houses of Orange-Nassau, Hesse-Cassel, and Brunswick were to
receive pensions from Murat and Jerome Bonaparte, who dispossessed
them.

Most important of all was the secret treaty of alliance with Russia,
also signed on July 7th, whereby the