utrals between the upper and the nether millstone. But it is
difficult to see what other alternative was open to an insular State
that was all-powerful at sea and weak on land. Our very existence was
bound up with maritime commerce; and an abandonment of the carrying
trade to neutrals would have been the tamest of surrenders, at a time
when surrender meant political extinction.

We turn now to follow the chief steps in Napoleon's onward march,
which enabled him to impose his system on nearly the whole of the
Continent. While encamped in the Prussian capital he decreed the
deposition of the Elector of Hesse-Cassel, and French and Dutch troops
forthwith occupied that Electorate. Towards Saxony he acted with
politic clemency; and on December 11th, 1806, the Elector accepted the
French alliance, entered the Confederation of the Rhine, and received
the title of King.[118]

Meanwhile Frederick William, accompanied by his grief-stricken
consort, was striving to draw together an army in his eastern
provinces. Some overtures with a view to peace had been made after
Jena; but Napoleon finally refused to relax his pursuit unless the
Prussians retired beyond the Vistula, and yielded up to him all the
western parts of the kingdom, with their fortresses. Besides, he let
it be known that Prussia must join him in a close alliance against
Russia, with a view to checking her ambitious projects against Turkey;
for the Czar, resenting the Sultan's deposition of the hospodars of
the Danubian Principalities, an act suggested by the French, had sent
an army across the River Pruth, even when the Porte timidly revoked
its objectionable firman.[119] The Eastern Question having been thus
reopened, Napoleon suggested a Franco-Prussian alliance so as to avert
a Russian conquest of the Balkan Peninsula. But now, as ever, his
terms to Prussia were too exacting. The King deigned not to stoop to
such humiliation, but resolved to stake his all on the courage of his
troops and the fidelity of the Czar.

The Russians, though delayed by their distrust of Haugwitz, and by
their insensate war with Turkey, were now marching, 73,000 strong,
into Prussian Poland, but were too late to save the Silesian
fortresses, most of which surrendered to the French. The fighting in
the open also went against the allies, though at Pultusk, a town north
of Warsaw, the Russians claimed that the contest had been drawn in
their favour.

At the close of the year the armies w