Russian customs dues on French goods.[254] The
reception given by Napoleon to these reasonable terms was unpromising.
"You are a gentleman," he exclaimed to Prince Kurakin, "--and yet you
dare to present to me such proposals?--You are acting as Prussia did
before Jena." Alexander had already given up all hope of peace. A week
before that scene, he had left St. Petersburg for the army, knowing
full well that Napoleon's cast-iron will might be shivered by a mighty
blow, but could never be bent by diplomacy.

On his side, Napoleon sought to overawe his eastern rival by a display
of imposing force. Lord of a dominion that far excelled that of the
Czar in material resources, suzerain of seven kingdoms and thirty
principalities, he called his allies and vassals about him at Dresden,
and gave to the world the last vision of that imperial splendour which
dazzled the imagination of men.

It was an idle display. In return for secret assurances that he might
eventually regain his Illyrian provinces, the Emperor Francis had
pledged himself by treaty to send 30,000 men to guard Napoleon's flank
in Volhynia. But everyone at St. Petersburg knew that this aid, along
with that of Prussia, was forced and hollow.[255] The example of Spain
and the cautious strategy of Wellington had dissolved the spell of
French invincibility; and the Czar was resolved to trust to the
toughness of his people and the defensive strength of his boundless
plains. The time of the Macks, the Brunswicks, the Bennigsens was
past: the day of Wellington and of truly national methods of warfare
had dawned.

Yet the hosts now moving against Alexander bade fair to overwhelm the
devotion of his myriad subjects and the awful solitudes of his
steppes. It was as if Peter the Hermit had arisen to impel the peoples
of Western and Central Europe once more against the immobile East.
Frenchmen to the number of 200,000 formed the kernel of this vast
body: 147,000 Germans from the Confederation of the Rhine followed the
new Charlemagne: nearly 80,000 Italians under Eugene formed an Army of
Observation: 60,000 Poles stepped eagerly forth to wrest their
nation's liberty from the Muscovite grasp; and Illyrians, Swiss, and
Dutch, along with a few Spaniards and Portuguese, swelled the Grand
Army to a total of 600,000 men. Nor was this all. Austria and Prussia
sent their contingents, amounting in all to 50,000 men, to guard
Napoleon's flanks on the side of Volhynia and Courland. An