rmy. Thanks to the teachings
of Fichte and the still deeper lessons of adversity, the mind of
Germany was now ranged on the side of national independence and
against an omnivorous imperialism.

Where the mind led the body followed, yet still somewhat haltingly. In
truth, the King and his officials were in a difficult position. They
distrusted the Russians, who seemed chiefly eager to force Frederick
William into war with France and to arrange the question of a frontier
afterwards. But the eastern frontier was a question of life and death
for Prussia. If Alexander kept the whole of the great Duchy of Warsaw,
the Hohenzollern States would be threatened from the east as
grievously as ever they were on the west by the French at Magdeburg.
And the Czar seemed resolved to keep the whole of Poland. He told the
Prussian envoy, Knesebeck, that, while handing over to Frederick
William the whole of Saxony, Russia must retain all the Polish lands,
a resolve which would have planted the Russian standards almost on the
banks of the Oder. Nay, more: Knesebeck detected among the Russian
officials a strong, though as yet but half expressed, longing for the
whole of Prussia east of the lower Vistula.

For his part, Frederick William cherished lofty hopes. He knew that
the Russian troops had suffered horribly from privations and disease,
that as yet they mustered only 40,000 effectives on the Polish
borders, and that they urgently needed the help of Prussia. He
therefore claimed that, if he joined Russia in a war against Napoleon,
he must recover the whole of what had been Prussian Poland, with the
exception of the district of Bialystock ceded at Tilsit.[284] It
seemed, then, that the Polish Question would once more exert on the
European concert that dissolving influence which had weakened the
Central Powers ever since the days of Valmy. Had Napoleon now sent to
Breslau a subtle schemer like Savary, the apple of discord might have
been thrown in with fatal results. But the fortunes of his Empire then
rested on a Piedmontese nobleman, St. Marsan, who showed a singular
credulity as to Prussia's subservience. He accepted all Hardenberg's
explanations (including a thin official reproof to Steffens), and did
little or nothing to countermine the diplomatic approaches of Russia.
The ground being thus left clear, it was possible for the Czar to
speak straight to the heart of Frederick William. This he now did.
Knesebeck was set aside; and Alexa