e with
Napoleon, was directly controverted by the secret instructions which
he bore from Frederick William to Alexander. He described several
midnight interviews with the Czar at the Winter Palace, in which he
convinced him that by war with Napoleon, and by enticing him into the
heart of Russia, Europe would be saved. Lehmann has shown ("Knesebeck
und Schoen") that this story is contradicted by all the documentary
evidence. It may be dismissed as the offspring of senile vanity.]

[Footnote 259: "Toll," vol. i., pp. 256 _et seq._ Mueffling was assured
by Phull in 1819 that the Drissa plan was only part of a grander
design which had never had a fair[*Scanner's note: fair is correct]
chance!]

[Footnote 260: Bernhardi's "Toll" (vol. i., p. 231) gives Barclay's
chief "army of the west" as really mustering only 127,000 strong,
along with 9,000 Cossacks; Bagration, with the second "army of the
west," numbered at first only 35,000, with 4,000 Cossacks; while
Tormasov's corps observing Galicia was about as strong. Clausewitz
gives rather higher estimates.]

[Footnote 261: Labaume, "Narrative of 1812," and Segur.]

[Footnote 262: See the long letter of May 28th, 1812, to De Pradt;
also the Duc de Broglie's "Memoirs" (vol. i., ch. iv.) for the
hollowness of Napoleon's Polish policy. Bignon, "Souvenirs d'un
Diplomate" (ch. xx.), errs in saying that Napoleon charged De
Pradt--"Tout agiter, tout enflammer." At St. Helena, Napoleon said to
Montholon ("Captivity," vol. iii., ch. iii.): "Poland and its
resources were but poetry in the first months of the year 1812."]

[Footnote 263: "Toll," vol. i., p. 239; Wilson, "Invasion of Russia,"
p. 384.]

[Footnote 264: We may here also clear aside the statements of some
writers who aver that Napoleon intended to strike at St. Petersburg.
Perhaps he did so for a time. On July 9th he wrote at Vilna that he
proposed to march _both on Moscow and St. Petersburg_. But that was
while he still hoped that Davoust would entrap Bagration, and while
Barclay's retreat on Drissa seemed likely to carry the war into the
north. Napoleon always aimed first at the enemy's army; and Barclay's
retreat from Drissa to Vitepsk, and thence to Smolensk, finally
decided Napoleon's move towards Moscow. If he had any preconceived
scheme--and he always regulated his moves by events rather than by a
cast-iron plan--it was to strike at Moscow. At Dresden he said to De
Pradt: "I must finish the war by the end of Septe