to the assistance of Frederick William. That
unfortunate Prince sent Lucchesini to Berlin, to open, if possible, a
negotiation with the victorious occupant of his capital and palace; but
Buonaparte demanded Dantzick, and two other fortified towns, as the
price of even the briefest armistice; and the Italian envoy returned to
inform the King, that no hope remained for him except in the arrival of
the Russians.

Napoleon held in his hands the means of opening his campaign with those
allies of Prussia, under circumstances involving his enemy in a new, and
probably endless train of difficulties. The Partition of Poland--that
great political crime, for which every power that had a part in it has
since been severely, though none of them adequately punished--had left
the population of what had once been a great and powerful kingdom, in a
state of discontent and irritation, of which, had Napoleon been willing
to make full use of it, the fruits might have been more dangerous for
the Czar than any campaign against any foreign enemy. The French Emperor
had but to announce distinctly that his purpose was the restoration of
Poland as an independent state, and the whole mass, of an eminently
gallant and warlike population would have risen instantly at his call.
But Buonaparte was withheld from resorting to this effectual means of
annoyance by various considerations; of which the chief were these:
first, he could not emancipate Poland without depriving Austria of a
rich and important province, and consequently provoking her once more
into the field: and secondly, he foresaw that the Russian Emperor, if
threatened with the destruction of his Polish territory and authority,
would urge the war in a very different manner from that which he was
likely to adopt while acting only as the ally of Prussia. In a word,
Napoleon was well aware of the extent of the Czar's resources, and had
no wish at this time to give a character of irremediable bitterness to
their quarrel.

Though, however, he for these and other reasons refrained from openly
appealing in his own person to the Poles as a nation, Buonaparte had no
scruple about permitting others to tamper, in his behalf, with the
justly indignant feelings of the people. Some of the heroic leaders of
the Poles, in the struggles for their expiring independence, had long
been exiles in France--not a few of them had taken service in her
armies. These men were allowed, and encouraged, to address thems