s passed through Paris,
Napoleon addressed to them one of those orations which never failed to
swell the resolution and pride of his soldiery on the eve of some great
enterprise. "Comrades," said he, "after triumphing on the banks of the
Danube and the Vistula, with rapid steps you have passed through
Germany. This day, without a moment of repose, I command you to traverse
France. Soldiers, I have need of you. The hideous presence of the
leopard contaminates the peninsula of Spain and Portugal. In terror he
must fly before you. Let us bear our triumphant eagles to the Pillars of
Hercules: there also we have injuries to avenge. Soldiers! you have
surpassed the renown of modern armies; but have you yet equalled the
glory of those Romans, who, in one and the same campaign, were
victorious on the Rhine, and the Euphrates, in Illyria and on the Tagus?
A long peace, a lasting prosperity, shall be the reward of your labours.
A real Frenchman could not, should not rest, until the seas are free and
open to all. Soldiers, what you have done, and what you are about to do,
for the happiness of the French people and for my glory, shall be
eternal in my heart!"

Having thus dismissed his troops on their way, Buonaparte himself
travelled rapidly to Erfurt, where he had invited the Emperor Alexander
to confer with him. It was most needful that before he went to Spain
himself, he should ascertain the safety of his empire on the other side;
and there was much in the state of Germany that might well give rise to
serious apprehensions. Austria was strengthening her military
establishment to a vast extent, and had, by a recent law, acquired the
means of drawing on her population unlimitedly, after the method of
Napoleon's own conscription code. She professed pacific intentions
towards France, and intimated that her preparations were designed for
the protection of her Turkish frontier; but the Emperor Francis
positively declined to acknowledge Joseph Buonaparte as King of Spain;
and this refusal was quite sufficient for Napoleon. In Prussia,
meantime, and indeed all over Germany, a spirit of deep and settled
enmity was manifesting itself in the shape of patriotic clubs (the chief
being called the _Tugend-bund_, or Alliance of Virtue), which included
the young and the daring of every class, and threatened, at no distant
period, to convulse the whole fabric of society with the one purpose of
clearing the national soil of its foreign oppressors