g their disputes with Paris to a close,
before Napoleon should have leisure to consummate the conquest of
Spain.

During the summer of 1811, then, the relations of these two governments
were becoming every day more dubious; and when, towards the close of it,
the Emperor of Austria published a rescript, granting a free passage
through his territories to the troops of his son-in-law, England, ever
watchful of the movements of her great enemy, perceived clearly that she
was about to have an ally.

From the moment in which the Russian government began to reclaim
seriously against certain parts of his conduct, Buonaparte increased by
degrees his military force in the north of Germany and the Grand Duchy
of Warsaw, and advanced considerable bodies of troops nearer and nearer
to the Czar's Polish frontier. These preparations were met by some
similar movements on the other side; yet, during many months, the hope
of terminating the differences by negotiation was not abandoned. The
Russian complaints, at length, assumed a regular shape, and embraced
three distinct heads, viz.:--

First, the extension of the territories of the Duchy of Warsaw, under
the treaty of Schoenbrunn. This alarmed the court of St. Petersburg, by
reviving the notion of Polish independence, and Buonaparte was in vain
urged to give his public guarantee that no national government should be
re-established in the dismembered kingdom:

Second, the annexation of the Duchy of Oldenburg to the French empire,
by that edict of Napoleon which proclaimed his seizure of the whole
sea-coast of Germany, between Holland and the Baltic. Oldenburg, the
hereditary territory of the Emperor Alexander's brother-in-law, had been
expressly guaranteed to that prince by the treaty of Tilsit. Napoleon
was asked to indemnify the ejected duke by the cession of Dantzick, or
some other territory in the neighbourhood of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw;
but this he declined, though he professed his willingness to give some
compensation elsewhere:

Thirdly, the Czar alleged, and most truly, that the state of his country
made it altogether necessary that the regulations of the "continental
system" should be dispensed with in his instance, and declared that he
could no longer submit to see the commerce of an independent empire
trammelled for the purpose of serving the policy of a foreign power.
Buonaparte admitted that it might be necessary to modify the system
complained of, and expressed hi