s bound to furnish him with
30,000, and Prussia with 20,000 auxiliaries. The sum-total is 1,187,000.
Deducting 387,000--a large allowance for hospitals, furloughs, and
incomplete regiments-there remained 800,000 effective men at his
immediate command. The Spanish peninsula might perhaps occupy, even now,
150,000; but still Napoleon could bring into the field against Russia,
in case all negotiation failed, an army of 650,000 men; numbers such as
Alexander could have no chance of equalling; numbers such as had never
before followed an European banner.

Notwithstanding all this display of military strength, the French
statesmen who had in former days possessed the highest place in the
Emperor's confidence, and who had been shaken in his favour by their
bold prophecies of the result of his attempts on Spain and Portugal,
did not hesitate to come forward on this new occasion, and offer
warnings, for which the course of events in the Peninsula might have
been expected to procure a patient hearing. Talleyrand, still in office,
exhausted all his efforts in vain. Fouche, who on pretence of ill health
had thrown up his Roman government, and was now resident at his country
seat near Paris, drew up a memorial, in which the probable consequences
of a march into Russia were detailed with masterly skill and eloquence;
and demanded an audience of the Emperor, that he might present it in
person. Napoleon, whose police now watched no one so closely as their
former chief, was prepared for this. He received Fouche with an air of
cool indifference. "I am no stranger to your errand," said he. "The war
with Russia pleases you as little as that of Spain." Fouche answered,
that he hoped to be pardoned for having drawn up some reflections on so
important a crisis. "It is no crisis at all," resumed Buonaparte, "but a
mere war of politics. Spain falls whenever I have destroyed the English
influence at St. Petersburg. I have 800,000 soldiers in readiness: with
such an army I consider Europe as an old prostitute, who must obey my
pleasure. Did not you yourself once tell me that the word _impossible_
is not French? You grandees are now too rich, and though you pretend to
be anxious about my interests, you are only thinking of what might
happen to yourselves in case of my death, and the dismemberment of my
empire. I regulate my conduct much more by the sentiments of my army
than by yours. Is it my fault that the height of power which I have
attained c