was when his health was really good.

Throughout the late campaign the Emperor Francis had occupied a
position of non-intervention and hesitating neutrality similar to that
of Frederick William the year before. If he had intervened any time
during the winter after Eylau, his will would have been imperative.
But as Prussia had held off in his hour of need, leaving Napoleon
untrammeled, so now he let Prussia drink of the same cup, and remained
nominally neutral. Andreossy reported, however, that Austria's
strength was being rapidly recruited, and that her preparations
foreboded a renewal of hostilities. There was a new prime minister,
Count Stadion, remarkable for his energy and insight. Napoleon
immediately began to make propositions for an alliance, intended
merely to gain time. As he had the previous year called for the boy
conscripts of 1807, so he now demanded those for 1808, who were even
somewhat younger. The Confederacy of the Rhine was summoned to supply
fresh troops, and even Spain, in which there had recently been
symptoms of serious uneasiness, was called on for a large contingent
of auxiliaries. Before the close of negotiations with Francis,
Napoleon had virtually doubled his army; the new levies were kept in
Silesia and central Prussia, apparently as a reserve, but they were
not far from the Austrian frontier.

On May twenty-sixth, in spite of a gallant and persistent defense by
Kalkreuth, Dantzic, the queen fortress of the Baltic, capitulated.
This made Lefebvre's force available to strengthen further the army
which still lay behind the Passarge. Napoleon again offered Silesia to
Francis, this time entire and outright, as the price of an alliance;
he was even willing to make an exchange for Dalmatia. On April
twenty-sixth, at Bartenstein, Russia and Prussia had signed a new
treaty, according to which they bound themselves to make no separate
peace, and agreed that they would endeavor to unite the Scandinavian
powers with England, Austria, and themselves for a general war of
liberation. The Viennese cabinet was again divided on the question of
renewing hostilities, and in the end proposed its services as a
mediator, provided that Poland should remain divided and Turkey
unmolested, and that German affairs should be rearranged. Napoleon
coquetted with this proposal until Russia and Prussia gave their
reply, which was not an assent to Austria's proposition, but a request
for Francis's adherence to the conven