ring two years of diplomatic fencing the initiative had been
Russian, the instigation French. For the war which followed no single
cause can be assigned. Some blamed Napoleon, claiming that with his
scheme of universal empire it was inevitable; Metternich said Russia
had brought on war in an unpardonable manner. The Tilsit alliance was
personal; the separation of the contracting parties inevitably
weakened it. The affiliations of the Russian aristocracy with the
Austrian; the smart of both under the Continental System, which
rendered their agriculture unprofitable; England's stand under
Castlereagh; the Oldenburg question--all these were cumulative in
their effect. With Alexander, Poland and the Continental System were
the real difficulties; the marriage question was only secondary. On
January twelfth, 1812, the Czar with mournful and solemn mien declared
his hands clean of blood-guiltiness and laid down his ultimatum. To
the concentration of Russian troops Napoleon had replied by sending
his own to Erfurt and Magdeburg. Alexander formally stated his
readiness to take back his own move if the Emperor would withdraw the
French soldiers; he would even accept Erfurt for Oldenburg, and permit
Warsaw to be capital of a Saxon province. But he said not a word about
the Continental System, being fully determined not to yield one jot,
and for Napoleon this was the primary matter. Alexander's ultimatum by
its clever form compelled his ally either to abandon the scheme of
Western empire or to fight. Both parties to the Tilsit alliance
understood that with European harbors shut to English trade, Great
Britain must cease to support the Spanish insurrection, which in that
case a few thousand troops could hold in check. Then the great scheme
of revolutionary extension which had been inaugurated by the
Convention and logically developed by Napoleon step by step in every
war and treaty since Campo Formio would in a few short years be
complete. But two real powers would thus remain in continental
Europe--France and Russia. They could by united action crush British
power both by land and by sea. To dash this brimming cup from his lips
was for Napoleon an insupportable thought. With the hope, apparently,
of securing from the Czar the last essential concession, he set his
troops in motion toward the Vistula on the very day after his treaty
with Prussia was signed.

The natural counter-move to Napoleon's advance would be the invasion
of War