h this force into the vast interior would have left
Napoleon as a general just where he was before. This ineffectual
result was entirely due to a single deliberate move which terminated
his scheme of surrounding and annihilating the foe--the detachment of
Davout against Lestocq on the enemy's extreme right.

But when viewed from the statesman's point of view, Friedland appears
in a very different light.[6] It is a strange coincidence that in the
month previous a rebellion of the janizaries had deprived Selim III
of his throne, and that, Sebastiani's influence being thus ended,
France's position in the Oriental question was utterly changed. The
formal despatches announcing this fact did not reach Tilsit until June
twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth, but there is a strong probability
that it was known to Napoleon before the battle of Friedland. Is it
possible that the Emperor intended Friedland to do no more than
satisfy his army's eagerness for glory, and yet leave Alexander in a
humor to unite with him for the gratification of those well-known
Oriental ambitions of his which he had so recently seen jeopardized by
the Franco-Turkish alliance and the consequent ascendancy of French
influence at Constantinople? Such a hypothesis is by no means wild;
nevertheless, a careful study of the campaign seems to prove that
Napoleon, in suddenly changing from the defensive to the offensive,
and so finding himself at Heilsberg face to face with defeat, took the
quickest and easiest means to relieve a critical situation. It would
have appeared something very much like bravado had Davout's corps
penetrated between Lestocq's division and the Russian army, and thus
have exposed itself to a rear attack. If the easy self-reliance
Napoleon felt after a winter of robust health had been somewhat less,
and if his intellectual acumen had been somewhat greater, the whole
situation might have been foreseen and provided for. As neither was
the case, he did as a general the best thing that was possible at the
moment. Admitting this, we shall find the statesman making the most of
the general's poor situation; for the treaty which followed Friedland
is unique in the history of diplomacy.

[Footnote 6: Yorck von Wartenburg: Napoleon als Feldherr, I,
XIII.]

There were forcible reasons on both sides for arriving at an
understanding. It has been remarked that Napoleon never discharged the
stings and darts of personal abuse at Alexander