made, for an extension of
her frontier to the Vistula. Shortly afterwards it was agreed to
postpone the attack on Norway till the following year, and thus at
length the Russian army in Finland was set free. The treaties with the
Porte and Sweden were too late to liberate troops to oppose Napoleon's
advance, but the troops thus liberated greatly endangered his retreat.
With Persia no peace could be made. Great Britain was still nominally at
war both with Russia and with Sweden. Negotiations with Russia in April
came to nothing because the British government refused to take over a
loan of L4,000,000, but on July 18 a treaty of alliance between the
three powers was signed, in which Great Britain promised pecuniary aid
to Russia. A further sign of friendship was given when the tsar handed
over the Cronstadt fleet for safekeeping to the British. The formal
treaty was, however, only the public recognition of a friendship and
mutual confidence which had begun with the breach between Russia and
France. This good understanding was shared by the nominal allies of
France, Prussia and Austria. Russia was fully informed of the military
and political plans of Austria, and knew that her forces would not fight
except under compulsion.

At last, on June 24, Napoleon's grand army began the passage of the
Niemen, which formed the boundary between the duchy of Warsaw and the
Russian empire. The main body, at least 300,000 strong, was commanded by
Napoleon himself. A northern division, including the Prussian
contingent, was commanded by Macdonald, and, after advancing to Riga,
which it pretended to besiege, remained idle throughout the campaign.
The Austrians, under Schwarzenberg, formed a southern division, but they
merely manoeuvred, and made no serious attempts to impede the
movements of the southern Russian army on its return journey from the
war on the Danube. Napoleon himself drove the main Russian armies before
him in the direction of Moscow. At last Kutuzov, who had taken over the
command of the Russians in the course of the retreat, made a stand at
Borodino, where on September 7 one of the bloodiest battles on record
was fought. The figures are variously given, but the French army
probably lost over 30,000 in killed and wounded out of a force of
125,000; and the Russians lost not less than 40,000 out of an army of
slightly smaller dimensions. This awful carnage ended, after all, in
little more than a trial of strength. The French