The Tsar Alexander at once
sued for peace. At Tilsit, on a raft moored in the middle of the River
Niemen, Napoleon and Alexander met and arranged the terms of peace for
France, Russia, and Prussia. The impressionable tsar was dazzled by the
striking personality and the unexpected magnanimity of the emperor of
the French. Hardly an inch of Russian soil was exacted, only a promise
to cooeperate in excluding British trade from the Continent. Alexander
was accorded full permission to deal as he would with Finland and
Turkey. "What is Europe?" exclaimed the emotional tsar: "Where is it,
if it is not you and I?" But Prussia had to pay the price of the
alliance between French and Russian emperors. From Prussia was torn the
portion of Poland which was erected into the grand-duchy of Warsaw,
under Napoleon's obsequious ally, the elector of Saxony. Despoiled
altogether of half of her territories, compelled to reduce her army to
42,000 men, and forced to maintain French troops on her remaining lands
until a large war indemnity was paid, Prussia was reduced to the rank
of a third-rate power.
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