The
drama thenceforth led irresistibly through two terrible acts--the
Russian campaign and the Battle of the Nations--to the
_denouement_ in the emperor's abdication and to a sorry epilogue
in Waterloo.
[Sidenote: Strained Relations between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander]
It was the rupture between Napoleon and the Tsar Alexander that
precipitated the disasters. A number of events which transpired between
the celebrated meeting at Tilsit in 1807 and the memorable year of 1812
made a rupture inevitable. Tilsit had purported to divide the world
between the two emperors, but Alexander, as junior partner in the firm,
soon found that his chief function was to assist Napoleon in bringing
all western and central Europe under the domination of the French
Empire while he himself was allowed by no means a free rein in dealing
with his own country's hereditary enemies--Sweden, Poland, and Turkey.
To be sure, Alexander had wrested Finland from Sweden (1809), but
Napoleon's forcing of Sweden into a war with Great Britain (1810-1812),
presumably as an ally of Russia as well as of France, had prevented him
from extending his territory further in that direction.
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