Then, too, the
revival of a Polish state under the name of the grand-duchy of Warsaw
and under French protection was a thorn in his flesh, which became all
the more painful, more irritating, when it was enlarged after the
Austrian War of 1809. Finally, Alexander's warfare against Turkey was
constantly handicapped by French diplomacy, so that when the treaty of
Bucharest was at length concluded (28 May, 1812) it was due to British
rather than to French assistance that Russia extended her southern
boundary to the River Pruth. Alexander was particularly piqued when
Napoleon dethroned one of the tsar's relatives in Oldenburg and
arbitrarily annexed that duchy to the French Empire, and he was deeply
chagrined when the marriage of his ally with a Habsburg archduchess
seemed to cement the bonds between France and Austria.
All these political differences might conceivably have been adjusted,
had it not been for the economic breach which the Continental System
ever widened. Russia, at that time almost exclusively an agricultural
country, had special need of British imports, and the tsar, a
sympathetic, kind-hearted man, could not endure the suffering and
protests of his people.
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