"Sire," cried the colonel joyfully, "your Majesty signs in this moment the glory of the nation and the deliverance of Europe."
His words were true—with this qualification, that the glory of Russia and the deliverance of Europe were not the work of a moment, but of long months of patient, heroic resolution. Alexander had not wished for war—perhaps, indeed, he had striven too long to avert it. Personally, in his earlier years, he admired Napoleon: the fact is undeniable, though it has been the subject of much exaggeration. From the dawn of manhood his favourite dream had been of a universal and durable peace, and he imagined he saw in the victories of Napoleon so many steps to its attainment. What are now called "Les idées Napoléoniques," seem to have captivated for a season this young, ardent, somewhat visionary mind. But the veil once torn from his eyes by the insatiable ambition and the repeated perfidies of the French usurper, thenceforward it was between them war to the death.
When Napoleon suddenly poured his enormous hosts across the Niemen, Alexander at once and emphatically announced his resolution, "I will not sheathe the sword while a single foreigner remains in arms upon the soil of Russia." At that moment the eyes of all Europe were upon him, and neither friend nor foe believed it possible that he could make good his word.
"Napoleon," said an astute observer, "thought he could terrify the Emperor of Russia by his menaces without drawing a sword; he thought he could make him lose his head by beginning the war suddenly in the midst of negotiations; he thought he could end that war by a single battle. But nothing happened that he thought."[1] In a letter written by him about this time, which was intercepted and brought to his rival, were
- ↑ De Maistre.—Sir Robert Wilson, an Englishman, was of great use in this crisis as the friend and counsellor of Alexander.
