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By Root 2502 0

to sign an armistice with the Turks, and on 24 August such an agreement had duly been negotiated at Slobosia. Apparently misled by the account of the Tilsit agreement given him by the Turkish plenipotentiary, Galib Efendi, into believing that the Danubian provinces were to be given back to the Porte, General Mikhelson had initially accepted that Wallachia and Moldavia should be evacuated, but when news reached Alexander he had refused to ratify the peace terms and ordered his troops to remain put until such time as a formal treaty had been negotiated. The Turkish forces having all withdrawn in accordance with what had been agreed at Slobosia, the Russians could therefore look on Moldavia and Wallachia as safely in their sphere of influence.

No such satisfaction could be felt in Prussia. She was forced to pay a heavy indemnity, maintain a large French garrison, recognize the Confederation of the Rhine, now expanded to include the whole of Germany apart from herself and Austria, accede to the Continental Blockade, and accept the loss of half her territory. Her western territories (except, in the first instance, Hanover) were used to create Westphalia, a new state centred on Kassel that went to Napoleon’s brother, Jerome, and to augment Berg and Holland, both of which got small frontier districts. As for the bulk of Prussian Poland, this was used to create a reborn Polish state known as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, that was placed under the rule of the King of Saxony (as noted above, a district in the east centred on Bialystok went to Russia). Until the indemnity was paid, the rump of Prussia - a territory that was all but entirely indefensible and for the most part very poor - was to be occupied by French troops. The actual size of the indemnity was not stipulated, however, and thus it was that Napoleon was left free to set it at so high a price that Frederick William would never be able to rid himself of the grande armée. As for Prussian influence in Germany, it was reduced to nothing. This was rammed home in the treatment meted out to the few states that had to the end remained under Potsdam’s sway. Oldenburg, the two Mecklenburgs and Saxony were given their independence, but only at the price of joining the Confederation of the Rhine, while Hesse-Kassel and Brunswick were swallowed up by Westphalia. In short, the entire edifice of Hohenzollern power was at an end. Well might a shattered Blücher write, ‘My heart sobs over the disaster which has fallen on the state and upon my master.’61 As for Frederick William, he could only fume impotently, describing Napoleon as ‘that monster choked out of hell, formed by Beelzebub to be the scourge of the earth’.62

Tilsit, then, found the Napoleonic empire at what proved to be its zenith. Napoleon himself was the unchallenged ruler of a much enlarged France; French potentates had been placed on the thrones of Holland, Berg, Westphalia, Naples and the Kingdom of Italy; Germany and Switzerland were entirely under French control; and Spain had become a humble ally, albeit a somewhat fractious one. Britain could still count on Sweden, but her supremacy at sea had availed her very little. Not only had she failed to make any impact at all in the campaigns of October 1806 to June 1807, but her various expeditionary forces had come to a bad end. As for her vigorous response to the Continental Blockade, the Orders in Council which resulted would plunge Britain into fresh complications over the tight controls they imposed on neutral shipping. With Napoleon in control of much of the European coastline, the future was distinctly uncertain. What would occur next was, of course, impossible to say. But such was Britain’s predicament it is entirely possible that she would have been forced to give in. Fortunately for the Portland administration, however, their opponent was not a rational European statesman, but Napoleon. If he had only allowed Russia to believe that she was a French partner rather than a French vassal, the emperor might have won the war, but, exactly as had been the case in 1803, he