Turkey as Selim had been deposed. 'This is an act of Providence; it tells
me that the Ottoman empire can no longer exist.' By all accounts
Alexander swallowed this and hung on every word.
While the diplomats got down to the small print of the draft treaty, the
tiring and stressful round of dinners and meetings between the two rulers
went on daily until 5 July. Then Qu een Louise of Prussia arrived. Using
all her charm and cajolery, she made strenuous efforts to get the
draconian terms of the draft peace treaty amended, but Napoleon could
not forgive her for her obduracy after Jena, that had cost him so much
blood and treasure. To Josephine he wrote: 'The Qu een of Prussia is
really charming, she is fu ll of coquetry for me, but don't be jealous. It's
water off a duck's back to me. It's too much effort for me to play the
gallant.' Finally, the Tilsit agreement was ready for signature on 7 July. It
was ratified two days later so that, at last, on 9 July, Napoleon bade
farewell to the intriguing and enigmatic Alexander. A quite separate
treaty with Prussia was signed on 9 July and ratified on the rzth.
The Treaty of Tilsit gave the Czar a free hand against European
Turkey and Finland; Russia would join Napoleon's blockade of Britain
(the 'Continental System'); the Russian navy would help France capture
Gibraltar. In a secret protocol the Czar promised to raise no objections to
Napoleonic interventions in Spain and Portugal, though this did not
justify, as was later alleged, Bonapartist assertions that Alexander had
formally connived at the expulsion of the Bourbons in the Iberian
peninsula and their replacement by Napoleon's brothers. Alexander also
agreed informally - this did not fo rm part of the final protocol - that he
would collaborate in a joint Franco-Russian project aimed at British
power in India, initially by sending a so,ooo-strong army into Persia.
Napoleon's extreme duplicity here must be stressed, for before Friedland
he had been encouraging the Persians to ally themselves with him and
thus regain from Russia the lost province of Georgia. Napoleon was to
mediate in the Russo-Turkish conflict and, if the new Sultan refused his
mediation, the Ottoman provinces in eastern Europe were to be shared
between the signatories. In return, Alexander was to mediate in the
Franco-British war: if Britain refused, Alexander would bring pressure
on the courts of Copenhagen, Stockholm and Lisbon to force them to
close their ports to English produce.
The treaty with Prussia represented a humiliation fo r the Hohenzol
lerns. Prussia was restricted to her 1772 frontiers and the French held on
to the fo rtress of Magdeburg. All Prussian possessions west of the Elbe
and a part of Hanover were incorporated in the new kingdom of
Westphalia, with Napoleon's brother Jerome as king. All Prussian
marcin
(Marcin)
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