bulwark against Russia - and it was obvious that Alexander was merely
playing for time.
After Tilsit Napoleon turned his face homewards and began a leisurely
progress back to Paris. In Dresden on 19 July the Polish deputies for the
new Duchy of Warsaw were presented to him, and he dictated to them
the constitution of the new government. While in Dresden he found time
for a brief affair with Charlotte von Kilmansegg. A week later he was back
at St-Cloud, where Fouche and Talleyrand found him much changed.
Talleyrand recorded that even his voice seemed different after Tilsit.
Certainly the harsher side of his nature came to the fore, and after July
1807 his reflex action when faced with a problem was to use a heavy hand,
be it military force, secret police or government censorship. Fouche
reported that Parisians were becoming increasingly restless with his
regime, the recent military and diplomatic successes notwithstanding.
They sensed that the war with the Russians had been a near-run thing
and dreaded the social and economic consequences if French society was
to remain on a permanent wartime footing. Fouche indeed now
concluded that the Emperor was incapable of dealing rationally with bad
news. It was the generally received opinion in France, certainly with
hindsight, that at Tilsit the Emperor crossed an invisible Rubicon. He
thought himself poised on the cusp of permanent European hegemony
but was about to start sliding down a slippery slope whose end would be
disaster.
marcin
(Marcin)
#1