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Updated: May 20, 2025
He could not afford to go to war with Prussia, Austria, France, England, and Turkey together. It had become impossible for him to invade European Turkey by the accustomed route. So, under pressure of their assembling forces, he withdrew his troops from the Danubian provinces, which removed all cause of hostilities from Prussia and Austria.
Working their way down from Gothland and Jutland, we know not why nor when, thrusting aside the cognate Burgunds, and the Sclavonic tribes whom they met on the road, they had spread themselves, in the third century, over the whole South of Russia, and westward over the Danubian Provinces, and Hungary. What manner of men they were it is hard to say, so few details are left to us.
Thus, within a few years, Greece has been taken away; Egypt has not merely been taken away, but rendered dangerous to the Porte; the great Danubian provinces, Moldavia and Wallachia, have been taken away, and thus Russia has been brought to the banks of the Danube.
He then mounted his carriage and drove away to Paris to resume his conquest of Spain. The last diplomatic proceeding at Erfurt was the drawing up of a secret convention which assigned Finland and the Danubian Provinces to Russia, and promised Russia's help to Napoleon in case Austria should attack him.
After the destruction of the fleet at Chesme the Crimea became untenable and was abandoned to the brief mercies of Russia: and with a veiled Russian protectorate established in the Danubian principalities, and an open Russian occupation in Morean ports, Constantinople had lost once more her own seas.
The opening of the Black Sea, the dismemberment of Turkey, the control of the Mediterranean, the fate of the Danubian Principalities for all this he cared nothing, for in them Prussia had no interests; they only existed for him so far as the new combinations among the Powers might for good or evil affect Prussia.
His sovereign's stateliest lands had been gained by the partition of Austria and of Poland; he now suggested that Russia and Austria should divide the Danubian principalities between them, that France should take Greece and her isles, and that Poland should be restored and given to the King of Saxony, who in turn should hand over his German domains to Prussia.
Besides, he let it be known that Prussia must join him in a close alliance against Russia, with a view to checking her ambitious projects against Turkey; for the Czar, resenting the Sultan's deposition of the hospodars of the Danubian Principalities, an act suggested by the French, had sent an army across the River Pruth, even when the Porte timidly revoked its objectionable firman.
Napoleon was, however, secretly opposing Alexander's plans for adding the Danubian provinces and Finland to his possessions. Then the possibility of Napoleon's reëstablishing Poland as a national kingdom which might threaten Russia's interests, was a constant source of apprehension to Alexander.
I then took a series of short and rapid whiffs of my pipe while I bethought me of the best manner of treating the subject of my visit, and then said, "that few orientals could draw a distinction between politics and geography; but that with a man of his calibre and experience, I was safe from misinterpretation that I was collecting the materials for a work on the Danubian provinces, and that for any information which he might give me, consistently with the exigencies of his official position, I should feel much indebted, as I thought I was least likely to be misunderstood by stating clearly the object of my journey to the authorities, while information derived from the fountain-head was the most valuable."
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