"Madam" replied the Emperor, in a serious tone, "I am to be pitied; it is the result of my unhappy stars." He then took leave of the Queen, who, on reaching her carriage, threw herself on the seat in tears.
From a Painting by Baron Gros
Meeting Between Napoleon and Francis II. of Austria
Alexander was charmed by the presence of Napoleon. They spent some days at Tilsit together, and never did he leave the French Emperor without expressing his unbounded admiration of him. "What a great man," he said incessantly to those who approached him; "What a genius! What extensive views! What a captain! What a statesman! Had I but known him sooner how many faults he might have spared me! What great things we might have accomplished together!"
In July Napoleon hastened back to Paris, arriving there on the 27th. He was received by the Senate and other public bodies as well as by the people with demonstrations similar to those which had been shown him on his return from the victory at Austerlitz. Fêtes and celebrations in honor of his achievements dazzled the world. He had now wrung from the last of his reluctant enemies, except England, the recognition of his imperial power, which already embraced a wider territory and a far greater number of subjects than Charlemagne ruled over, as Emperor of the West, a thousand years before. The power of Napoleon, the prosperity of France, and the splendor of Paris may be said to have been at their greatest height at this period. The regulation of the whole Empire lay in the hand of Napoleon himself, and as the glory of France had always been, and continued to be his grand object, every faculty of his intellect was bent to its promotion.
"I am inclined to think that I was happiest at Tilsit," said Napoleon one day to Gourgaud at St. Helena on being asked at what time he was happiest. "I had experienced vicissitudes, cares, and reverses," he continued, "Eylau had reminded me that fortune might abandon me, and I found myself victorious, dictating peace, with emperors and kings to form my court. After all that is not a real enjoyment. Perhaps I was really more happy after my Italian victories hearing the people raise their voices, only to bless their liberator, and all that at twenty-five years of age! From that time I saw what I might become, I already saw the world flying beneath me, as if I had been carried through the air."
Napier, the eminent historian, and himself an actor in many of the scenes he describes, says: "Up to the peace of Tilsit, the wars of France were essentially defensive; for the bloody contest that wasted the Continent so many years was not a struggle for pre-eminence between ambitious powers—not a dispute for some acquisition of territory—nor for the political ascendancy of one or another nation—but a deadly conflict to determine whether aristocracy or democracy should predominate—whether aristocracy or privilege should henceforth be the principle of European governments."
On the 15th of August the Emperor repaired in great pomp to Notre Dame, where the Te Deum was sung and thanksgiving offered up for the peace of Tilsit—a peace that gave much glory to France, but which as has generally been conceded, was "poor politics"; but, as Thiers has well said: "In war Napoleon was guided by his genius, in politics by his passions."