increase of her own strength by their exhaustion. On the 14th of March,
1812, she promised France 30,000 men; but she prepared prudent secret
instructions for them. She obtained a vague promise of an increase of
territory, as an indemnity for her share of the expenses of the war, and
the possession of Gallicia was guaranteed to her. She admitted, however,
the future possibility of a cession of part of that province to the
kingdom of Poland; but in exchange for that she would have received the
Illyrian provinces. The sixth article of the secret treaty establishes
that fact.

The success of the war, therefore, in no degree depended on the cession
of Gallicia, or the difficulties arising from the Austrian jealousy of
that possession. Napoleon, consequently, might on his entrance into
Wilna, have publicly proclaimed the liberation of the whole of Poland,
instead of betraying the expectations of her people, astonishing and
rendering them indifferent by expressions of wavering import.

This, however, was one of those prominent points, which in politics as
well as in war are decisive, with which every thing is connected, and
from which nothing ought to have made him swerve. But whether it was
that Napoleon reckoned too much on the ascendancy of his genius, or the
strength of his army, and the weakness of Alexander; or that,
considering what he left behind him, he felt it too dangerous to carry
on so distant a war slowly and methodically; or whether, as we shall
presently be told by himself, he had doubts of the success of his
undertaking; certain it is, that he either neglected, or could not yet
determine to proclaim the liberation of that country whose freedom he
had come to restore.

And yet he had sent an ambassador to her Diet. When this inconsistency