Still, there was to be a Prussia. Between the two great empires was to lie, in realization of a long-cherished plan, a girdle of neutral states like the "marches" established by Charles the Great. In this line Silesia was the only break. Prussia and Austria, one on each side of this mark, shorn of their strength and prestige, might await their destiny. France was to mediate for peace between Russia and Turkey, Russia between England and France. In case Great Britain should not prove tractable,--that is, admit the sanctity of all flags on the high seas, and restore all the colonies of France and her allies captured since 1805,--then Russia, in common with France, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, and Austria, would declare commercial war on England, and complete the continental embargo on British trade. Should Turkey refuse favorable terms, the two empires would divide between them all her European lands except Rumelia and the district of Constantinople. Alexander afterward declared that Napoleon gave a verbal promise that Russia should have a substantial increment on the Danube. The rumor was that Bessarabia, Moldavia, Wallachia, and Bulgaria were indicated to the Czar as his share.
No mention was made of Austria, which the treaty of Presburg had sufficiently dismembered. But Prussia? In order to complete the great "march" between east and west, Silesia was essential. At first Napoleon thought of combining it with Prussian Poland to form a kingdom. This would not restore the real Poland, but it would create a Poland, and give him a Polish army. It was already decided that the Elbe should form Frederick William's western frontier; to weaken his strength still further would destroy all balance between Prussia and Austria. Moreover, Alexander made a tender appeal, and adroitly suggested a distasteful counter-proposition. Accordingly it was settled that the great province should remain Prussian. This was a large concession to the Czar.
To make some pretense of fulfilling the lavish but indefinite promises made to the Poles, the lands of Warsaw and the province of Posen, with a considerable tract not now contained in it, were erected into the grand duchy of Warsaw. Under the influence of historical reminiscence this was given, not as a province but as a separate sovereignty to the Elector of Saxony, who was simultaneously made king and a member of the Rhine Confederation. The Czar, in return for his cessions to the grand duchy of Warsaw, received the Prussian district of Bielostok. As a compensation for the Bocche di Cattaro and the Ionian Islands, Dantzic was restored to its position of a free city. The Prussian lands of the Elbe, together with Hesse-Cassel and many minor domains, were erected into the kingdom of Westphalia for the Emperor's brother Jerome. We have almost forgotten in our day how, less than a century ago, Germany was divided into insignificant fragments. It is instructive to recall that the formation of this new kingdom beneficently ended the separate existence of no fewer than twenty-four more or less autonomous powers--electorates, duchies, counties, bishoprics, and cities. It contained the all-important fortress of Magdeburg, the possession of whose frowning walls carried with it the command of the Elbe, and virtually made Prussia a conquered and tributary state.