By a treaty ably engineered by the sleepless Stein and signed on the 27th February 1813, Prussia finally decided to throw down the gauntlet and join Russia against Napoleon. In the following June Prussia promised to raise 80,000 men for a subsidy of £700,000 from Great Britain, Russia supplying double the number of troops for £1,400,000. Even Sweden deserted the Emperor in March by agreeing to bring 30,000 men into the field in return for a subsidy of £1,000,000 per annum from England and the cession of Guadaloupe. Austria, while still pretending to be friendly to the French cause, came to a secret understanding with Russia in January 1813 for the cessation of hostilities. Afterwards overtures for peace were made to Napoleon by a Congress held at Prague in July.[5] “Napoleon,” says Mignet, “would not consent to diminished grandeur; Europe would not consent to remain subject to him.”
When Napoleon heard of the defection of Prussia he muttered, “It is better to have a declared enemy than a doubtful ally”; as he left St Cloud at dawn on the 15th April for the headquarters of the army after having appointed the Empress regent during his absence, he said, according to Caulaincourt, “I envy the lot of the meanest peasant of my Empire. At my age he has discharged his debt to his country, and he may remain at home, enjoying the society of his wife and children; while I--I must fly to the camp and engage in the strife of war. Such is the mandate of my inexplicable Destiny.”
While the French were growing tired of the ceaseless struggle, they had nobly supported the Emperor in his appeal for soldiers to fill the gaps in the ranks caused by the campaign of 1812. No fewer than 350,000 conscripts were voted, cities gave liberally and equipped volunteer regiments, the people still seemed to be fascinated by his genius and afraid of incurring his displeasure. But the army for the first Saxon campaign was unlike the old army. There were too many youths in it, fellows brave enough no doubt but unused to the rough life of field and camp. Fortunately for the Emperor the best of his officers had survived, and although Murat called his brother-in-law a madman, they still believed in his sanity and ability. Had the King of Naples termed Napoleon imprudent there would have been more justification in his remark, for his constant warfare tended to become an obsession. “I grew up in the field,” he told Metternich, “and a man like me troubles himself little about the lives of a million of men.” This was not the Napoleon of the Italian campaign, but a gambler, a man who put his trust in material forces rather than in carefully-chosen strategic positions, and swift, decisive strokes. De Fezensac had noted Napoleon’s lack of care in the Polish campaign. “The order,” he says, “must be executed without waiting for the means.... This habit of attempting everything with the most feeble instruments, this wish to overlook impossibilities, this unbounded assurance of success, which at first helped to win us advantages, in the end became our destruction.”