They asked in private how the deficit of 1812 and the further expenses of 1813 were to be met, even if he allotted the communal domains to the service of the State.

They pointed to allies ruined or lost; to Spain, where Joseph's throne still tottered from the shock of Salamanca; to Poland, lying mangled at the feet of the Muscovites; to Italy, desolated by the loss of her bravest sons; to the Confederation of the Rhine, equally afflicted and less resigned; to Austria and Prussia, where timid sovereigns and calculating Courts alone kept the peoples true to the hated French alliance.

Only by a change of system, they averred, could the hatred of Europe be appeased, and the formation of a new and vaster Coalition avoided.

Let Napoleon cease to force his methods of commercial warfare on the Continent: let him make peace on honourable terms with Russia, where the chief Minister, Romantzoff, was ready to meet him halfway: let him withdraw his garrisons from Prussian fortresses, soothe the susceptibilities of Austria--and events would tend to a solid and honourable peace.
To all promptings of prudence Napoleon was deaf.

His instincts and his experience of the Kings prevented him yielding on any important point.
He determined to carry on the war from the Tagus to the Vistula, to bolster up Joseph in Spain, to keep his garrisons fast rooted in every fortress as far east as Danzig.