The timid and incompetent Whitelocke was tried and cashiered.
Some of these disasters were unknown at the time when Bennigsen demanded an armistice; but the general ill success of the British expeditions was notorious, and produced without doubt a very serious impression on the mind of Alexander.
The armistice was ratified on the 23rd of June, and on the 25th the Emperors of France and Russia met personally, each accompanied by a few attendants, on a raft moored on the river Niemen, near the town of Tilsit.

The sovereigns embraced each other, and retiring under a canopy had a long conversation, to which no one was a witness.

At its termination the appearances of mutual goodwill and confidence were marked: immediately afterwards the town of Tilsit was neutralised, and the two Emperors established their courts there, and lived together, in the midst of the lately hostile armies, more like old friends who had met on a party of pleasure, than enemies and rivals attempting by diplomatic means the arrangement of differences which had for years been deluging Europe with blood.

Whatever flatteries could be suggested by the consummate genius and mature experience of Napoleon, were lavished, and produced their natural effects, on the mind of a young autocrat, of great ambition, and as great vanity.

The intercourse of the Emperors assumed by degrees the appearance of a brotherlike intimacy.