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a settlement was Britain, with which France had become locked in a self-perpetuating duel. With her control of the seas, Britain could cripple French trade and support resistance anywhere on the European mainland, as she was currently doing in Spain. After the annihilation of his fleet at Trafalgar in 1805 Napoleon could not hope to confront the British navy in battle. He had therefore decided to ruin her economically, by closing the whole Continent to her trade.
    The idea was not new. It was one of the fundamental French beliefs that Britain’s wealth came not from herself but from her colonies, which supplied commodities she could sell on to Europe at vast profit. Every conflict between Britain and France over the past century had included a tariff war, and the revolutionary government and the Directory inherited this tradition. As there was widespread commercial jealousy of Britain, this was a popular policy. Napoleon carried on this tradition, setting ever higher tariffs and eventually banning all British trade from the Continent.
    In theory, the French policy was bound to bring about economic hardship in Britain that would undermine support for her war effort. The Whigs, currently in opposition, had sympathised with the revolution in France and opposed the waging of war against her, and many admired Napoleon himself. Although they were in a minority, their calls for peace with France might well have carried the day if British trade had really begun to suffer. But in the long run, France probably suffered more than Britain. And Napoleon’s Continental System, as he called it, was in effect unenforceable. Smuggling and corruption holed it even in French ports, while some of France’s dependent states and allies were hardly enforcing it at all.
    Worse, it imposed real hardships on the populations of subject and allied states. Nowhere more so than in the very area France most needed to control. Germany was feeling the cost very keenly, and political discontent was mounting. Although most of the sovereignswho ruled there were strongly attached to the French cause, the mood of their people might make them think twice if an alternative became possible. Such a situation might arise if French power were challenged, but there were only two powers capable of mounting such a challenge – Britain, which could not gain a serious foothold on mainland Europe, and Russia, which was an ally of France.
    But Russia was not a happy ally, and nobody realised better than Napoleon that if she were to break out and challenge his authority, Britain could never be brought to the negotiating table, and the whole of Germany would be destabilised. Russia was therefore the key, and she would have to be brought back on side before any final settlement could be achieved. What he could not appreciate was that it was already far too late for that, and that even as French society was looking forward to a golden age of peace, Russia was coming to see war with France as unavoidable, desirable even, while her ruler was entertaining dreams of his own for the regeneration of Europe.

3
The Soul of Europe
    T hat Alexander could be beginning to think of himself as a counterweight or even an alternative to Napoleon on the international stage is eloquent testimony to what a mess the Emperor of the French had made of his dealings with the other nations of Europe, and with the Germans in particular.
    France’s had long been the dominant intellectual and cultural influence on the Continent, and by the end of the eighteenth century progressives and liberals of every nation fed on the fruits of her Enlightenment. The fall of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, followed by the abolition of privilege, the declaration of the Rights of Man, the introduction of representative government and other such measures elicited wild enthusiasm among the educated classes in every corner of Europe. Even moderate liberals saw revolutionary France as the catalyst that would bring about the