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242 of Eylau, and Friedland, Napoleon I had concluded with Alexander I the Peace of Tilsit. The treaty was fatal to Europe, for it divided the Continent practically between the Russian and French Empires. But it was highly advantageous to Russia and enormously added to Russian power and Russian prestige.

It was certainly in Russia's interest to maintain the alliance. It was broken largely through one of those small dynastic incidents which are of such vast importance under an absolute despotism. One of Napoleon's main objects was to establish a Napoleonic dynasty and to be adopted by marriage into one of the ruling families of Europe. The Corsican parvenu passionately desired a matrimonial alliance with the House of Romanov, and repeatedly applied for the hand of one of Alexander's sisters. The dowager Tsarina, Alexander's mother, a daughter of the King of Württemberg, as persistently refused. She had all the pride of birth of a German Princess and all the hatred of a reactionary against the armed soldier of the Revolution. Foiled at the Court of Petersburg, Napoleon was more successful at the Court of Vienna. A few months after Napoleon's last overtures had been rejected by