Napoleon endeavoured to concentrate the power of the German princes as a whole by the formation of the Confederation of the Rhine, of which he was officially recognised as Protector. The original Confederation of the Rhine established in July 1805, consisted of only fifteen princes, but after Tilsit it comprised thirty-two. The Arch-Chancellor of the new confederation was Charles de Dalberg, the Grand Duke of Frankfort, the only ecclesiastic who was acknowledged as a member. It comprised in all the four kingdoms of Bavaria, Würtemberg, Westphalia, and Saxony, the five grand duchies and twenty-three principalities. Its policy was conducted by a Diet sitting at Frankfort composed of two colleges,—the College of Kings and the College of Princes. The Confederation of the Rhine, which was mainly situated between the Rhine and the Elbe, contained a population of twenty million Germans, and was bound by treaty to contribute a hundred and fifty thousand soldiers to the armies of Napoleon.

In no respect did Napoleon prove how thoroughly his idea of re-establishing the ancient Empires of the East and the West had taken possession of his imagination than in his treatment of Poland. In order to please the Emperor Alexander he did not insist upon re-establishing Polish independence. Not only did he neither dare nor wish to deprive Russia of her Polish provinces, but at Tilsit he even ceded to Alexander the two Polish circles of Salkief and Tloczow. But though he dared not establish a powerful independent Poland for fear of offending Russia, he nevertheless formed, in 1807, a small Polish state under the name of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. By this half measure he failed to satisfy the Poles, who had looked to him to be the restorer of Polish independence, and at the same time offended the Emperor Alexander, who disliked the creation of a Polish state of any size or under any form. The Grand Duchy of Warsaw eventually contained the whole of Prussian and the greater part of Austrian Poland, and was placed under the rule of the King of Saxony as Grand Duke of Warsaw, just as in former days the Electors of Saxony had been Kings of Poland. In this half-and-half policy with regard to Poland was to be found the greatest peril to the newly-formed alliance between Alexander and Napoleon.

For more than a year the alliance between Russia and France, between Alexander and Napoleon, remained the most important fact of European polity; but causes of dissension soon arose. On the one hand, Alexander resented the existence of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and felt that his subjects had cause to grumble at the sufferings they endured owing to the Continental Blockade; on the other, there were not wanting signs that Napoleon’s power had reached its height, and was now about to decline. The first symptoms of this decline were his quarrel with the Pope and his intervention in the affairs of Spain. The first blows struck at his military superiority were the defeat of the French troops in Portugal by Sir Arthur Wellesley at Vimeiro and the capitulation of General Dupont to the Spaniards. The Treaty of Tilsit marked the true zenith of Napoleon’s power; but in spite of the misfortunes he suffered in 1808, and his wanton intervention in the affairs of Spain, he still seemed the greatest monarch in Europe. Feeling his prestige somewhat affected, and fearing the effect upon the mind of his imaginative ally, Napoleon, trusting in the magnetism of his presence and his conversation, had recourse to a personal interview with Alexander at Erfurt in September 1808. There the two masters of Europe discussed the state of affairs; Napoleon soothed Alexander’s discontent, and again promised him the Danubian provinces. But the full confidence which had been established at Tilsit was not restored at Erfurt. Alexander, in spite of his admiration for the person of Napoleon, felt distrustful of his policy, and Napoleon deceived himself when he thought he had regained his ascendency over the mind of the Russian Emperor. The interviews between the two Emperors formed the important political side of the Congress of Erfurt; but the features which dazzled Europe were the grand fêtes, the pit full of kings which listened to Talma, the great French actor, and the obsequiousness of the high-born German princes to one who, a few years before but a general of the French Republic, was now master of Europe.