It was easy to see
that the Poles in Volhynia were not at all afraid of the entrance of
the French; but although their opinions were known, they were not in
the least subjected to that petty persecution which only excites
hatred without restraining it. The spectacle, however, of one nation
subjected by another, is always a painful one;--centuries must
elapse before the union is sufficiently established to make the
names of victor and vanquished be forgotten.
At Gitomir, the chief town of Volhynia, I was told that the Russian
minister of police had been sent to Wilna, to learn the motive of
the emperor Napoleon's aggression, and to make a formal protest
against his entry into the Russian territory. One can hardly credit
the numberless sacrifices made by the emperor Alexander, in order to
preserve peace. And in fact, far from Napoleon having it in his
power to accuse the emperor Alexander of violating the treaty of
Tilsit, the latter might have been reproached with a too scrupulous
fidelity to that fatal treaty; and it was rather he who had the
right of declaring war against Napoleon, as having first violated
it. The emperor of France in his conversation with M. Balasheff, the
minister of police, gave himself up to those inconceivable
indiscretions which might be taken for abandon, if we did not know
that it suits him to increase the terror which he inspires by
exhibiting himself as superior to all kinds of calculation.
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