reluctantly came to the conclusion in 1811-1812 that he had to remove the military opposition of what he called "the colossus of the barbarians of the North" (Schom 594). After defeating the armies of the rulers of central Europe, Austria and Prussia, at the battles of
Austerlitz (1805) and Jena (1806), respectively, and the Prussians again and the Russia of Tsar Alexander I at the battles of Eylau/Friedland (1806/1807), Napoleon negotiated what he hoped was a stable settlement with the Tsar under the Treaty of Tilsit of 1807. However, by the end of 1808 the Tsar "was more convinced than ever that Napoleon had to be stopped" (Schom 479).
The Tsar became disenchanted with French attempts to prop up a Polish puppet state on Russia's borders. Russia agreed to join Napoleon's trade embargo or Continental System against English goods, but was unhappy over its disruptive effects on Russian commerce. Napoleon had mesmerized the young Tsar at their meetings at Tilsit; however, he took an impudent stance toward Alexander at their meetings at Erfurt in 1808 which Schom says "proved to be a grave error, with lasting consequences" (475). After 1808, according to Dupuy and Dupuy, "Franco-Russian relations . . . frayed steadily" (752). In December 1810 the Tsar issued a decree allowing English ships to call at Russian and Baltic ports. He raised Russian taxes on French luxury imports. Russia made peace in 1811 with the Ottoman Turks and strengthened its fortifications along the Polish frontier.
Meanwhile Napoleon pursued peaceful alternatives through diplomacy. By the spring of 1812, he had decided on war. When his former Ambassador to Russia, Armand de Calaincourt, attempted to dissuade him from undertaking yet another distant campaign and warned the French Emperor of the risks of invading a country as vast as Russia, he was rudely dismissed. When the Tsar asked him to withdraw the first French bridgeheads across the Niemen in June 181...