On February the 3rd he wrote to Maret, complaining that 2,000 Prussian horsemen were shutting themselves up in Silesian towns, "as if they were afraid of us, instead of helping us and covering their country." Once away from Berlin, Frederick William found himself launched on a resistless stream of national enthusiasm.

At heart he was no less a patriot than the most ardent of the university students; but he knew far better than they the awful risks of war with the French Empire.
His little kingdom of 4,700,000 souls, with but half-a-dozen strongholds it could call its own, a realm ravaged by Napoleon's troops alike in war and peace until commerce and credit were but a dim memory--such a land could ill afford to defy an empire ten times as populous and more than ten times as powerful.

True, the Russians were pouring in under the guise of friendship; but the bitter memories of Tilsit forbade any implicit trust in Alexander.

And, if the dross had been burnt out of his nature by a year of fiery trial, could his army, exhausted by that frightful winter campaign and decimated by the diseases which Napoleon's ghastly array scattered broadcast in its flight, ever hope, even with the help of Prussia's young levies, to cope with the united forces of Napoleon and Austria?
For at present it seemed that the Court of Vienna would hold fast to the French alliance.

There Metternich was all-powerful, and the keystone of his system was a guarded but profit-seeking subservience to Napoleon.