It is glaring in 1808, after the deposition of the Spanish Bourbons; it becomes scandalous and monstrous in 1812, when the war with Russia took place.

Napoleon himself admits that this war is against the interests of France and yet he undertakes it.[12133] Later, at St.
Helena, he falls into a melting mood over "the French people whom he loved so dearly."[12134] The truth is, he loves it as a rider loves his horse; as he makes it rear and prance and show off its paces, when he flatters and caresses it; it is not for the advantage of the animal but for his own purposes, on account of its usefulness to him; to be spurred on until exhausted, to jump ditches growing wider and wider, and leap fences growing higher and higher; one ditch more, and still another fence, the last obstacle which seems to be the last, succeeded by others, while, in any event, the horse remains forcibly and for ever, what it already is, namely, a beast of burden and broken down .-- For, on this Russian expedition, instead of frightful disasters, let us imagine a brilliant success, a victory at Smolensk equal to that of Friedland, a treaty of Moscow more advantageous than that of Tilsit, and the Czar brought to heel.

As a result the Czar is probably strangled or dethroned, a patriotic insurrection will take place in Russia as in Spain, two lasting wars, at the two extremities of the Continent, against religious fanaticism, more irreconcilable than positive interests, and against a scattered barbarism more indomitable than a concentrated civilization.

At best, a European empire secretly mined by European resistance; an exterior France forcibly superposed on the enslaved Continent;[12135] French residents and commanders at St.Petersburg and Riga as at Dantzic, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Barcelona, and Trieste.

Every able-bodied Frenchman that can be employed from Cadiz to Moscow in maintaining and administering the conquest.