To Poland, too, he promised
deliverance, and, after the unfortunate country had risen, and spent
her last strength and her best blood in the war against Russia, she
became exhausted, and offered no resistance when he claimed her as
his spoil, and declared the Poles, who had dreamed that they were
free, to be subjects of France. The princes of the Rhenish
Confederation were compelled to send their German troops to Spain,
to wage war against a nation that was struggling for independence;
and Napoleon in the meantime placed a French adventurer upon a
throne in the middle of Germany, and erected a kingdom for him from
the spoils he had taken from German princes. Holland, which had
endeavored to preserve some vestiges of liberty, was suddenly
deprived of her sovereign, and converted into a French province; and
when Napoleon had succeeded in bringing about a war between Sweden
and Russia, and instigating unfortunate Finland to resist the latter
power, he profited by the favorable moment, and took Stralsund and
the Island of Rugen, both of which belonged to the King of Sweden,
who had been his ally up to that time. In Italy only the Pontifical
states and the holy father at Rome still resisted him, after the
remainder of the peninsula had awakened from its dreams of liberty
under the rule of French marshals and Napoleonic princes.
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