Besides, you look at things in a light by far too
partial and rose-colored. Do not confound your enthusiastic hopes
with stern reality. The 'grand army of public opinion,' to which you
refer, is an ally which cannot be depended upon--it is fickle,
turning with every wind--it is an ally prodigal of words, but not of
deeds. If my soldiers were to be clothed, and fed by public opinion,
they would likely go naked and die of hunger. If my military chests
wait for public opinion to fill them, they would remain empty.
Public opinion, by the way, has always been on my side and against
Napoleon; it has, for six years past, disapproved--nay, indignantly
condemned his course toward Prussia, and still it has permitted
Napoleon to halve my states; to take much more than he was entitled
to by the treaty of Tilsit; to leave his troops in my states, in
spite of the express stipulations of the treaties; to impose
contributions on Prussia and extort their payment. Public opinion
deplored it as a terrible calamity that I should be, as it were, a
prisoner here in the capital of my own monarchy, and at the palace
of my ancestors, and live under the cannon of Spandau, a fortress
unlawfully occupied by the French. Public opinion, I say, deplored
my fate, but it did not come to my assistance; it did not preserve
me from the humiliations which, at Dresden, I had to endure, not
only at the hands of Napoleon, but of all the German princes.
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