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In 1809, after a war with Austria, in which he received valuable

aid from the Poles, Napoleon increased the Grand Duchy of Warsaw

by lands taken from that country. Tardy and ungenerous though his

action had been, he had thus done something to justify the hopes

of the Poles that he would one day reconstitute their

Commonwealth as a whole. Hence it will be clear with what

enthusiasm Poland, and still more Lithuania, awaited the outcome

of a great war between Napoleon and Russia, such as was evidently

approaching in the year 1811. The Poles believed Napoleon to be

unconquerable, and trusted that when he had defeated Russia he

would proclaim the reunion of Lithuania with the Grand Duchy of

Warsaw; then Poland would live once more (pp. 160, 277).