East-West love affairs often hide western expansionist intentions
It was over 200 years ago that a French Emperor led his Grand Army across the Neman, a river now located in Belarus, its significance was as epoch-defining as Caesar crossing the Rubicon. The young Russian Tzar Alexander I was attending social engagements in Saint Petersburg at the time the French emperor led his army eastward. Tzar Alexander I was attending a celebration where young Russian aristocrats were dancing wearing the latest French fashions to the strains of the latest European music written by German and Italian composers. Russia admired all things European. Napoleon I and Alexander I, a short-lived romance Confident that Napoleon I would not invade his country over a simple matter of trade and that the Treaty of Tilsit he signed with the French Emperor on a raft on the very same Neman river would hold, Tzar Alexander I wasn't worried, but he should have been. Often conflicting interests are what turn friendly countries into adversaries. Na...