That is a good question. In hindsight a person could say, they offered Napoleon the traditional borders of France and peace - why was Napoleon so ambitious? What a bad stupid guy!
For years Napoleon’s enemies had played every game to buy time and trick him up to and including offering him an Austrian Archduchess for a mother to the son he so wanted.
By the time of the Frankfurt proposals Napoleon believed that his enemies only operated in bad faith and that these proposals were merely plots to buy time. During the 100 days, Napoleon stated that the old borders were fine he just wanted peace. The perception is that it was too late by then.
The story of Napoleon really is fascinating because he is in one impossible situation after another. We find out exactly the characters of his enemies and we find out who he was.
Napoleon’s view since the rupture of the Peace of Amiens was that his enemies were operating out of bad faith and there is nothing but tricks and lies with that sort. The story absolutely validates that. What I’ve learned is that there really is no winning against the duplicitous. It really was their chessboard and everything was rigged through a very corrupt system.
The story is fascinating because Napoleon tried to institute sovereignty in France and a meritocracy and a lot of masks got dropped because the autocrats were just not going to let that happen.
Since Napoleon the “masters of Europe” have had to switch up their game a great deal. I think they are even more duplicitous now in the shadows hiding behind political theater and unending media distractions.
Basically I think if Napoleon had accepted the Frankfurt proposals, there would’ve been war about the next thing invented quickly thereafter and the result would be little different than what happened.
The basis of my opinion can be found at the memoirs below:
https://www.thetanster.com/blog/2019/2/11/napoleon-memoirs-links
