CHAPTER VII.

Death of Pitt--Ministry of Fox and Grenville--Napoleon forces Prussia into

War with England, and then offers Hanover to England--Prussia resolves on

War with Napoleon--State of Prussia--Decline of the Army--Southern Germany

with Napoleon--Austria Neutral--England and Russia about to help Prussia,

but not immediately--Campaign of 1806--Battles of Jena and Auerstädt--Ruin

of the Prussian Army--Capitulation of Fortresses--Demands of Napoleon--The

War continues--Berlin Decree--Exclusion of English Goods from the

Continent--Russia enters the War--Campaign in Poland and East

Prussia--Eylau--Treaty of Bartenstein--Friedland--Interview at

Tilsit--Alliance of Napoleon and Alexander--Secret Articles--English

Expedition to Denmark--The French enter Portugal--Prussia after the Peace

of Tilsit--Stein's Edict of Emancipation--The Prussian Peasant--Reform of

the Prussian Army, and Creation of Municipalities--Stein's other Projects

of Reform, which are not carried out.

[Death of Pitt, Jan. 23rd, 1806.]

[Coalition Ministry of Fox and Grenville.]

Six weeks after the tidings of Austerlitz reached Great Britain, the

statesman who had been the soul of every European coalition against France

was carried to the grave. [124] Pitt passed away at a moment of the deepest

gloom. His victories at sea appeared to have effected nothing; his

combinations on land had ended in disaster and ruin. If during Pitt's

lifetime a just sense of the greatness and patriotism of all his aims

condoned the innumerable faults of his military administration, that

personal ascendancy which might have disarmed criticism even after the

disaster of Austerlitz belonged to no other member of his Ministry. His

colleagues felt their position to be hopeless. Though the King attempted to

set one of Pitt's subordinates in the vacant place, the prospects of Europe

were too dark, the situation of the country too serious, to allow a

Ministry to be formed upon the ordinary principles of party-organisation or

in accordance with the personal preferences of the monarch. The nation

called for the union of the ablest men of all parties in the work of

government; and, in spite of the life-long hatred of King George to Mr.

Fox, a Ministry entered upon office framed by Fox and Grenville conjointly;

Fox taking the post of Foreign Secretary, with a leading influence in the

Cabinet, and yielding to Grenville the title of Premier. Addington received

a place in the Ministry, and carried with him the support of a section of

the Tory party, which was willing to countenance a policy of peace.

[Napoleon hopes to intimidate Fox through Prussia.]

Fox had from the first given his whole sympathy to the French Revolution,

as the cause of freedom. He had ascribed the calamities of Europe to the

intervention of foreign Powers in favour of the Bourbon monarchy: he had

palliated the aggressions of the French Republic as the consequences of

unjust and unprovoked attack: even the extinction of liberty in France

itself had not wholly destroyed his faith in the honour and the generosity

of the soldier of the Revolution. In the brief interval of peace which in

1802 opened the Continent to English travellers, Fox had been the guest of

the First Consul. His personal feeling towards the French Government had in

it nothing of that proud and suspicious hatred which made negotiation so

difficult while Pitt continued in power. It was believed at Paris, and with

good reason, that the first object of Fox on entering upon office would be

the restoration of peace. Napoleon adopted his own plan in view of the

change likely to arise in the spirit of the British Cabinet. It was his

habit, wherever he saw signs of concession, to apply more violent means of

intimidation. In the present instance he determined to work upon the

pacific leanings of Fox by adding Prussia to the forces arrayed against

Great Britain. Prussia, isolated and discredited since the battle of

Austerlitz, might first be driven into hostilities with England, and then

be made to furnish the very satisfaction demanded by England as the primary

condition of peace.

[The King of Prussia wishes to disguise the cession of Hanover.]

[Napoleon forces Prussia into war with England, March, 1806.]

At the moment when Napoleon heard of Pitt's death, he was expecting the

arrival of Count Haugwitz at Paris for the purpose of obtaining some

modification in the treaty which he had signed on behalf of Prussia after

the battle of Austerlitz. The principal feature in that treaty had been the

grant of Hanover to Prussia by the French Emperor in return for its

alliance. This was the point which above all others excited King Frederick

William's fears and scruples. He desired to retain Hanover, but he also

desired to derive his title rather from its English owner than from its

French invader. It was the object of Haugwitz' visit to Paris to obtain an

alteration in the terms of the treaty which should make the Prussian

occupation of Hanover appear to be merely provisional, and reserve to the

King of England at least a nominal voice in its ultimate transfer. In full

confidence that Napoleon would agree to such a change, the King of Prussia

had concealed the fact of its cession to himself by Napoleon, and published

an untruthful proclamation, stating that, in the interests of the

Hanoverian people themselves, a treaty had been signed and ratified by the

French and Prussian Governments, in virtue of which Hanover was placed

under the protection of the King of Prussia until peace should be concluded

between Great Britain and France. The British Government received

assurances of Prussia's respect for the rights of King George III.: the

bitter truth that the treaty between France and Prussia contained no single

word reserving the rights of the Elector, and that the very idea of

qualifying the absolute cession of Hanover was an afterthought, lay hidden

in the conscience of the Prussian Cabinet. Never had a Government more

completely placed itself at the mercy of a pitiless enemy. Count Haugwitz,

on reaching Paris, was received by Napoleon with a storm of invective

against the supposed partisans of England at the Prussian Court. Napoleon

declared that the ill faith of Prussia had made an end even of that

miserable pact which had been extorted after Austerlitz, and insisted that

King Frederick William should openly defy Great Britain by closing the

ports of Northern Germany to British vessels, and by declaring himself

endowed by Napoleon with Hanover in virtue of Napoleon's own right of

conquest. Haugwitz signed a second and more humiliating treaty embodying

these conditions; and the Prussian Government, now brought into the depths

of contempt, but unready for immediate war, executed the orders of its

master. [125] A proclamation, stating that Prussia had received the

absolute dominion of Hanover from its conqueror Napoleon, gave the lie to

the earlier announcements of King Frederick William. A decree was published

excluding the ships of England from the ports of Prussia and from those of

Hanover itself (March 28, 1806). It was promptly answered by the seizure of

four hundred Prussian vessels in British harbours, and by the total

extinction of Prussian maritime commerce by British privateers. [126]

[Napoleon negotiates with Fox. Offers Hanover to England.]

Scarcely was Prussia committed to this ruinous conflict with Great Britain,

when Napoleon opened negotiations for peace with Mr. Fox's Government. The

first condition required by Great Britain was the restitution of Hanover to

King George III. It was unhesitatingly granted by Napoleon. [127] Thus was

Prussia to be mocked of its prey, after it had been robbed of all its

honour. For the present, however, no rumour of this part of the negotiation

reached Berlin. The negotiation itself, which dragged on through several

months, turned chiefly upon the future ownership of Sicily. Napoleon had in

the first instance agreed that Sicily should be left in the hands of

Ferdinand of Naples, who had never been expelled from it by the French.

Finding, however, that the Russian envoy d'Oubril, who had been sent to

Paris with indefinite instructions by the Emperor Alexander, was willing to

separate the cause of Russia from that of England, and to sign a separate

peace, Napoleon retracted his promise relating to Sicily, and demanded that

this island should be ceded to his brother Joseph. D'Oubril signed

Preliminaries on behalf of Russia on the 20th of July, and left the English

negotiator to obtain what terms he could. Fox had been willing to recognise

the order of things established by Napoleon on the Italian mainland; he

would even have ceded Sicily, if Russia had urged this in a joint

negotiation; but he was too good a statesman to be cheated out of Sicily by

a mere trick. He recalled the English envoy from Paris, and waited for the

judgment of the Czar upon the conduct of his own representative. The Czar

disavowed d'Oubril's negotiations, and repudiated the treaty which he

brought back to St. Petersburg. Napoleon had thus completely overreached

himself, and, instead of severing Great Britain and Russia by separate

agreements, had only irritated and displeased them both. The negotiations

went no further; their importance lay only in the effect which they

produced upon Prussia, when Napoleon's offer of Hanover to Great Britain

became known at Berlin.

[Prussia learns of Napoleon's offer of Hanover to England, Aug. 7.]

[Prussia determines on war.]

From the time when Haugwitz' second treaty placed his master at Napoleon's

feet, Prussia had been subjected to an unbroken series of insults and

wrongs. Murat, as Duke of Berg, had seized upon territory allotted to

Prussia in the distribution of the ecclesiastical lands; the establishment

of a North German Confederacy under Prussian leadership was suggested by

Napoleon himself, only to be summarily forbidden as soon as Prussia

attempted to carry the proposal into execution. There was scarcely a

courtier in Berlin who did not feel that the yoke of the French had become

past endurance; even Haugwitz himself now considered war as a question of

time. The patriotic party in the capital and the younger officers of the

army bitterly denounced the dishonoured Government, and urged the King to

strike for the credit of his country. [128] In the midst of this deepening

agitation, a despatch arrived from Lucchesini, the Prussian Ambassador at

Paris (August 7), relating the offer of Hanover made by Napoleon to the

British Government. For nearly three months Lucchesini had caught no

glimpse of the negotiations between Great Britain and France; suddenly, on

entering into conversation with the English envoy at a dinner-party, he

learnt the blow which Napoleon had intended to deal to Prussia. Lucchesini

instantly communicated with the Court of Berlin; but his despatch was

opened by Talleyrand's agents before it left Paris, and the French

Government was thus placed on its guard against the sudden explosion of

Prussian wrath. Lucchesini's despatch had indeed all the importance that

Talleyrand attributed to it. It brought that spasmodic access of resolution

to the irresolute King which Bernadotte's violation of his territory had

brought in the year before. The whole Prussian army was ordered to prepare

for war; Brunswick was summoned to form plans of a campaign; and appeals

for help were sent to Vienna, to St. Petersburg, and even to the hostile

Court of London.

[Condition of Prussia.]

[Ministers not in the King's Cabinet.]

The condition of Prussia at this critical moment was one which filled with

the deepest alarm those few patriotic statesmen who were not blinded by

national vanity or by slavery to routine. The foreign policy of Prussia in

1805, miserable as it was, had been but a single manifestation of the

helplessness, the moral deadness that ran through every part of its

official and public life. Early in the year 1806 a paper was drawn up by

Stein, [129] exposing, in language seldom used by a statesman, the

character of the men by whom Frederick William was surrounded, and

declaring that nothing but a speedy change of system could save the

Prussian State from utter downfall and ruin. Two measures of immediate

necessity were specified by Stein, the establishment of a responsible

council of Ministers, and the removal of Haugwitz and all his friends from

power. In the existing system of government the Ministers were not the

monarch's confidential advisers. The Ministers performed their work in

isolation from one another; the Cabinet, or confidential council of the

King, was composed of persons holding no public function, and free from all

public responsibility. No guarantee existed that the policy of the country

would be the same for two days together. The Ministers were often unaware

of the turn that affairs had taken in the Cabinet; and the history of

Haugwitz' mission to Austerlitz showed that an individual might commit the

State to engagements the very opposite of those which he was sent to

contract. The first necessity for Prussia was a responsible governing

council: with such a council, formed from the heads of the actual

Administration, the reform of the army and of the other branches of the

public service, which was absolutely hopeless under the present system,

might be attended with some chance of success.

[State of the Prussian Army.]

[Higher officers.]

The army of Prussia, at an epoch when the conscription and the genius of

Napoleon had revolutionised the art of war, was nothing but the army of

Frederick the Great grown twenty years older. [130] It was obvious to all

the world that its commissariat and marching-regulations belonged to a time

when weeks were allowed for movements now reckoned by days; but there were

circumstances less conspicuous from the outside which had paralysed the

very spirit of soldiership, and prepared the way for a military collapse in

which defeats in the field were the least dishonourable event. Old age had

rendered the majority of the higher officers totally unfit for military

service. In that barrack-like routine of officialism which passed in

Prussia for the wisdom of government, the upper ranks of the army formed a

species of administrative corps in time of peace, and received for their

civil employment double the pay that they could earn in actual war. Aged

men, with the rank of majors, colonels, and generals, mouldered in the

offices of country towns, and murmured at the very mention of a war, which

would deprive them of half their salaries. Except in the case of certain

princes, who were placed in high rank while young, and of a few vigorous

patriarchs like Blücher, all the energy and military spirit of the army was

to be found in men who had not passed the grade of captain. The higher

officers were, on an average, nearly double the age of French officers of

corresponding rank. [131] Of the twenty-four lieutenant-generals, eighteen

were over sixty; the younger ones, with a single exception, were princes.

Five out of the seven commanders of infantry were over seventy; even the

sixteen cavalry generals included only two who had not reached sixty-five.

These were the men who, when the armies of Prussia were beaten in the

field, surrendered its fortresses with as little concern as if they had

been receiving the French on a visit of ceremony. Their vanity was as

lamentable as their faint-heartedness. "The army of his Majesty," said

General Rüchel on parade, "possesses several generals equal to Bonaparte."

Faults of another character belonged to the generation which had grown up

since Frederick. The arrogance and licentiousness of the younger officers

was such that their ruin on the field of Jena caused positive joy to a

great part of the middle classes of Prussia. But, however hateful their

manners, and however rash their self-confidence, the vices of these younger

men had no direct connection with the disasters of 1806. The gallants who

sharpened their swords on the window-sill of the French Ambassador received

a bitter lesson from the plebeian troopers of Murat; but they showed

courage in disaster, and subsequently gave to their country many officers

of ability and honour.

[Common soldiers.]

What was bad in the higher grades of the army was not retrieved by any

excellence on the part of the private soldier. The Prussian army was

recruited in part from foreigners, but chiefly from Prussian serfs, who

were compelled to serve. Men remained with their regiments till old age;

the rough character of the soldiers and the frequency of crimes and

desertions occasioned the use of brutal punishments, which made the

military service an object of horror to the better part of the middle and

lower classes. The soldiers themselves, who could be flogged and drilled

into high military perfection by a great general like Frederick, felt a

surly indifference to their present taskmasters, and were ready to desert

in masses to their homes as soon as a defeat broke up the regimental muster

and roll-call. A proposal made in the previous year to introduce that

system of general service which has since made Prussia so great a military

power was rejected by a committee of generals, on the ground that it "would

convert the most formidable army of Europe into a militia." But whether

Prussia entered the war with a militia or a regular army, under the men who

held command in 1806 it could have met with but one fate. Neither soldiery

nor fortresses could have saved a kingdom whose generals knew only how to

capitulate.

[Southern Germany. Execution of Palm, Aug. 26.]

All southern Germany was still in Napoleon's hands. As the probability of a

war with Prussia became greater and greater, Napoleon had tightened his

grasp upon the Confederate States. Publications originating among the

patriotic circles of Austria were beginning to appeal to the German people

to unite against a foreign oppressor. An anonymous pamphlet, entitled

"Germany in its Deep Humiliation," was sold by various booksellers in

Bavaria, among others by Palm, a citizen of Nuremberg. There is no evidence

that Palm was even acquainted with the contents of the pamphlet; but as in

the case of the Duke of Enghien, two years before, Napoleon had required a

victim to terrify the House of Bourbon, so now he required a victim to

terrify those who among the German people might be inclined to listen to

the call of patriotism. Palm was not too obscure for the new Charlemagne.

The innocent and unoffending man, innocent even of the honourable crime of

attempting to save his country, was dragged before a tribunal of French

soldiers, and executed within twenty-four hours, in pursuance of the

imperative orders of Napoleon (August 26). The murder was an unnecessary

one, for the Bavarians and the Würtembergers were in fact content with the

yoke they bore; its only effect was to arouse among a patient and

home-loving class the doubt whether the German citizen and his family might

not after all have some interest in the preservation of national

independence.

[Austria neutral. England and Russia can give Prussia no prompt help.]

When, several years later, the oppressions of Napoleon had given to a great

part of the German race at least the transient nobleness of a real

patriotism, the story of Palm's death was one of those that kindled the

bitterest sense of wrong: at the time, it exercised no influence upon the

course of political events. Southern Germany remained passive, and supplied

Napoleon with a reserve of soldiers: Prussia had to look elsewhere for

allies. Its prospects of receiving support were good, if the war should

prove a protracted one, but not otherwise. Austria, crippled by the

disasters of 1805, could only hope to renew the struggle if victory should

declare against Napoleon. In other quarters help might be promised, but it

could not be given at the time and at the place where it was needed. The

Czar proffered the whole forces of his Empire; King George III. forgave the

despoilers of his patrimony when he found that they really intended to

fight the French; but the troops of Alexander lay far in the East, and the

action of England in any Continental war was certain to be dilatory and

ineffective. Prussia was exposed to the first shock of the war alone. In

the existing situation of the French armies, a blow unusually swift and

crushing might well be expected by all who understood Napoleon's warfare.

[Situation of the French and Prussian armies, Sept., 1806.]

[French on the Main.]

[Prussians on the Saale.]

A hundred and seventy thousand French soldiers, with contingents from the

Rhenish Confederate States, lay between the Main and the Inn. The last

weeks of peace, in which the Prussian Government imagined themselves to be

deceiving the enemy while they pushed forward their own preparations, were

employed by Napoleon in quietly concentrating this vast force upon the Main

(September, 1806). Napoleon himself appeared to be absorbed in friendly

negotiations with General Knobelsdorff, the new Prussian Ambassador at

Paris. In order to lull Napoleon's suspicions, Haugwitz had recalled

Lucchesini from Paris, and intentionally deceived his successor as to the

real designs of the Prussian Cabinet. Knobelsdorff confidentially informed

the Emperor that Prussia was not serious in its preparations for war.

Napoleon, caring very little whether Prussia intended to fight or not,

continued at Paris in the appearance of the greatest calm, while his

lieutenants in Southern Germany executed those unobserved movements which

were to collect the entire army upon the Upper Main. In the meantime the

advisers of King Frederick William supposed themselves to have made

everything ready for a vigorous offensive. Divisions of the Prussian army,

numbering nearly 130,000 men, were concentrated in the neighbourhood of

Jena, on the Saale. The bolder spirits in the military council pressed for

an immediate advance through the Thuringian Forest, and for an attack upon

what were supposed to be the scattered detachments of the French in

Bavaria. Military pride and all the traditions of the Great Frederick

impelled Prussia to take the offensive rather than to wait for the enemy

upon the strong line of the Elbe. Political motives pointed in the same

direction, for the support of Saxony was doubtful if once the French were

permitted to approach Dresden.

[Confusion of the Prussians.]

On the 23rd of September King Frederick William arrived at the

head-quarters of the army, which were now at Naumburg, on the Saale. But

his presence brought no controlling mind to the direction of affairs.

Councils of war held on the two succeeding days only revealed the discord

and the irresolution of the military leaders of Prussia. Brunswick, the

commander-in-chief, sketched the boldest plans, and shrank from the

responsibility of executing them. Hohenlohe, who commanded the left wing,

lost no opportunity of opposing his superior; the suggestions of officers

of real ability, like Scharnhorst, chief of the staff, fell unnoticed among

the wrangling of pedants and partisans. Brunswick, himself a man of great

intelligence though of little resolution, saw the true quality of the men

who surrounded him. "Rüchel," he cried, "is a tin trumpet, Möllendorf a

dotard, Kalkreuth a cunning trickster. The generals of division are a set

of stupid journeymen. Are these the people with whom one can make war on

Napoleon? No. The best service that I could render to the King would be to

persuade him to keep the peace." [132] It was ultimately decided, after two

days of argument, that the army should advance through the Thuringian

Forest, while feints on the right and left deceived the French as to its

real direction. The diplomatists, however, who were mad enough to think

that an ultimatum which they had just despatched to Paris would bring

Napoleon on to his knees, insisted that the opening of hostilities should

be deferred till the 8th of October, when the term of grace which they had

given to Napoleon would expire.

[Prussians at Erfurt, Oct. 4.]

A few days after this decision had been formed, intelligence arrived at

head-quarters that Napoleon himself was upon the Rhine. Before the

ultimatum reached the hands of General Knobelsdorff in Paris, Napoleon had

quitted the capital, and the astonished Ambassador could only send the

ultimatum in pursuit of him after he had gone to place himself at the head

of 200,000 men. The news that Napoleon was actually in Mainz confounded the

diplomatists in the Prussian camp, and produced an order for an immediate

advance. This was the wisest as well as the boldest determination that had

yet been formed; and an instant assault upon the French divisions on the

Main might perhaps even now have given the Prussian army the superiority in

the first encounter. But some fatal excuse was always at hand to justify

Brunswick in receding from his resolutions. A positive assurance was

brought into camp by Lucchesini that Napoleon had laid his plans for

remaining on the defensive on the south of the Thuringian Forest. If this

were true, there might yet be time to improve the plan of the campaign; and

on the 4th of October, when every hour was of priceless value, the forward

march was arrested, and a new series of deliberations began at the

head-quarters at Erfurt. In the council held on the 4th of October, a total

change in the plan of operations was urged by Hohenlohe's staff. They

contended, and rightly, that it was the design of Napoleon to pass the

Prussian army on the east by the valley of the Saale, and to cut it off

from the roads to the Elbe. The delay in Brunswick's movements had in fact

brought the French within striking distance of the Prussian communications.

Hohenlohe urged the King to draw back the army from Erfurt to the Saale, or

even to the east of it, in order to cover the roads to Leipzig and the

Elbe. His theory of Napoleon's movements, which was the correct one, was

adopted by the council, and the advance into the Thuringian Forest was

abandoned; but instead of immediately marching eastwards with the whole

army, the generals wasted two more days in hesitations and half-measures.

At length it was agreed that Hohenlohe should take post at Jena, and that

the mass of the army should fall back to Weimar, with the object of

striking a blow at some undetermined point on the line of Napoleon's

advance.

[Encounter at Saalfeld, Oct. 10.]

[Napoleon defeats Hohenlohe at Jena, Oct. 14.]

[Davoust defeats Brunswick at Auerstädt, Oct. 14.]

[Ruin of the Prussian Army.]

Napoleon, who had just received the Prussian ultimatum with unbounded

ridicule and contempt, was now moving along the roads that lead from

Bamberg and Baireuth to the Upper Saale. On the 10th of October, as the

division of Lannes was approaching Saalfeld, it was attacked by Prince

Louis Ferdinand at the head of Hohenlohe's advanced guard. The attack was

made against Hohenlohe's orders. It resulted in the total rout of the

Prussian force. Though the numbers engaged were small, the loss of

magazines and artillery, and the death of Prince Louis Ferdinand, the hero

of the war-party, gave to this first repulse the moral effect of a great

military disaster. Hohenlohe's troops at Jena were seized with panic;

numbers of men threw away their arms and dispersed; the drivers of

artillery-waggons and provision-carts cut the traces and rode off with

their horses. Brunswick, however, and the main body of the army, were now

at Weimar, close at hand; and if Brunswick had decided to fight a great

battle at Jena, the Prussians might have brought nearly 90,000 men into

action. But the plans of the irresolute commander were again changed. It

was resolved to fall back upon Magdeburg and the Elbe. Brunswick himself

moved northwards to Naumburg; Hohenlohe was ordered to hold the French in

check at Jena until this movement was completed. Napoleon reached Jena. He

had no intelligence of Brunswick's retreat, and imagined the mass of the

Prussian army to be gathered round Hohenlohe, on the plateau before him. He

sent Davoust, with a corps 27,000 strong, to outflank the enemy by a march

in the direction of Naumburg, and himself prepared to make the attack in

front with 90,000 men, a force more than double Hohenlohe's real army. The

attack was made on the 14th of October. Hohenlohe's army was dashed to

pieces by Napoleon, and fled in wild disorder. Davoust's weak corps, which

had not expected to meet with any important forces until it fell upon

Hohenlohe's flank, found itself in the presence of Brunswick's main army,

when it arrived at Auerstädt, a few miles to the north. Fortune had given

to the Prussian commander an extraordinary chance of retrieving what

strategy had lost. A battle conducted with common military skill would not

only have destroyed Davoust, but have secured, at least for the larger

portion of the Prussian forces, a safe retreat to Leipzig or the Elbe. The

French general, availing himself of steep and broken ground, defeated

numbers nearly double his own through the confusion of his adversary, who

sent up detachment after detachment instead of throwing himself upon

Davoust with his entire strength. The fighting was as furious on the

Prussian side as its conduct was unskilful. King Frederick William, who led

the earlier cavalry charges, had two horses killed under him. Brunswick was

mortally wounded. Many of the other generals were killed or disabled. There

remained, however, a sufficient number of unbroken regiments to preserve

some order in the retreat until the army came into contact with the remnant

of Hohenlohe's forces, flying for their lives before the cavalry of Murat.

Then all hope was lost. The fugitive mass struck panic and confusion into

the retreating columns; and with the exception of a few regiments which

gathered round well-known leaders, the soldiers threw away their arms and

spread over the country in headlong rout. There was no line of retreat, and

no rallying-point. The disaster of a single day made an end of the Prussian

army as a force capable of meeting the enemy in the field. A great part of

the troops was captured by the pursuing enemy during the next few days. The

regiments which preserved their coherence were too weak to make any attempt

to check Napoleon's advance, and could only hope to save themselves by

escaping to the fortresses on the Oder.

[Haugwitz and Lord Morpeth.]

[Retreat and surrender of Hohenlohe.]

Two days before the battle of Jena, an English envoy, Lord Morpeth, had

arrived at the head-quarters of the King of Prussia, claiming the

restoration of Hanover, and bearing an offer of the friendship and support

of Great Britain. At the moment when the Prussian monarchy was on the point

of being hurled to the ground, its Government might have been thought

likely to welcome any security that it should not be abandoned in its

utmost need. Haugwitz, however, was at head-quarters, dictating lying

bulletins, and perplexing the generals with ridiculous arguments of policy

until the French actually opened fire. When the English envoy made known

his arrival, he found that no one would transact business with him.

Haugwitz had determined to evade all negotiations until the battle had been

fought. He was unwilling to part with Hanover, and he hoped that a victory

over Napoleon would enable him to meet Lord Morpeth with a bolder

countenance on the following day. When that day arrived, Ministers and

diplomatists were flying headlong over the country. The King made his

escape to Weimar, and wrote to Napoleon, begging for an armistice; but the

armistice was refused, and the pursuit of the broken army was followed up

without a moment's pause. The capital offered no safe halting-place; and

Frederick William only rested when he had arrived at Graudenz, upon the

Vistula. Hohenlohe's poor remnant of an army passed the Elbe at Magdeburg,

and took the road for Stettin, at the mouth of the Oder, leaving Berlin to

its fate. The retreat was badly conducted; alternate halts and strained

marches discouraged the best of the soldiers. As the men passed their

native villages they abandoned the famishing and broken-spirited columns;

and at the end of a fortnight's disasters Prince Hohenlohe surrendered to

his pursuers at Prenzlau with his main body, now numbering only 10,000 men

(Oct. 28).

[Blücher at Lübeck.]

Blücher, who had shown the utmost energy and fortitude after the

catastrophe of Jena, was moving in the rear of Hohenlohe with a

considerable force which his courage had gathered around him. On learning

of Hohenlohe's capitulation, he instantly reversed his line of march, and

made for the Hanoverian fortress of Hameln, in order to continue the war in

the rear of the French. Overwhelming forces, however, cut off his retreat

to the Elbe; he was hemmed in on the east and on the west; and nothing

remained for him but to throw himself into the neutral town of Lübeck, and

fight until food and ammunition failed him. The French were at his heels.

The magistrates of Lübeck prayed that their city might not be made into a

battle-field, but in vain; Blücher refused to move into the open country.

The town was stormed by the French, and put to the sack. Blücher was driven

out, desperately fighting, and pent in between the Danish frontier and the

sea. Here, surrounded by overpowering numbers, without food, without

ammunition, he capitulated on the 7th of November, after his courage and

resolution had done everything that could ennoble both general and soldiers

in the midst of overwhelming calamity.

[Napoleon at Berlin, Oct. 27.]

[Capitulation of Prussian fortresses.]

The honour of entering the Prussian capital was given by Napoleon to

Davoust, whose victory at Auerstädt had in fact far surpassed his own.

Davoust entered Berlin without resistance on the 25th of October; Napoleon

himself went to Potsdam, and carried off the sword and the scarf that lay

upon the grave of Frederick the Great. Two days after Davoust, the Emperor

made his own triumphal entry into the capital. He assumed the part of the

protector of the people against the aristocracy, ordering the formation of

a municipal body and of a civic guard for the city of Berlin. The military

aristocracy he treated with the bitterest hatred and contempt. "I will make

that noblesse," he cried, "so poor that they shall beg their bread." The

disaster of Jena had indeed fearfully punished the insolence with which the

officers of the army had treated the rest of the nation. The Guards were

marched past the windows of the citizens of Berlin, a miserable troop of

captives; soldiers of rank who remained in the city had to attend upon the

French Emperor to receive his orders. But calamity was only beginning. The

overthrow of Jena had been caused by faults of generalship, and cast no

stain upon the courage of the officers; the surrender of the Prussian

fortresses, which began on the day when the French entered Berlin, attached

the utmost personal disgrace to their commanders. Even after the

destruction of the army in the field, Prussia's situation would not have

been hopeless if the commanders of fortresses had acted on the ordinary

rules of military duty. Magdeburg and the strongholds upon the Oder were

sufficiently armed and provisioned to detain the entire French army, and to

give time to the King to collect upon the Vistula a force as numerous as

that which he had lost. But whatever is weakest in human nature--old age,

fear, and credulity--seemed to have been placed at the head of Prussia's

defences. The very object for which fortresses exist was forgotten; and the

fact that one army had been beaten in the field was made a reason for

permitting the enemy to forestall the organisation of another. Spandau

surrendered on the 25th of October, Stettin on the 29th. These were places

of no great strength; but the next fortress to capitulate, Küstrin on the

Oder, was in full order for a long siege. It was surrendered by the older

officers, amidst the curses of the subalterns and the common soldiers: the

artillerymen had to be dragged from their guns by force. Magdeburg, with a

garrison of 24,000 men and enormous supplies, fell before a French force

not numerous enough to beleaguer it (Nov. 8).

[Napoleon's demands.]

Neither Napoleon himself nor any one else in Europe could have foreseen

such conduct on the part of the Prussian commanders. The unexpected series

of capitulations made him demand totally different terms of peace from

those which he had offered after the battle of Jena. A week after the

victory, Napoleon had demanded, as the price of peace, the cession of

Prussia's territory west of the Elbe, with the exception of the town of

Magdeburg, and the withdrawal of Prussia from the affairs of Germany. These

terms were communicated to King Frederick William; he accepted them, and

sent Lucchesini to Berlin to negotiate for peace upon this basis.

Lucchesini had scarcely reached the capital when the tidings arrived of

Hohenlohe's capitulation, followed by the surrender of Stettin and Küstrin.

The Prussian envoy now sought in vain to procure Napoleon's ratification of

the terms which he had himself proposed. No word of peace could be

obtained: an armistice was all that the Emperor would grant, and the terms

on which the armistice was offered rose with each new disaster to the

Prussian arms. On the fall of Magdeburg becoming known, Napoleon demanded

that the troops of Prussia should retire behind the Vistula, and surrender

every fortress that they still retained, with the single exception of

Königsberg. Much as Prussia had lost, it would have cost Napoleon a second

campaign to make himself master of what he now asked; but to such a depth

had the Prussian Government sunk, that Lucchesini actually signed a

convention at Charlottenburg (November 16), surrendering to Napoleon, in

return for an armistice, the entire list of uncaptured fortresses,

including Dantzig and Thorn on the Lower Vistula, Breslau, with the rest of

the untouched defences of Silesia, Warsaw and Praga in Prussian Poland, and

Colberg upon the Pomeranian coast. [133]

[Frederick William continues the war.]

The treaty, however, required the King's ratification. Frederick William,

timorous as he was, hesitated to confirm an agreement which ousted him from

his dominions as completely as if the last soldier of Prussia had gone into

captivity. The patriotic party, headed by Stein, pleaded for the honour of

the country against the miserable Cabinet which now sought to complete its

work of ruin. Assurances of support arrived from St. Petersburg. The King

determined to reject the treaty, and to continue the war to the last

extremity. Haugwitz hereupon tendered his resignation, and terminated a

political career disastrous beyond any recorded in modern times. For a

moment, it seemed as if the real interests of the country were at length to

be recognised in the appointment of Stein to one of the three principal

offices of State. But the King still remained blind to the necessity of

unity in the government, and angrily dismissed Stein when he refused to

hold the Ministry if representatives of the old Cabinet and of the

peace-party were to have places beside him. The King's act was ill

calculated to serve the interests of Prussia, either at home or abroad.

Stein was the one Minister on whom the patriotic party of Prussia and the

Governments of Europe could rely with perfect confidence. [134] His

dismissal at this crisis proved the incurable poverty of Frederick

William's mental nature; it also proved that, so long as any hope remained

of saving the Prussian State by the help of the Czar of Russia, the

patriotic party had little chance of creating a responsible government at

home.

[Napoleon at Berlin.]

[The Berlin decree against English commerce, Nov. 21, 1806.]

Throughout the month of November French armies overran Northern Germany:

Napoleon himself remained at Berlin, and laid the foundations of a

political system corresponding to that which he had imposed upon Southern

Germany after the victory of Austerlitz. The Houses of Brunswick and

Hesse-Cassel were deposed, in order to create a new client-kingdom of

Westphalia; Saxony, with Weimar and four other duchies, entered the

Confederation of the Rhine. A measure more widely affecting the Continent

of Europe dated from the last days of the Emperor's residence at the

Prussian capital. On the 21st of November, 1806, a decree was published at

Berlin prohibiting the inhabitants of the entire European territory allied

with France from carrying on any commerce with Great Britain, or admitting

any merchandise that had been produced in Great Britain or in its colonies.

[135] The line of coast thus closed to the shipping and the produce of the

British Empire included everything from the Vistula to the southern point

of Dalmatia, with the exception of Denmark and Portugal and the Austrian

port of Trieste. All property belonging to English subjects, all

merchandise of British origin, whoever might be the owner, was ordered to

be confiscated: no vessel that had even touched at a British port was

permitted to enter a Continental harbour. It was the fixed purpose of

Napoleon to exhaust Great Britain, since he could not destroy its navies,

or, according to his own expression, to conquer England upon the Continent.

All that was most harsh and unjust in the operation of the Berlin Decree

fell, however, more upon Napoleon's own subjects than upon Great Britain.

The exclusion of British ships from the harbours of the allies of France

was no more than the exercise of a common right in war; even the seizure of

the property of Englishmen, though a violation of international law, bore

at least an analogy to the seizure of French property at sea; but the

confiscation of the merchandise of German and Dutch traders, after it had

lain for weeks in their own warehouses, solely because it had been produced

in the British Empire, was an act of flagrant and odious oppression. The

first result of the Berlin Decree was to fill the trading towns of North

Germany with French revenue-officers and inquisitors. Peaceable tradesmen

began to understand the import of the battle of Jena when French gendarmes

threw their stock into the common furnace, or dragged them to prison for

possessing a hogshead of Jamaica sugar or a bale of Leeds cloth. The

merchants who possessed a large quantity of English or colonial wares were

the heaviest sufferers by Napoleon's commercial policy: the public found

the markets supplied by American and Danish traders, until, at a later

period, the British Government adopted reprisals, and prevented the ships

of neutrals from entering any port from which English vessels were

excluded. Then every cottage felt the stress of the war. But if the full

consequences of the Berlin Decree were delayed until the retaliation of

Great Britain reached the dimensions of Napoleon's own tyranny, the Decree

itself marked on the part of Napoleon the assumption of a power in conflict

with the needs and habits of European life. Like most of the schemes of

Napoleon subsequent to the victories of 1806, it transgressed the limits of

practical statesmanship, and displayed an ambition no longer raised above

mere tyranny by its harmony with forms of progress and with the better

tendencies of the age.

[Napoleon and the Poles.]

Immediately after signing the Berlin Decree, Napoleon quitted the Prussian

capital (Nov. 25). The first act of the war had now closed. The Prussian

State was overthrown; its territory as far as the Vistula lay at the mercy

of the invader; its King was a fugitive at Königsberg, at the eastern

extremity of his dominions. The second act of the war began with the

rejection of the armistice which had been signed by Lucchesini, and with

the entry of Russia into the field against Napoleon. The scene of

hostilities was henceforward in Prussian Poland and in the Baltic Province

lying between the lower Vistula and the Russian frontier. Napoleon entered

Poland, as he had entered Italy ten years before, with the pretence of

restoring liberty to an enslaved people. Kosciusko's name was fraudulently

attached to a proclamation summoning the Polish nation to arms; and

although Kosciusko himself declined to place any trust in the betrayer of

Venice, thousands of his countrymen flocked to Napoleon's standard, or

anticipated his arrival by capturing and expelling the Prussian detachments

scattered through their country. Promises of the restoration of Polish

independence were given by Napoleon in abundance; but the cause of Poland

was the last to attract the sympathy of a man who considered the sacrifice

of the weak to the strong to be the first principle of all good policy. To

have attempted the restoration of Polish independence would have been to

make permanent enemies of Russia and Prussia for the sake of an ally weaker

than either of them. The project was not at this time seriously entertained

by Napoleon. He had no motive to face a work of such enormous difficulty as

the creation of a solid political order among the most unpractical race in

Europe. He was glad to enrol the Polish nobles among his soldiers; he knew

the value of their enthusiasm, and took pains to excite it; but, when the

battle was over, it was with Russia, not Poland, that France had to settle;

and no better fate remained, even for the Prussian provinces of Poland,

than in part to be formed into a client-state, in part to be surrendered as

a means of accommodation with the Czar.

[Campaign in Poland against Russia, Dec., 1806.]

The armies of Russia were at some distance from the Vistula when, in

November, 1806, Napoleon entered Polish territory. Their movements were

slow, their numbers insufficient. At the moment when all the forces of the

Empire were required for the struggle against Napoleon, troops were being

sent into Moldavia against the Sultan. Nor were the Russian commanders

anxious to save what still remained of the Prussian kingdom. The disasters

of Prussia, like those of Austria at the beginning of the campaign of 1805,

excited less sympathy than contempt; and the inclination of the Czar's

generals was rather to carry on the war upon the frontier of their own

country than to commit themselves to a distant campaign with a despised

ally. Lestocq, who commanded the remnant of the Prussian army upon the

Vistula, was therefore directed to abandon his position at Thorn and to

move eastwards. The French crossed the Vistula higher up the river; and by

the middle of December the armies of France and Russia lay opposite to one

another in the neighbourhood of Pultusk, upon the Ukra and the Narew. The

first encounter, though not of a decisive character, resulted in the

retreat of the Russians. Heavy rains and fathomless mud checked the

pursuit. War seemed almost impossible in such a country and such a climate;

and Napoleon ordered his troops to take up their winter quarters along the

Vistula, believing that nothing more could be attempted on either side

before the spring.

[Eylau, Feb. 8, 1807.]

[Napoleon and Bennigsen in East Prussia.]

But the command of the Russian forces was now transferred from the aged and

half-mad Kamenski, [136] who had opened the campaign, to a general better

qualified to cope with Napoleon. Bennigsen, the new commander-in-chief, was

an active and daring soldier. Though a German by birth, his soldiership was

of that dogged and resolute order which suits the character of Russian

troops; and, in the mid-winter of 1806, Napoleon found beyond the Vistula

such an enemy as he had never encountered in Western Europe. Bennigsen

conceived the design of surprising the extreme left of the French line,

where Ney's division lay stretched towards the Baltic, far to the

north-east of Napoleon's main body. Forest and marsh concealed the movement

of the Russian troops, and both Ney and Bernadotte narrowly escaped

destruction. Napoleon now broke up his winter quarters, and marched in

great force against Bennigsen in the district between Königsberg and the

mouth of the Vistula. Bennigsen manoeuvred and retired until his troops

clamoured for battle. He then took up a position at Eylau, and waited for

the attack of the French. The battle of Eylau, fought in the midst of

snowstorms on the 8th of February, 1807, was unlike anything that Napoleon

had ever yet seen. His columns threw themselves in vain upon the Russian

infantry. Augereau's corps was totally destroyed in the beginning of the

battle. The Russians pressed upon the ground where Napoleon himself stood;

and, although the superiority of the Emperor's tactics at length turned the

scale, and the French began a forward movement, their advance was stopped

by the arrival of Lestocq and a body of 13,000 Prussians. At the close of

the engagement 30,000 men lay wounded or dead in the snow; the positions of

the armies remained what they had been in the morning. Bennigsen's

lieutenants urged him to renew the combat on the next day; but the

confusion of the Russian army was such that the French, in spite of their

losses and discouragement, would probably have gained the victory in a

second battle; [137] and the Russian commander determined to fall back

towards Königsberg, content with having disabled the enemy and given

Napoleon such a check as he had never received before. Napoleon, who had

announced his intention of entering Königsberg in triumph, fell back upon

the river Passarge, and awaited the arrival of reinforcements.

[Sieges of Dantzig and Colberg, March, 1807.]

[Inaction of England.]

[Fall of Grenville's Ministry, March 24, 1807.]

[Treaty of Bartenstein between Russia, Prussia, England, and Sweden.

April, 1807.]

The warfare of the next few months was confined to the reduction of the

Prussian fortresses which had not yet fallen into the hands of the French.

Dantzig surrendered after a long and difficult siege; the little town of

Colberg upon the Pomeranian coast prolonged a defence as honourable to its

inhabitants as to the military leaders. Two soldiers of singularly

different character, each destined to play a conspicuous part in coming

years, first distinguished themselves in the defence of Colberg. Gneisenau,

a scientific soldier of the highest order, the future guide of Blücher's

victorious campaigns, commanded the garrison; Schill, a cavalry officer of

adventurous daring, gathered round him a troop of hardy riders, and

harassed the French with an audacity as perplexing to his military

superiors as to the enemy. The citizens, led by their burgomaster, threw

themselves into the work of defence with a vigour in striking contrast to

the general apathy of the Prussian people; and up to the end of the war

Colberg remained uncaptured. Obscure as Colberg was, its defence might have

given a new turn to the war if the Government of Great Britain had listened

to the entreaties of the Emperor Alexander, and despatched a force to the

Baltic to threaten the communications of Napoleon. The task was not a

difficult one for a Power which could find troops, as England now did, to

send to Constantinople, to Alexandria, and to Buenos Ayres; but military

judgment was more than ever wanting to the British Cabinet. Fox had died at

the beginning of the war; his successors in Grenville's Ministry, though

they possessed a sound theory of foreign policy, [138] were not fortunate

in its application, nor were they prompt enough in giving financial help to

their allies. Suddenly, however, King George quarrelled with his Ministers

upon the ancient question of Catholic Disabilities, and drove them from

office (March 24). The country sided with the King. A Ministry came into

power, composed of the old supporters of Pitt, men, with the exception of

Canning and Castlereagh, of narrow views and poor capacity, headed by the

Duke of Portland, who, in 1793, had given his name to the section of the

Whig party which joined Pitt. The foreign policy of the new Cabinet, which

concealed its total lack of all other statesmanship, returned to the lines

laid down by Pitt in 1805. Negotiations were opened with Russia for the

despatch of an English army to the Baltic; arms and money were promised to

the Prussian King. For a moment it seemed as if the Powers of Europe had

never been united in so cordial a league. The Czar embraced the King of

Prussia in the midst of his soldiers, and declared with tears that the two

should stand or fall together. The Treaty of Bartenstein, signed in April

1807 pledged the Courts of St. Petersburg, Stockholm, and Berlin to a joint

prosecution of the war, and the common conclusion of peace. Great Britain

joined the pact, and prepared to fulfil its part in the conflict upon the

Baltic. But the task was a difficult one, for Grenville's Ministry had

dispersed the fleet of transports; and, although Canning determined upon

the Baltic expedition in April, two months passed before the fleet was

ready to sail.

[Summer campaign in East Prussia, 1807.]

[Battle of Friedland.]

In the meantime army upon army was moving to the support of Napoleon, from

France, from Spain, from Holland, and from Southern Germany. The fortresses

of the Elbe and the Oder, which ought to have been his barrier, had become

his base of operations; and so enormous were the forces at his command,

that, after manning every stronghold in Central Europe, he was able at the

beginning of June to bring 140,000 men into the field beyond the Vistula.

The Russians had also received reinforcements, but Bennigsen's army was

still weaker than that of the enemy. It was Bennigsen, nevertheless, who

began the attack; and now, as in the winter campaign, he attempted to

surprise and crush the northern corps of Ney. The same general movement of

the French army followed as in January. The Russian commander, outnumbered

by the French, retired to his fortified camp at Heilsberg. After sustaining

a bloody repulse in an attack upon this position, Napoleon drew Bennigsen

from his lair by marching straight upon Königsberg. Bennigsen supposed

himself to be in time to deal with an isolated corps; he found himself face

to face with the whole forces of the enemy at Friedland, accepted battle,

and was unable to save his army from a severe and decisive defeat (June

14). The victory of Friedland brought the French into Königsberg. Bennigsen

retired behind the Niemen; and on the 19th of June an armistice closed the

operations of the hostile forces upon the frontiers of Russia. [139]

The situation of Bennigsen's army was by no means desperate. His men had

not been surrounded; they had lost scarcely any prisoners; they felt no

fear of the French. But the general exaggerated the seriousness of his

defeat. Like most of his officers, he was weary of the war, and felt no

sympathy with the motives which led the Emperor to fight for the common

cause of Europe. The politicians who surrounded Alexander urged him to

withdraw Russia from a conflict in which she had nothing to gain. The

Emperor wavered. The tardiness of Great Britain, the continued neutrality

of Austria, cast a doubt upon the wisdom of his own disinterestedness; and

he determined to meet Napoleon, and ascertain the terms on which Russia

might be reconciled to the master of half the Continent.

[Interview of Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit, June 25.]

On the 25th of June the two sovereigns met one another on the raft of

Tilsit, in the midstream of the river Niemen. The conversation, which is

alleged to have been opened by Alexander with an expression of hatred

towards England, was heard by no one but the speakers. But whatever the

eagerness or the reluctance of the Russian monarch to sever himself from

Great Britain, the purpose of Napoleon was effected. Alexander surrendered

himself to the addresses of a conqueror who seemed to ask for nothing and

to offer everything. The negotiations were prolonged; the relations of the

two monarchs became more and more intimate; and the issue of the struggle

for life or death was that Russia accepted the whole scheme of Napoleonic

conquest, and took its place by the side of the despoiler in return for its

share of the prey. It was in vain that the King of Prussia had rejected

Napoleon's offers after the battle of Eylau, in fidelity to his engagements

towards his ally. Promises, treaties, and pity were alike cast to the

winds. The unfortunate Frederick William received no more embraces; the

friend with whom he was to stand or fall bargained away the larger half of

his dominions to Napoleon, and even rectified the Russian frontier at his

expense. Prussia's continued existence in any shape whatever was described

as a concession made by Napoleon to Alexander. By the public articles of

the Treaties of Tilsit, signed by France, Russia, and Prussia in the first

week of July, the King of Prussia ceded to Napoleon the whole of his

dominions west of the Elbe, and the entire territory which Prussia had

gained in the three partitions of Poland, with the exception of a district

upon the Lower Vistula connecting Pomerania with Eastern Prussia. Out of

the ceded territory on the west of the Elbe a Kingdom of Westphalia was

created for Napoleon's brother Jerome; the Polish provinces of Prussia,

with the exception of a strip made over to Alexander, were formed into the

Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, and presented to Napoleon's vassal, the King of

Saxony. Russia recognised the Napoleonic client-states in Italy, Holland,

and Germany. The Czar undertook to offer his mediation in the conflict

between France and Great Britain; a secret article provided that, in the

event of Great Britain and France being at war on the ensuing 1st of

December, Prussia should declare war against Great Britain.

[Secret Treaty of Alliance.]

[Conspiracy of the two Emperors.]

Such were the stipulations contained in the formal Treaties of Peace

between the three Powers. These, however, contained but a small part of the

terms agreed upon between the masters of the east and of the west.

A secret Treaty of Alliance, distinct from the Treaty of Peace, was also

signed by Napoleon and Alexander. In the conversations which won over the

Czar to the cause of France, Napoleon had offered to Alexander the spoils

of Sweden and the Ottoman Empire. Finland and the Danubian provinces were

not too high a price for the support of a Power whose arms could paralyse

Austria and Prussia. In return for the promise of this extension of his

Empire, Alexander undertook, in the event of Great Britain refusing terms

of peace dictated by himself, to unite his arms to those of Napoleon, and

to force the neutral maritime Powers, Denmark and Portugal, to take part in

the struggle against England. The annexation of Moldavia and Wallachia to

the Russian Empire was provided for under the form of a French mediation.

In the event of the Porte declining this mediation, Napoleon undertook to

assist Russia to liberate all the European territory subject to the yoke of

the Sultan, with the exception of Roumelia and Constantinople. A partition

of the liberated territory between France and Russia, as well as the

establishment of the Napoleonic house in Spain, probably formed the subject

rather of a verbal understanding than of any written agreement. [140]

Such was this vast and threatening scheme, conceived by the man whose whole

career had been one consistent struggle for personal domination, accepted

by the man who among the rulers of the Continent had hitherto shown the

greatest power of acting for a European end, and of interesting himself in

a cause not directly his own. In the imagination of Napoleon, the national

forces of the western continent had now ceased to exist. Austria excepted,

there was no State upon the mainland whose army and navy were not

prospectively in the hands of himself and his new ally. The commerce of

Great Britain, already excluded from the greater part of Europe, was now to

be shut out from all the rest; the armies which had hitherto fought under

British subsidies for the independence of Europe, the navies which had

preserved their existence by neutrality or by friendship with England, were

soon to be thrown without distinction against that last foe. If even at

this moment an English statesman who had learnt the secret agreement of

Tilsit might have looked without fear to the future of his country, it was

not from any imperfection in the structure of Continental tyranny. The

fleets of Denmark and Portugal might be of little real avail against

English seamen; the homes of the English people might still be as secure

from foreign invasion as when Nelson guarded the seas; but it was not from

any vestige of political honour surviving in the Emperor Alexander. Where

Alexander's action was of decisive importance, in his mediation between

France and Prussia, he threw himself without scruple on to the side of

oppression. It lay within his power to gain terms of peace for Prussia as

lenient as those which Austria had gained at Campo Formio and at Lunéville:

he sacrificed Prussia, as he allied himself against the last upholders of

national independence in Europe, in order that he might himself receive

Finland and the Danubian Provinces.

[English expedition against Denmark, July, 1807.]

Two days before the signature of the Treaty of Tilsit the British troops

which had once been so anxiously expected by the Czar landed in the island

of Rügen. The struggle in which they were intended to take their part was

over. Sweden alone remained in arms; and even the Quixotic pugnacity of

King Gustavus was unable to save Stralsund from a speedy capitulation. But

the troops of Great Britain were not destined to return without striking a

blow. The negotiations between Napoleon and Alexander had scarcely begun,

when secret intelligence of their purport was sent to the British

Government. [141] It became known in London that the fleet of Denmark was

to be seized by Napoleon, and forced to fight against Great Britain.

Canning and his colleagues acted with the promptitude that seldom failed

the British Government when it could effect its object by the fleet alone.

They determined to anticipate Napoleon's violation of Danish neutrality,

and to seize upon the navy which would otherwise be seized by France and

Russia.

[Bombardment of Copenhagen, Sept. 2.]

On the 28th of July a fleet with 20,000 men on board set sail from the

British coast. The troops landed in Denmark in the middle of August, and

united with the corps which had already been despatched to Rügen. The

Danish Government was summoned to place its navy in the hands of Great

Britain, in order that it might remain as a deposit in some British port

until the conclusion of peace. While demanding this sacrifice of Danish

neutrality, England undertook to protect the Danish nation and colonies

from the hostility of Napoleon, and to place at the disposal of its

Government every means of naval and military defence. Failing the surrender

of the fleet, the English declared that they would bombard Copenhagen. The

reply given to this summons was such as might be expected from a courageous

nation exasperated against Great Britain by its harsh treatment of neutral

ships of commerce, and inclined to submit to the despot of the Continent

rather than to the tyrants of the seas. Negotiations proved fruitless, and

on the 2nd of September the English opened fire on Copenhagen. For three

days and nights the city underwent a bombardment of cruel efficiency.

Eighteen hundred houses were levelled, the town was set on fire in several

places, and a large number of the inhabitants lost their lives. At length

the commander found himself compelled to capitulate. The fleet was handed

over to Great Britain, with all the stores in the arsenal of Copenhagen. It

was brought to England, no longer under the terms of a friendly neutrality,

but as a prize of war.

The captors themselves were ashamed of their spoil. England received an

armament which had been taken from a people who were not our enemies, and

by an attack which was not war, with more misgiving than applause. In

Europe the seemingly unprovoked assault upon a weak neutral State excited

the utmost indignation. The British Ministry, who were prevented from

making public the evidence which they had received of the intention of the

two Emperors, were believed to have invented the story of the Secret

Treaty. The Danish Government denied that Napoleon had demanded their

co-operation; Napoleon and Alexander themselves assumed the air of

indignant astonishment. But the facts alleged by Canning and his colleagues

were correct. The conspiracy of the two Emperors was no fiction. The only

question still remaining open--and this is indeed an essential one--relates

to the engagements entered into by the Danish Government itself. Napoleon

in his correspondence of this date alludes to certain promises made to him

by the Court of Denmark, but he also complains that these promises had not

been fulfilled; and the context of the letter renders it almost certain

that, whatever may have been demanded by Napoleon, nothing more was

promised by Denmark than that its ports should be closed to English

vessels. [142] Had the British Cabinet possessed evidence of the

determination of the Danish Government to transfer its fleet to Napoleon

without resistance, the attack upon Denmark, considered as virtually an act

of war, would not have been unjust. But beyond an alleged expression of

Napoleon at Tilsit, no such evidence was even stated to have reached

London; and the undoubted conspiracy of the Emperors against Danish

neutrality was no sufficient ground for an action on the part of Great

Britain which went so far beyond the mere frustration of their designs. The

surrender of the Danish fleet demanded by England would have been an

unqualified act of war on the part of Denmark against Napoleon; it was no

mere guarantee for a continued neutrality. Nor had the British Government

the last excuse of an urgent and overwhelming necessity. Nineteen Danish

men-of-war would not have turned the scale against England. The memory of

Trafalgar might well have given a British Ministry courage to meet its

enemies by the ordinary methods of war. Had the forces of Denmark been far

larger than they actually were, the peril of Great Britain was not so

extreme as to excuse the wrong done to mankind by an example encouraging

all future belligerents to anticipate one another in forcing each neutral

state to take part with themselves.

[Napoleon's demands upon Portugal.]

The fleet which Napoleon had meant to turn against this country now lay

safe within Portsmouth harbour. Denmark, in bitter resentment, declared war

against Great Britain, and rendered some service to the Continental League

by the attacks of its privateers upon British merchant-vessels in the

Baltic. The second neutral Power whose fate had been decided by the two

Emperors at Tilsit received the summons of Napoleon a few days before the

attack on Copenhagen. The Regent of Portugal himself informed the British

Government that he had been required by Napoleon to close his ports to

British vessels, to declare war on England, and to confiscate all British

property within his dominions. Placed between a Power which could strip him

of his dominions on land, and one which could despoil him of everything he

possessed beyond the sea, the Regent determined to maintain his ancient

friendship with Great Britain, and to submit to Napoleon only in so far as

the English Government would excuse him, as acting under coercion. Although

a nominal state of war arose between Portugal and England, the Regent

really acted in the interest of England, and followed the advice of the

British Cabinet up to the end.

[Treaty of Fontainebleau between France and Spain for the partition of

Portugal, Oct. 27.]

The end was soon to come. The demands of Napoleon, arbitrary and oppressive

as they were, by no means expressed his full intentions towards Portugal.

He had determined to seize upon this country, and to employ it as a means

for extending his own dominion over the whole of the Spanish Peninsula. An

army-corps, under the command of Junot, had been already placed in the

Pyrenees. On the 12th of October Napoleon received the answer of the Regent

of Portugal, consenting to declare war upon England, and only rejecting the

dishonourable order to confiscate all English property. This single act of

resistance was sufficient for Napoleon's purpose. He immediately recalled

his ambassador from Lisbon, and gave orders to Junot to cross the frontier,

and march upon Portugal. The King of Spain, who was to be Napoleon's next

victim, was for the moment employed as his accomplice. A treaty was

concluded at Fontainebleau between Napoleon and King Charles IV. for the

partition of Portugal (Oct. 27). [143] In return for the cession of the

kingdom of Etruria, which was still nominally governed by a member of the

Spanish house, the King of Spain was promised half the Portuguese colonies,

along with the title of Emperor of the Indies; the northern provinces of

Portugal were reserved for the infant King of Etruria, its southern

provinces for Godoy, Minister of Charles IV.; the central districts were to

remain in the hands of France, and to be employed as a means of regaining

the Spanish colonies from England upon the conclusion of a general peace.

[Junot invades Portugal, Nov., 1807.]

[Flight of the House of Braganza.]

Not one of these provisions was intended to be carried into effect. The

conquest of Portugal was but a part of the conquest of the whole peninsula.

But neither the Spanish Court nor the Spanish people suspected Napoleon's

design. Junot advanced without resistance through the intervening Spanish

territory, and pushed forward upon Lisbon with the utmost haste. The speed

at which Napoleon's orders forced him to march reduced his army to utter

prostration, and the least resistance would have resulted in its ruin. But

the Court of Lisbon had determined to quit a country which they could not

hope to defend against the master of the Continent. Already in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the House of Braganza had been

familiar with the project of transferring the seat of their Government to

Brazil; and now, with the approval of Great Britain, the Regent resolved to

maintain the independence of his family by flight across the Atlantic. As

Junot's troops approached the capital, the servants of the palace hastily

stowed the royal property on ship-board. On the 29th of November, when the

French were now close at hand, the squadron which bore the House of

Braganza to its colonial home dropped down the Tagus, saluted by the cannon

of the English fleet that lay in the same river. Junot entered the capital

a few hours later, and placed himself at the head of the Government without

encountering any opposition. The occupation of Portugal was described by

Napoleon as a reprisal for the bombardment of Copenhagen. It excited but

little attention in Europe; and even at the Spanish Court the only feeling

was one of satisfaction at the approaching aggrandisement of the Bourbon

monarchy. The full significance of Napoleon's intervention in the affairs

of the Peninsula was not discovered until some months were passed.

[Prussia after the Peace of Tilsit.]

[Stein Minister, Oct. 5, 1807.]

Portugal and Denmark had felt the consequences of the peace made at Tilsit.

Less, however, depended upon the fate of the Danish fleet and the

Portuguese Royal Family than upon the fate of Prussia, the most cruelly

wronged of all the victims sacrificed by Alexander's ambition. The

unfortunate Prussian State, reduced to half its former extent, devastated

and impoverished by war, and burdened with the support of a French army,

found in the crisis of its ruin the beginning of a worthier national life.

Napoleon, in his own vindictive jealousy, unwittingly brought to the head

of the Prussian Government the ablest and most patriotic statesman of the

Continent. Since the spring of 1807 Baron Hardenberg had again been the

leading Minister of Prussia, and it was to his counsel that the King's

honourable rejection of a separate peace after the battle of Eylau was due.

Napoleon could not permit this Minister, whom he had already branded as a

partisan of Great Britain, to remain in power; he insisted upon

Hardenberg's dismissal, and recommended the King of Prussia to summon

Stein, who was as yet known to Napoleon only as a skilful financier, likely

to succeed in raising the money which the French intended to extort.

[Edict of Emancipation, Oct. 9, 1807.]

Stein entered upon office on the 5th of October, 1807, with almost

dictatorial power. The need of the most radical changes in the public

services, as well as in the social order of the Prussian State, had been

brought home to all enlightened men by the disasters of the war; and a

commission, which included among its members the historian Niebuhr, had

already sketched large measures of reform before Hardenberg quitted office.

Stein's appointment brought to the head of the State a man immeasurably

superior to Hardenberg in the energy necessary for the execution of great

changes, and gave to those who were the most sincerely engaged in civil or

military reform a leader unrivalled in patriotic zeal, in boldness, and in

purity of character. The first great legislative measure of Stein was the

abolition of serfage, and of all the legal distinctions which fixed within

the limits of their caste the noble, the citizen, and the peasant. In

setting his name to the edict [144] which, on the 9th of October, 1807,

made an end of the mediæval framework of Prussian society, Stein was indeed

but consummating a change which the progress of neighbouring States must

have forced upon Prussia, whoever held its government. The Decree was

framed upon the report of Hardenberg's Commission, and was published by

Stein within six days after his own entry upon office. Great as were the

changes involved in this edict of emancipation, it contained no more than

was necessary to bring Prussia up to the level of the least advanced of the

western Continental States. In Austria pure serfage had been abolished by

Maria Theresa thirty years before; it vanished, along with most of the

legal distinctions of class, wherever the victories of France carried a new

political order; even the misused peasantry of Poland had been freed from

their degrading yoke within the borders of the newly-founded Duchy of

Warsaw. If Prussia was not to renounce its partnership in European progress

and range itself with its barbarous eastern neighbour, that order which

fettered the peasant to the soil, and limited every Prussian to the

hereditary occupations of his class could no longer be maintained. It is

not as an achievement of individual genius, but as the most vivid

expression of the differences between the old and the new Europe, that the

first measure of Stein deserves a closer examination.

[The Prussian peasant before and after the Edict of Oct. 9.]

The Edict of October 9, 1807, extinguished all personal servitude; it

permitted the noble, the citizen, and the peasant to follow any calling; it

abolished the rule which prevented land held by a member of one class from

passing into the hands of another class; it empowered families to free

their estates from entail. Taken together, these enactments substitute the

free disposition of labour and property for the outworn doctrine which

Prussia had inherited from the feudal ages, that what a man is born that he

shall live and die. The extinction of serfage, though not the most

prominent provision of the Edict, was the one whose effects were the

soonest felt. In the greater part of Prussia the marks of serfage, as

distinct from payments and services amounting to a kind of rent, were the

obligation of the peasant to remain on his holding, and the right of the

lord to take the peasant's children as unpaid servants into his house. A

general relation of obedience and command existed, as between an hereditary

subject and master, although the lord could neither exact an arbitrary

amount of labour nor inflict the cruel punishments which had been common in

Poland and Hungary. What the villein was in England in the thirteenth

century, that the serf was in Prussia in the year 1806; and the change

which in England gradually elevated the villein into the free copyholder

was that change which, so many centuries later, the Prussian legislator

effected by one great measure. Stein made the Prussian peasant what the

English copyholder had become at the accession of Henry VII., and what the

French peasant had been before 1789, a free person, but one bound to render

fixed dues and service to the lord of the manor in virtue of the occupation

of his land. These feudal dues and services, which the French peasant,

accustomed for centuries before the Revolution to consider himself as the

full proprietor of the land, treated as a mere grievance and abuse, Stein

considered to be the best form in which the joint interest of the lord and

the peasant could be maintained. It was reserved for Hardenberg, four years

later, to free the peasant from all obligations towards his lord, and to

place him in unshackled proprietorship of two-thirds of his former holding,

the lord receiving the remaining one-third in compensation for the loss of

feudal dues. Neither Stein nor Hardenberg interfered with the right of the

lord to act as judge and police-magistrate within the limits of his manor;

and the hereditary legal jurisdiction, which was abolished in Scotland in

1747, and in France in 1789, continued unchanged in Prussia down to the

year 1848.

[Relative position of the peasant in Prussia and England.]

The history of Agrarian Reform upon the Continent shows how vast was the

interval of time by which some of the greatest social changes in England

had anticipated the corresponding changes in almost all other nations. But

if the Prussian peasant at the beginning of this century remained in the

servile condition which had passed out of mind in Great Britain before the

Reformation, the early prosperity of the peasant in England was dearly

purchased by a subsequent decline which has made his present lot far

inferior to that of the children or grandchildren of the Prussian serf.

However heavy the load of the Prussian serf, his holding was at least

protected by law from absorption into the domain of his lord. Before

sufficient capital had been amassed in Prussia to render landed property an

object of competition, the forced military service of Frederick had made it

a rule of State that the farmsteads of the peasant class must remain

undiminished in number, at whatever violence to the laws of the market or

the desires of great landlords. No process was permitted to take place

corresponding to that by which in England, after the villein had become the

free copyholder, the lord, with or without technical legal right,

terminated the copyhold tenure of his retainer, and made the land as much

his own exclusive property as the chairs and tables in his house. In

Prussia, if the law kept the peasant on the land, it also kept the land for

the peasant. Economic conditions, in the absence of such control in

England, worked against the class of small holders. Their early

enfranchisement in fact contributed to their extinction. It would perhaps

have been better for the English labouring class to remain bound by a

semi-servile tie to their land, than to gain a free holding which the law,

siding with the landlord, treated as terminable at the expiration of

particular lives, and which the increasing capital of the rich made its

favourite prey. It is little profit to the landless, resourceless English

labourer to know that his ancestor was a yeoman when the Prussian was a

serf. Long as the bondage of the peasant on the mainland endured,

prosperity came at last. The conditions which once distinguished

agricultural England from the Continent are now reversed. Nowhere on the

Continent is there a labouring class so stripped and despoiled of all

interest in the soil, so sedulously excluded from all possibilities of

proprietorship, as in England. In England alone the absence of internal

revolution and foreign pressure has preserved a class whom a life spent in

toil leaves as bare and dependent as when it began, and to whom the only

boon which their country can offer is the education which may lead them to

quit it.

[Reform of Prussian Army.]

[Short service.]

Besides the commission which had drafted the Edict of Emancipation, Stein

found a military commission engaged on a plan for the reorganisation of the

Prussian army. The existing system forced the peasant to serve in the ranks

for twenty years, and drew the officers from the nobility, leaving the

inhabitants of towns without either the duty or the right to enter the army

at all. Since the battle of Jena, no one doubted that the principle of

universal liability to military service must be introduced into Prussia; on

the other hand, the very disasters of the State rendered it impossible to

maintain an army on anything approaching to its former scale. With half its

territory torn from it, and the remainder devastated by war, Prussia could

barely afford to keep 40,000 soldiers in arms. Such were the conditions

laid before the men who were charged with the construction of a new

Prussian military system. Their conclusions, imperfect in themselves, and

but partially carried out in the succeeding years, have nevertheless been

the basis of the latest military organisation of Prussia and of Europe

generally. The problem was solved by the adoption of a short period of

service and the rapid drafting of the trained conscript into a

reserve-force. Scharnhorst, President of the Military Commission, to whom

more than to any one man Prussia owed its military revival, proposed to

maintain an Active Army of 40,000 men; a Reserve, into which soldiers

should pass after short service in the active army; a Landwehr, to be

employed only for the internal defence of the country; and a Landsturm, or

general arming of the population, for a species of guerilla warfare.

Scharnhorst's project was warmly supported by Stein, who held a seat and a

vote on the Military Commission; and the system of short service, with a

Reserve, was immediately brought into action, though on a very limited

scale. The remainder of the scheme had to wait for the assistance of

events. The principle of universal military obligation was first proclaimed

in the war of 1813, when also the Landwehr was first enrolled.

[Stein's plans of political reform.]

[Design for a Parliament, for Municipalities, and District boards.]

The reorganisation of the Prussian military system and the emancipation of

the peasant, though promoted by Stein's accession to power, did not

originate in Stein himself; the distinctive work of Stein was a great

scheme of political reform. Had Stein remained longer in power, he would

have given to Prussia at least the beginnings of constitutional government.

Events drove him from office when but a small part of his project was

carried into effect; but the project itself was great and comprehensive. He

designed to give Prussia a Parliament, and to establish a system of

self-government in its towns and country districts. Stein had visited

England in his youth. The history and the literature of England interested

him beyond those of any other country; and he had learnt from England that

the partnership of the nation in the work of government, so far from

weakening authority, animates it with a force which no despotic system can

long preserve. Almost every important State-paper written by Stein

denounces the apathy of the civil population of Prussia, and attributes it

to their exclusion from all exercise of public duties. He declared that the

nation must be raised from its torpor by the establishment of

representative government and the creation of free local institutions in

town and country. Stein was no friend of democracy. Like every other

Prussian statesman he took for granted the exercise of a vigorous

monarchical power at the centre of the State; but around the permanent

executive he desired to gather the Council of the Nation, checking at least

the caprices of Cabinet-rule, and making the opinion of the people felt by

the monarch. Stein's Parliament would have been a far weaker body than the

English House of Commons, but it was at least not intended to be a mockery,

like those legislative bodies which Napoleon and his clients erected as the

disguise of despotism. The transaction of local business in the towns and

country districts, which had hitherto belonged to officials of the Crown,

Stein desired to transfer in part to bodies elected by the inhabitants

themselves. The functions allotted to the new municipal bodies illustrated

the modest and cautious nature of Stein's attempt in the direction of

self-government, including no more than the care of the poor, the

superintendence of schools, and the maintenance of streets and public

buildings. Finance remained partly, police wholly, in the hands of the

central Government. Equally limited were the powers which Stein proposed to

entrust to the district councils elected by the rural population. In

comparison with the self-government of England or America, the

self-government which Stein would have introduced into Prussia was of the

most elementary character; yet his policy stood out in striking contrast to

that which in every client-state of Napoleon was now crushing out the last

elements of local independence under a rigid official centralisation.

[Municipal reform alone carried out.]

Stein was indeed unable to transform Prussia as he desired. Of the

legislative, the municipal, and the district reforms which he had sketched,

the municipal reform was the only one which he had time to carry out before

being driven from power; and for forty years the municipal institutions

created by Stein were the only fragment of liberty which Prussia enjoyed. A

vehement opposition to reform was excited among the landowners, and

supported by a powerful party at the Court. Stein was detested by the

nobles whose peasants he had emancipated, and by the Berlin aristocracy,

which for the last ten years had maintained the policy of friendship with

France, and now declared the only safety of the Prussian State to lie in

unconditional submission to Napoleon. The fire of patriotism, of energy, of

self-sacrifice, which burned in Stein made him no representative of the

Prussian governing classes of his time. It was not long before the

landowners, who deemed him a Jacobin, and the friends of the French, who

called him a madman, had the satisfaction of seeing the Minister sent into

banishment by order of Napoleon himself (Dec., 1808). Stein left the

greater part of his work uncompleted, but he had not laboured in vain. The

years of his ministry in 1807 and 1808 were the years that gathered

together everything that was worthiest in Prussia in the dawn of a national

revival, and prepared the way for that great movement in which, after an

interval of the deepest gloom, Stein was himself to light the nation to its

victory.