Discontent of Prussia--Death of Pitt--Negotiation of Lords Yarmouth
and Lauderdale broken off--Murder of Palm, the bookseller--Prussia
declares War--Buonaparte heads the Army--Naumburg taken--Battle of
Jena--Napoleon enters Berlin--Fall of Magdeburg, &c.--Humiliation
of Prussia--Buonaparte's cruelty to the Duke of Brunswick--his
rapacity and oppression in Prussia.
The establishment of the Confederation of the Rhine rendered Napoleon,
in effect, sovereign of a large part of Germany; and seemed to have so
totally revolutionised Central Europe, that Francis of Austria declared
the Imperial Constitution at an end. He retained the title of Emperor as
sovereign of his own hereditary dominions; but "The Holy Roman Empire,"
having lasted full one thousand years, was declared to be no more; and
of its ancient influence the representative was to be sought for not at
Vienna, but at Paris.
The vacillating court of Berlin heard with much apprehension of the
formation of the Rhenish confederacy;[53] and with deep resentment of
its immediate consequence, the dissolution of the Germanic Empire. The
house of Brandenburg had consented to the humiliation of Francis in the
hope of succeeding, at the next election, to the imperial crown so long
worn by the princes of Austria; and now, not only was that
long-cherished hope for ever dispelled, but it appeared that Napoleon
had laid the foundation of a new system, under which the influence of
the house of Brandenburg must, in all probability, be overruled far more
effectually than it ever had been, of recent times, by the imperial
prerogative of Austria.
The only method of counteracting the consolidation of French power all
over Germany, seemed to be that of creating another confederacy in the
northern circles, capable of balancing the league of the Rhine. The
Elector of Saxony, however, perceived that Napoleon was not likely to
acquiesce in the realisation of this scheme; and his Minister at Berlin
continued to decline acceding to the Northern alliance. The Prince of
Hesse-Cassel took a similar view of the case; but acted with a degree of
vacillation worthy of the late conduct of Prussia herself, refusing on
the one hand to embrace the confederation proposed by the Cabinet of
Berlin, and yet declining, on the other, to form part of the Rhenish
league, to which effect Buonaparte had frequently and urgently invited
this elector. In the reluctance, however, of these princes, Prussia saw
nothing but the determination of Napoleon to suppress, in the beginning,
any such confederation of the Northern German States as had been
contemplated; and irritation and jealousy from day to day increased.
The relations of France and Prussia continued in this dubious state,
until the Cabinet of Berlin learned some particulars of a negotiation
between Napoleon and the English Government, which took place in the
summer of 1806.
Mr. Pitt, who despaired of opposing Buonaparte on the continent after
Marengo, did not long survive the disastrous intelligence of Austerlitz.
Worn out and broken by the endless anxieties of his situation, not even
the glorious tidings of Trafalgar could revive the sinking spirit of
this great minister. He died on the 23rd of January, 1806, and was
succeeded in the government by Mr. Fox, the same statesman who had,
throughout every variety of fortune, arraigned his conduct of the war as
imbecile and absurd, and who all along professed his belief that in the
original quarrel between Great Britain and revolutionised France, the
blame lay with his own country, and above all with Mr. Pitt.
The personal intercourse which took place between Fox and Napoleon,
during the peace of Amiens, has already been alluded to. It was
calculated to make all men regard the chances of a solid peace between
France and England as increased by the event which transferred the reins
of government, in the latter country, into the hands of the illustrious
opponent of Mr. Pitt. But the peculiar feelings of English politicians
have seldom been understood by foreigners--never more widely
misunderstood than by Buonaparte. When Fox visited him, as First Consul,
at the Tuileries, he complained that the English Government countenanced
the assassins who were plotting against his life. Mr. Fox, forgetting
all his party prejudice when the honour of his country was assailed,
answered in terms such as Napoleon's own military bluntness could not
have surpassed--"Clear your head of that nonsense." And now, in like
manner, Mr. Fox, once placed in the responsible management of his
country's interests, was found, not a little to the surprise and
disappointment of Napoleon, about as close and watchful a negotiator as
he could have had to deal with in Pitt himself. The English minister
employed on this occasion, first, Lord Yarmouth,[54] one of the
_detenus_ of 1803, and afterwards Lord Lauderdale. For some time strong
hopes of a satisfactory conclusion were entertained; but, in the end,
the negotiation broke up, on the absolute refusal of Napoleon to concede
Malta to England, unless England would permit him to conquer Sicily from
the unfortunate sovereign whose Italian Kingdom had already been
transferred to his brother Joseph. Mr. Fox was lost to his country in
September, 1806; and Napoleon ever afterwards maintained that, had that
great statesman lived, the negotiation would have been resumed, and
pushed to a successful close. Meantime, however, the diplomatic
intercourse of the Tuileries and St. James's was at an end, and the
course which the negotiation had taken transpired necessarily in
Parliament.
It then came out that the article of _Hanover_ had not formed one of the
chief difficulties;--in a word, Napoleon had signified that, although
the Electorate had been ceded by him to Prussia under the treaty of
Vienna, at the close of 1805, Prussia yielding to him in return the
principalities of Anspach, Bareuth and Neufchatel, still, if the English
Government would agree to abandon Sicily, he, on his part, would offer
no opposition to the resumption of Hanover by its rightful sovereign,
George III. This contemptuous treachery being ascertained at Berlin, the
ill-smothered rage of the court and nation at length burst into a flame.
The beautiful Queen of Prussia, and Prince Louis, brother to the king,
two characters whose high and romantic qualities rendered them the
delight and pride of the nation, were foremost to nourish and kindle the
popular indignation. The young nobility and gentry rose in tumult, broke
the windows of the ministers who were supposed to lean to the French
interest, and openly whetted their sabres on the threshold-stone of
Napoleon's ambassador. The lovely Queen appeared in the uniform of the
regiment which bore her name, and rode at its head. The enthusiasm of
the people thus roused might be directed, but could hardly be repressed.
Nor was it in Prussia alone that such sentiments prevailed. Split as
Germany has for ages been into many independent states, there has
always, nevertheless, been felt, and acknowledged, a certain national
unity of heart as well as head among all that speak the German language:
the dissolution of the empire was felt all over the land as a common
wrong and injury: Napoleon's insulting treatment of Prussia was resented
as indicative of his resolution to reduce that power also (the only
German power now capable of opposing any resistance to French
aggression) to a pitch of humiliation as low as that in which Austria
was already sunk; and, lastly, another atrocious deed of the French
Emperor--a deed as darkly unpardonable as the murder of D'Enghien--was
perpetrated at this very crisis, and arrayed against him, throughout all
Germany, every feeling, moral and political, which could be touched
either by the crimes or the contumelies of a foreign tyrant.
Palm, a bookseller of the free city of Naumburg, having published a
pamphlet in which the ambition of Napoleon was arraigned, a party of
French gens-d'armes passed the frontier, and seized the unsuspecting
citizen, exactly as the Duke d'Enghien had been arrested at Ettingen,
and Sir George Rumbold at Hamburg, the year before. The bookseller was
tried for a libel against Napoleon, at Braunau, before a French
court-martial; found guilty, condemned to death, and shot immediately,
in pursuance of his sentence. It is needless to dwell upon this outrage:
the death of D'Enghien has found advocates or palliators--this mean
murder of a humble tradesman, who neither was nor ever had been a
subject either of France or Buonaparte, has been less fortunate.
The Emperor of Russia once more visited Berlin, when the feelings of
Prussia, and indeed of all the neighbouring states, were in this fever
of excitement. He again urged Frederick William to take up arms in the
common cause, and offered to back him with all the forces of his own
great empire. The English Government, taking advantage of the same
crisis, sent Lord Morpeth[55] to Berlin, with offers of pecuniary
supplies--about the acceptance of which, however, the anxiety of Prussia
on the subject of Hanover created some difficulty. Lastly, Buonaparte,
well informed of what was passing in Berlin, and desirous, since war
must be, to hurry Frederick into the field ere the armies of the Czar
could be joined with his, now poured out in the _Moniteur_ such abuse on
the persons and characters of the Queen, Prince Louis, and every
illustrious patriot throughout Prussia, that the general wrath could no
longer be held in check. Warlike preparations of every kind filled the
kingdom during August and September. On the first of October the
Prussian Minister at Paris presented a note to Talleyrand, demanding,
among other things, that the formation of a Confederacy in the North of
Germany should no longer be thwarted by French interference, and that
the French troops within the territories of the Rhenish League should
recross the Rhine into France, by the 8th of the same month of October.
But Napoleon was already in person on the German side of the Rhine; and
his answer to the Prussian note was a general order to his own troops,
in which he called on them to observe in what manner a German sovereign
still dared to insult the soldiers of Austerlitz.
The conduct of Prussia, in thus rushing into hostilities, without
waiting for the advance of the Russians, was as rash as her holding back
from Austria, during the campaign of Austerlitz, had been cowardly. As
if determined to profit by no lesson, the Prussian council also directed
their army to advance towards the French, instead of lying on their own
frontier--a repetition of the great leading blunder of the Austrians in
the preceding year. The Prussian army accordingly invaded the Saxon
provinces, and the Elector, seeing his country treated as rudely as that
of Bavaria had been on a similar occasion by the Austrians, and wanting
the means to withdraw his own troops as the Bavarian had succeeded in
doing under like provocation, was compelled to accept the alliance which
the Cabinet of Berlin urged on him, and to join his troops with those of
the power by which he had been thus insulted and wronged.
No sooner did Napoleon know that the Prussians had advanced into the
heart of Saxony, than he formed the plan of his campaign: and they,
persisting in their advance, and taking up their position finally on the
Saale, afforded him, as if studiously, the means of repeating, at their
expense, the very manoeuvres which had ruined the Austrians in the
preceding campaign. In a word, he perceived that the Prussian army was
extended upon too wide a line, and the consequent possibility of
destroying it in detail. He further discovered that the enemy had all
his principal stores and magazines at Naumburg, to the rearward, not of
his centre, but of his extreme right; and resolved to commence
operations by an attempt to turn the flank, and seize those magazines,
ere the main body of the Prussians, lying at Weimar, could be aware of
his movement. The French came forward in three great divisions; the
corps of Soult and Ney, in the direction of Hof; Murat, Bernadotte and
Davoust, towards Saalburg and Schleitz; and Lannes and Augereau upon
Coburg and Saalfield. These last generals were opposed sternly, at
Saalfield, by the corps of Prince Louis of Prussia. This brave young
officer imprudently abandoned the bridge over the Saale, which he might
have defended with success, and came out into the open plain, where his
troops were overpowered by the French impetuosity. He himself, fighting
hand to hand with a subaltern, was desired to surrender, and replying by
a sabre cut, was immediately struck down with a mortal thrust. The
Prussians fled; the bridge, which ought to have defended, gave the
French access to the country behind the Saale. The flank of the Prussian
position was turned: the French army passed entirely round them;
Napoleon seized Naumburg, and blew up the magazines there,--announcing,
for the first time, by this explosion, to the King of Prussia and his
Generalissimo, the Duke of Brunswick, that he was in their rear.
From this moment the Prussians were isolated, and cut off from all their
resources, as completely as the army of Mack was at Ulm, when the French
had passed the Danube and overrun Suabia. The Duke of Brunswick hastily
endeavoured to concentrate his forces for the purpose of cutting his way
back again to the frontier which he had so rashly abandoned. Napoleon,
meantime, had posted his divisions so as to watch the chief passages of
the Saale, and expected, in confidence, the assault of his outwitted
opponent. It was now that he found leisure to answer the manifesto of
Frederick William, which had reached Paris a day or two after he himself
quitted that capital for the camp. His letter, dated at Gera, is written
in the most elaborate style of insult. The King of Prussia (said he) had
sent him a silly pamphlet of twenty pages, in very bad French--such a
pamphlet as the English ministry were in the habit of commanding their
hireling scribblers to put forth--but he acquitted the King of having
read this performance. He was extremely anxious to live on the most
friendly terms with his "good brother," and begged him, as the first
token of equal goodwill, to dismiss the counsellors who had hurried him
into the present unjust and unequal war. Such was the language of this
famous note. Napoleon, now sure of his prey, desired his own generals to
observe how accurately he had already complied with one of the requests
of the Prussian Manifesto--"The French army," said he, "has done as it
was bidden. This is the 8th of October, and we _have_ evacuated the
territories of the Confederation of the Rhine."
The Prussian King understood well, on learning the fall of Naumburg, the
imminent danger of his position; and his army was forthwith set in
motion, in two great masses; the former, where he was in person present,
advancing towards Naumburg; the latter attempting, in like manner, to
force their passage through the French line in the neighbourhood of
Jena. The King's march was arrested at Auerstadt by Davoust, who, after
a severely contested action, at length repelled the assailant. Napoleon
himself, meanwhile, was engaged with the other great body of the
Prussians. Arriving on the evening of the 13th October at Jena, he
perceived that the enemy were ready to attempt the advance next morning,
while his own heavy train were still six-and-thirty hours' march in his
rear. Not discouraged with this adverse circumstance, the Emperor
laboured all night in directing and encouraging his soldiery to cut a
road through the rocks, and draw up by that means such light guns as he
had at command to a position, on a lofty plateau in front of Jena, where
no man could have expected beforehand that any artillery whatever should
be planted, and where, accordingly, the effect even of a small park
proved more decisive than that of a much larger one might have been
under other circumstances. Buonaparte spent all the night among the men,
offering large sums of gold for every piece that should be dragged to
the position, and continually reminding his followers that the Prussians
were about to fight not for honour, but for safety,--that they were
already isolated as completely as Mack's army had been at Ulm, and on
stern resistance must needs submit to the fate of the Austrians. Lannes
commanded the centre; Augereau the right; Soult the left; and Murat the
reserve and cavalry.
Soult had to sustain the first assault of the Prussians, which was
violent--and sudden; for the mist lay so thick on the field that the
armies were within half gunshot of each other ere the sun and wind rose
and discovered them; and on that instant Mollendorf charged. The battle
was contested well for some time on this point; but at length Ney
appeared in the rear of the Emperor with a fresh division; and then the
French centre advanced to a general charge, before which the Prussians
were forced to retire. They moved for some space in good order; but
Murat now poured his masses of cavalry on them, storm after storm, with
such rapidity and vehemence that their rout became inevitable. It ended
in the complete breaking up of the army--horse and foot all flying
together, in the confusion of panic, upon the road to Weimar. At that
point the fugitives met and mingled with their brethren flying, as
confusedly as themselves, from Auerstadt. In the course of this
disastrous day 20,000 Prussians were killed or taken; 300 guns, twenty
generals, and sixty standards. The Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of
Brunswick, being wounded in the face with a grape-shot, was carried
early off the field, never to recover. The loss of superior officers on
the Prussian side was so great, that of an army which, on the evening of
the 13th of October, mustered not less than 150,000, but a few regiments
were ever able to act in concert for some time after the 14th. The
various routed divisions roamed about the country, seeking separately
the means of escape: they were in consequence destined to fall an easy
prey. Mollendorf and the Prince of Orange-Fulda laid down their arms at
Erfurt. General Kalkreuth's corps was overtaken and surrounded among the
Hartz Mountains: Prince Eugene of Wirtemberg, and 16,000 men,
surrendered to Bernadotte at Halle. The Prince of Hohenlohe at length
drew together not less than 50,000 of these wandering soldiers, and
threw himself, at their head, into Magdeburg. But it turned out that
that great fortress had been stripped of all its stores for the service
of the Duke of Brunswick's army before Jena. Hohenlohe, therefore, was
compelled to retreat towards the Oder. He was defeated in a variety of
skirmishes; and at length, finding himself devoid of ammunition or
provisions, laid down his arms at Prenzlow; 20,000 surrendered with the
Prince. His rear, consisting of about 10,000, under the command of the
celebrated General Blucher, were so far behind as to render it possible
for them to attempt escape. Their heroic leader traversed the country
with them for some time unbroken, and sustained a variety of assaults,
from far superior numbers, with the most obstinate resolution. By
degrees, however, the French, under Soult, hemmed him in on one side,
Murat on the other, and Bernadotte appeared close behind him. He was
thus forced to throw himself into Lubeck, where a severe action was
fought in the streets of the town, on the 6th of November. The Prussian,
in this battle, lost 4000 prisoners, besides the slain and wounded: he
retreated to Schwerta, and there, it being impossible for him to go
farther without violating the neutrality of Denmark, on the morning of
the 7th, Blucher at length laid down his arms--having exhibited a
specimen of conduct and valour such as certainly had not been displayed
by any of his superiors in the campaign.
The strong fortresses of the Prussian monarchy made as ineffectual
resistance as the armies in the field. In how far the charge of actual
treachery, brought then, and still continued, against the commanders of
those places, be just, we know not; but the fact is certain that the
Governors of Spandau, Stettin, Custrin, Hamelen, and Magdeburg itself,
yielded successively to the French Generals, under circumstances which
roused the indignant suspicion of the Prussian people, as well as the
soldiery and their unfortunate King. Buonaparte, in person, entered
Berlin on the 25th of October: and before the end of November, except
Konigsberg--where the King himself had found refuge, and gathered round
him a few thousand troops, the sad relics of an army which had been
considered as not unable to withstand the whole power of France,--and a
few less important fortresses, the whole of the German possessions of
the house of Brandenburg were in the hands of the conqueror. Louis
Buonaparte, King of Holland, meanwhile, had advanced into Westphalia,
and occupied that territory also, with great part of Hanover, East
Friesland, Embden, and the dominions of Hesse-Cassel.
Thus in the course of a few short weeks, was the proud fabric of the
Prussian monarchy levelled with the ground. The government being of a
strictly military character, when the army, the pride and strength of
the nation, disappeared, every bond of union among the various provinces
of the crown seemed to be at once dissolved. To account for the
unexampled rapidity of such a downfall, it must be remembered, first,
that the Prussian states, many of them the fruits of recent military
conquest, were held together by little but the name of the great
Frederick, and the terror of the highly disciplined force, which he had
bequeathed to his successors; that, in a word, they had not yet had time
to be blended and melted thoroughly into a national whole: secondly,
that Prussia had rushed into this war not only with imprudent rashness,
but with the stain of dishonour on her hands. The acceptance of Hanover,
as a bribe, from the French despot, and the hard and brazen reluctance
to part with that ill-gotten spoil, even when the preservation of peace
with France seemed hopeless--these circumstances, together with the mean
desertion of Austria during the preceding campaign of Austerlitz--had,
in effect, injured the government deeply and degradingly in the opinion
of its own subjects, as well as of other nations: but, thirdly, the
imbecile conduct of the chief Prussian officers, in the campaign of
Jena, was as little likely to have been foreseen or expected, as the
pusillanimous, if not treacherous, baseness of those who, after the army
was defeated, abandoned so easily a chain of the best fortresses in
Europe.
The personal character of King Frederick William was never calumniated,
even when the measures of his government were most generally and most
justly exposed to suspicion and scorn. On the contrary, the misfortunes
of this virtuous sovereign and his family were heard of with unmixed
regret and compassion.
These sentiments, and all sentiments likely in their consequences to be
injurious to the cause of Napoleon, the conduct of the Conqueror in
Prussia, at this time of national humiliation and sorrow, was well
calculated to strengthen and confirm. The Duke of Brunswick, retiring
wounded from Jena to the capital of his own hereditary principality,
addressed a letter from thence to Napoleon, requesting that the
territory of Brunswick might not be confounded with that of Prussia,
although he, as an individual, had appeared in Prussian uniform against
him. Buonaparte answered with insolence as well as harshness. He styled
the Duke "General Brunswick," and said he was determined to destroy his
city, and displace his family for ever. The brave, though unfortunate
Duke, retired on this to Altona, a Danish town, from which he meant to
embark for England; but his wound being inflamed by these untimely
movements, he died ere a vessel could be prepared for him. His son,
considering him as murdered, vowed eternal revenge--and how he kept his
vow, we shall see hereafter. The Prussian nobility and gentry were
treated on almost every occasion with like brutality. The great
Conqueror did not hesitate to come down from his dignity for the petty
pleasure of personally insulting gentlemen, who had done him no injury
except that of being loyal to their own prince. The exactions of the
victorious military were beyond all former example of licence; and
studied contempt was everywhere mingled with their rapacity. It was now
that the French laid the foundation of that universal hatred with which
the Prussian nation, in the sequel, regarded them, and which assumed
everywhere the virulence of a private and personal passion.
In justice to Buonaparte, a solitary instance of generous conduct, which
occurred ere he had been long in Berlin, must be noticed. The Prince of
Hatzsfeld, continuing to reside in Berlin under his protection,
corresponded, nevertheless, with Hohenlohe, then in the field, and sent
information of the state and movements of the French army. One of his
letters fell into the hands of the French--the Prince was arrested--his
wife gained access to the Emperor, and, ignorant of her husband's
conduct, spoke with the boldness of innocence in his favour. He handed
to her the Prince's letter; and, confounded with the clearness of that
evidence, she fell on her knees in silence. "Put the paper in the fire,
madam," said Napoleon, "and there will then be no proof."
Perhaps no part of Buonaparte's conduct at this time gave more general
disgust than his meanness in robbing the funeral monument of Frederick
the Great of his sword and orders. These unworthy trophies he
transmitted to Paris, along with the best statues and pictures of the
galleries of Berlin and Potsdam, thus dealt with according to the
example of Lombardy and Venice.
[Footnote 53: Published 27th July, 1806.]
[Footnote 54: Afterwards third Marquis of Hertford.]
[Footnote 55: Afterwards sixth Earl of Carlisle.]