Lefebvre had already entered Innsbruck, and, according to his brutal custom, had plundered the villages and reduced them to ashes; he had also published a proscription-list[10] instead of the amnesty. A desperate resistance now commenced. The whole of the Tyrol again flew to arms; the young men placed in their green hats the bunch of rosemary gathered by the girl of their heart, the more aged a peacock's plume, the symbol of the house of Habsburg, all carried the rifle, so murderous in their hands; they made cannons of larch-wood, bound with iron rings, which did good service; they raised abatis, blew up rooks, piled immense masses of stone on the extreme edges of the precipitous rocks commanding the narrow vales, in order to hurl them upon the advancing foe, and directed the timber-slides in the forest-grown mountains, or those formed of logs by means of which the timber for building was usually run into the valleys, in such a manner upon the most important passes and bridges, as to enable them to shoot enormous trees down upon them with tremendous velocity.

Lefebvre resolved to advance with the main body of his forces across the Brenner to Botzen, whither another corps under Burscheidt also directed its way through the upper valley of the Inn, the Finstermunz, and Meran, while a third under Rusca came from Carinthia through the Pusterthal, and a fourth under Peyry was on the march from Verona through the vale of the Adige. These various corps d'armee, by which the Tyrol was thus attacked simultaneously on every point, were to concentrate in the heart of the country. Lefebvre found the Brenner open. The Tyrolese, headed by Haspinger, had burned the bridges on the Oberau and awaited the approach of the enemy on the heights commanding the narrow valley of Eisach. The Saxons under Rouyer were sent in advance by Lefebvre to shed their blood for a foreign despot. Rocks and trees hurled by the Tyrolese into the valley crushed numbers of them to death. Rouyer, after being slightly hurt by a rolling mass of rock, retreated after leaving orders to the Saxon regiment, composed of contingents from Weimar, Gotha, Coburg, Hildburghausen, Altenburg, and Meiningen, commanded by Colonel Egloffstein, to retain its position in the Oberau. This action took place on the 4th of August. The Saxons, worn out by the fatigue and danger to which they were exposed, were compelled, on the ensuing day, to make head in the narrow vale against overwhelming numbers of the Tyrolese, whose incessant attacks rendered a moment's repose impossible. Although faint with hunger and with the intensity of the heat, a part of the troops under Colonel Egloffstein succeeded in forcing their way through, though at an immense sacrifice of life,[11] and fell back upon Rouyer, who had taken up a position at Sterzing without fighting a stroke in their aid, and who expressed his astonishment at their escape. The rest of the Saxon troops were taken prisoners, after a desperate resistance, in the dwelling-houses of Oberau.[12] They had lost nearly a thousand men. The other corps d'armee met with no better fate. Burscheidt merely advanced up the valley of the Inn as far as the bridges of Pruz, whence, being repulsed by the Tyrolese and dreading destruction, he retreated during the dark night of the 8th of August. His infantry crept, silent and unheard, across the bridge of Pontlaz, of such fatal celebrity in 1703, which was strictly watched by the Tyrolese. The cavalry cautiously followed, but were betrayed by the sound of one of the horses' feet. Rocks and trees were in an instant hurled upon the bridge, crushing men and horses and blocking up the way. The darkness that veiled the scene but added to its horrors. The whole of the troops shut up beyond the bridge were either killed or taken prisoner. Burscheidt reached Innsbruck with merely a handful of men, completely worn out by the incessant pursuit. Rusca was also repulsed, between the 6th and the 11th of August (particularly at the bridge of Lienz), in the Pusterthal, by brave Antony Steger. Rusca had set two hundred farms on fire. Twelve hundred of his men were killed, and his retreat was accelerated by Steger's threat to roast him, in case he fell into his hands, like a scorpion, within a fiery circle. Peyry did not venture into the country.

Lefebvre, who had followed to the rear of the Saxon troops from Innsbruck, bitterly reproached them with their defeat, but, although he placed himself in advance, did not succeed in penetrating as far as they had up the country. At Mauls, his cavalry were torn from their saddles and killed with clubs, and he escaped, with great difficulty, after losing his cocked hat. His corps, notwithstanding its numerical strength, was unable to advance a step further. The Capuchin harassed his advanced guard from Mauls and was seconded by Speckbacher from Stilfs, while Count Arco was attacked to his rear at Schonberg by multitudes of Tyrolese. The contest was carried on without intermission from the 5th to the 10th of August. Lefebvre was finally compelled to retreat with his thinned and weary troops.[13] On the 11th, Deroy posted himself with the rearguard on the mountain of Isel. The Capuchin, after reading mass under the open sky to his followers, again attacked him on the 13th. A horrible slaughter ensued. Four hundred Bavarians, who had fallen beneath the clubs of their infuriated antagonists, lay in a confused heap. The enemy evacuated Innsbruck and the whole of the Tyrol.[14] Count Arco was one of the last victims of this bloody campaign.

The Sandwirth, placed himself at the head of the government at Innsbruck. Although a simple peasant and ever faithful to the habits of his station,[15] he laid down some admirable rules, convoked a national assembly, and raised the confidence of the people of Carinthia, to whom he addressed a proclamation remarkable for dignity. He hoped, at that time, by summoning the whole of the mountain tribes to arms and leading them to Vienna, to compel the enemy to accede to more favorable terms of peace. Speckbacher penetrated into the district of Salzburg, defeated the Bavarians at Lofers and Unken, took one thousand seven hundred prisoners, and advanced as far as Reichenhall and Melek. The Capuchin proposed, in his zeal, to storm Salzburg and invade Carinthia, but was withheld by Speckbacher, who saw the hazard attached to the project, as well as the peril that would attend the departure of the Tyrolese from their country. His plan merely consisted in covering the eastern frontier. His son, Anderle, who had escaped from his secluded Alp, unexpectedly joined him and fought at his side. Speckbacher was stationed at Melek, where he drove Major Rummele with his Bavarian battalion into the Salzach, but was shortly afterward surprised by treachery. He had already been deprived of his arms, thrown to the ground, and seriously injured with blows dealt with a club, when, furiously springing to his feet, he struck his opponents to the earth and escaped with a hundred of his men across a wall of rock unscalable save by the foot of the expert and hardy mountaineer. His young son was torn from his side and taken captive. The king, Maximilian Joseph, touched by his courage and beauty, sent for him and had him well educated.—The Capuchin, who had reached Muhrau in Styria, was also compelled to retire.

The peace of Vienna, in which the Tyrolese were not even mentioned, was meanwhile concluded. The restoration of the Tyrol to Bavaria was tacitly understood, and, in order to reduce the country to obedience, three fresh armies again approached the frontiers, the Italian, Peyry, from the south through the valley of the Adige, and Baraguay d'Hilliers from the west through the Pusterthal; the former suffered a disastrous defeat above Trent, but was rescued from utter destruction by General Vial, who had followed to his rear, and who, as well as Baraguay, advanced as far as Brixen.[16] Drouet d'Erlon, with the main body of the Bavarians, came from the north across the Strub and the Loferpass, and gained forcible possession of the Engpass. Hofer had been persuaded by the priest, Donay, to relinquish the anterior passes into the country and Innsbruck, and to take up a strong position on the fortified mountain of Isel. Speckbacher arrived too late to defend Innsbruck, and, enraged at the ill-laid plan of defence, threw a body of his men into the Zillerthal in order to prevent the Bavarians from falling upon Hofer's rear. He was again twice wounded at the storming of the Kemmberg, which had already been fortified by the Bavarians. On the 25th of October, the Bavarians entered Innsbruck and summoned Hofer to capitulate. During the night of the 30th, Baron Lichtenthurm appeared in the Tyrolese camp, announced the conclusion of peace, and delivered a letter from the Archduke John, in which the Tyrolese were commanded peaceably to disperse and no longer to offer their lives a useless sacrifice. There was no warrant for the future, not a memory of an earlier pledge. The commands of their beloved master were obeyed by the Tyrolese with feelings of bitter regret, and a complete dispersion took place. Speckbacher alone maintained his ground, and repulsed the enemy on the 2d and 3d of November, but, being told, in a letter, by Hofer, "I announce to you that Austria has made peace with France and has forgotten the Tyrol," he gave up all further opposition, and Mayer and Kemnater, who had gallantly made head against General Rusca at the Muhlbacher Klause, followed his example.

The tragedy drew to a close. Hofer returned to his native vale, where the people of Passeyr and Algund, resolved at all hazards not to submit to the depredations of the Italian brigands under Rusca, flocked around him and compelled him to place himself at their head for a last and desperate struggle. Above Meran, the French were thrown in such numbers from the Franzosenbuhl, which still retains its name, that "they fell like a shower of autumnal leaves into the city." The horses belonging to a division of cavalry intended to surround the insurgent peasantry were all that returned; their riders had been shot to a man. Rusca lost five hundred dead and one thousand seven hundred prisoners. The Capuchin was also present, and generously saved the captive Major Doreille, whose men had formerly set fire to a village, from the hands of the infuriated peasantry. But a traitor guided the enemy to the rear of the brave band of patriots; Peter Thalguter fell, and Hofer took refuge amid the highest Alps.—Kolb, who was by some supposed to be an English agent, but who was simply an enthusiast, again summoned the peasantry around Brixen to arms. The peasantry still retained such a degree of courage, as to set up an enormous barn-door as a target for the French artillery, and at every shot up jumped a ludicrous figure. Resistance had, however, ceased to be general; the French pressed in ever-increasing numbers through the valleys, disarmed the people, the majority of whom, obedient to Hofer's first mandate, no longer attempted opposition, and took their leaders captive. Peter Mayer was shot at Botzen. His life was offered to him on condition of his denying all participation in the patriotic struggles of his countrymen, but he disdained a lie and boldly faced death. Those among the peasantry most distinguished for gallantry were either shot or hanged. Baur, a Bavarian author, who had fought against the Tyrolese, and is consequently a trusty witness, remarks that all the Tyroleso patriots, without exception, evinced the greatest contempt of death. The struggle recommenced in the winter, but was merely confined to the Pusterthal. A French division under Broussier was cut off on the snowed-up roads and shot to a man by the peasantry.

Hofer at first took refuge with his wife and child in a narrow rocky hollow in the Kellerlager, afterward in the highest Alpine hut, near the Oetzthaler Firner in the wintry desert. Vainly was he implored to quit the country; his resolution to live or to die on his native soil was unchangeable. A peasant named Raffel, unfortunately descrying the smoke from the distant hut, discovered his place of concealment, and boasted in different places of his possession of the secret of his hiding-place. This came to the ears of Father Donay, a traitor in the pay of France;[17] Raffel was arrested, and, in the night of the 27th of January, 1810, guided one thousand six hundred French and Italian troops to the mountain, while two thousand French were quartered in the circumjacent country. Hofer yielded himself prisoner with calm dignity. The Italians abused him personally, tore out his beard, and dragged him pinioned, half naked and barefoot, in his night-dress, over ice and snow to the valley. He was then put into a carriage and carried into Italy to the fortress of Mantua. No one interceded in his behalf. Napoleon sent orders by the Paris telegraph to shoot him within four-and-twenty hours. He prepared cheerfully for death.[18] On being led past the other Tyrolese prisoners, they embraced his knees, weeping. He gave them his blessing. His executioners halted not far from the Porta Chiesa, where, placing himself opposite the twelve riflemen selected for the dreadful office, he refused either to allow himself to be blindfolded or to kneel. "I stand before my Creator," he exclaimed with a firm voice, "and standing will I restore to Him the spirit He gave!" He gave the signal to fire, but the men, it may be, too deeply moved by the scene, missed their aim. The first fire brought him on his knees, the second stretched him on the ground, and a corporal, advancing, terminated his misery by shooting him through the head, February 29, 1810.—At a later period, when Mantua again became Austrian, the Tyrolese bore his remains back to his native Alps. A handsome monument of white marble was erected to his memory in the church at Innsbruck; his family was ennobled. Count Alexander of Wurtemberg has poetically described the restoration of his remains to the Tyrol, for which he so nobly fought and died.

"How was the gallant hunter's breast With mingled feelings torn, As slowly winding 'mid the Alps, His hero's corpse was borne!

"The ancient Gletcher, glowing red, Though cold their wonted mien, Bright radiance shed o'er Hofer's head, Loud thundered the lavine!"

Haspinger, the brave Capuchin, escaped unhurt to Vienna, in which Joseph Speckbacher, the greatest hero of this war, also succeeded, after unheard-of suffering and peril.—The Bavarians in pursuit of him searched the mountains in troops, and vowed to "cut his skin into boot-straps, if they caught him." Speckbacher attempted to escape into Austria, but was unable to go beyond Dux, the roads being blocked up with snow. At Dux, the Bavarians came upon his trace, and attacking the house in which he had taken refuge, he escaped by leaping through the roof, but again wounded himself. During the ensuing twenty-seven days, he wandered about the snow-clad forests, exposed to the bitter cold and in danger of starvation. During four consecutive days he did not taste food. He at length found an asylum in a hut in a high and exposed situation at Bolderberg, where he by chance fell in with his wife and children, who had also taken refuge there. The watchful Bavarians pursued him even here, and he merely owed his escape to the presence of mind with which, taking a sledge upon his shoulders, he advanced toward them as if he had been the servant of the house. No longer safe in this retreat, he hid himself in a cave on the Gemshaken, whence he was, in the beginning of spring, carried by a snow-ravine a mile and a half into the valley. He contrived to disengage himself from the snow, but one of his legs had been dislocated and rendered it impossible for him to regain his cave. Suffering unspeakable anguish, he crept to the nearest hut, where he found two men, who carried him to his own house at Rinn, whither his wife had returned. But Bavarians were quartered in the house, and his only place of refuge was the cow-shed, where Zoppel, his faithful servant, dug for him a hole beneath the bed of one of the cows, and daily brought him food. The danger of discovery was so great that his wife was not made acquainted with his arrival. He remained in this half-buried state for seven weeks, until rest had so far invigorated his frame as to enable him to escape across the high mountain passes, now freed by the May sun from the snow. He accordingly rose from his grave and bade adieu to his sorrowing wife. He reached Vienna without encountering further mishap, but gained no thanks for his heroism. He was compelled to give up a small estate that he had purchased with the remains of his property, the purchase-money proving insufficient, and he must have been consigned to beggary, had not Hofer's son, who had received a fine estate from the emperor, engaged him as his steward.

[Footnote 1: Without any attempt being made on the part of the government to prepare the minds of the people by proper instruction, the children were taken away by force in order to be inoculated for the smallpox. The mothers, under an idea that their infants were being bewitched or poisoned, trembled with rage and fear, while the Bavarian authorities and their servants mocked their dismay.]

[Footnote 2: Hofer was, in 1790, as the deputy of the Passeyrthal, a member of the diet at Innsbruck which so zealously opposed the reforms attempted by Joseph II.; he had fought, as captain of a rifle corps, against the French in 1796, and, in 1805, when bidding farewell to the Archduke John on the enforced cession of the Tyrol by Austria to Bavaria, had received a significant shake of the hand with an expressed hope of seeing him again in better times. Hofer traded in wine, corn and horses, was well known and highly esteemed as far as the Italian frontier. He had a Herculean form and was remarkably good-looking. He wore a low-crowned, broad-brimmed black Tyrolean hat, ornamented with green ribbons and the feathers of the capercalzie. His broad chest was covered with a red waistcoat, across which green braces, a hand in breadth, were fastened to black chamois-leather knee-breeches. His knees were bare, but his well-developed calves were covered with red stockings. A broad black leathern girdle clasped his muscular form. Over all was thrown a short green coat without buttons. His long dark-brown beard, that fell in rich curls upon his chest, added dignity to his appearance. His full, broad countenance was expressive of good-humor and honesty. His small, penetrating eyes sparkled with vivacity.]

[Footnote 3: A youth of two-and-twenty, slight in person and extremely handsome, at that time a bridegroom, and inspired by the deepest hatred of the Bavarians, by whose officers he had been personally insulted.]

[Footnote 4: The daughter of a tailor, named Camper. As the balls flew around her, she shouted, "On with ye! who cares for Bavarian dumplings!"]

[Footnote 5: The Austrian general, Marschall, who had been sent to guard the Southern Tyrol, was removed for declaring that he deemed it an insult for the military to make common cause with peasants and for complaining of his being compelled to sit down to table with Hofer.]

[Footnote 6: Proclamation of the emperor Francis to the Tyrolese: "Willingly do I anticipate your wish to be regarded as the most faithful subjects of the Austrian empire. Never again shall the sad fate of being torn from my heart befall you."]

[Footnote 7: The Count von Stachelburg from Meran, who fought as a volunteer among the peasantry, fell at that time. He was the last of his race.]

[Footnote 8: He was joined here by his son Anderl, a child ten years of age, who collected the enemy's balls in his hat, and so obstinately refused to quit the field of battle that his father was compelled to have him carried by force to a distant alp.]

[Footnote 9: He paid a visit, in disguise, to the commandant within the fortress, extinguished a grenade with his hat, crept undiscovered into the fortress and spoiled the fire-engines, cut loose the ships moored beneath the walls, etc. Joseph Speckbacher of the Innthal was an open-hearted, fine-spirited fellow, endowed with a giant's strength, and the best marksman in the country. His clear bright eye could, at the distance of half a mile, distinguish the bells on the necks of the cattle. In his youth, he was addicted to poaching, and being, on one occasion, when in the act of roasting a chamois, surprised by four Bavarian Jaeger, he unhesitatingly dashed the melted fat of the animal into their faces, and, quick as lightning, dealt each of them a deathblow with the butt-end of his rifle.]

[Footnote 10: He cited the following names immortal in the Tyrol: A. Hofer, Straub of Hall, Reider of Botzen, Bombardi, postmaster of Salurn, Morandel of Kaltern, Resz of Fleims, Tschoell of Meran, Frischmann of Schlanders, Senn, sheriff of Nauders, Fischer, actuary of Landek, Strehle, burgomaster of Imbst, Plawen, governor of Reutti, Major Dietrich of Lermos, Aschenbacher, governor of the Achenthal, Sieberer of Cuffstein, Wintersteller of Kisbuechl, Kolb of Lienz, Count Sarntheim, Peer, counsellor to the court of appeal. Count Sarntheim was taken prisoner and carried into Bavaria, together with the heroic Baroness of Sternbach, who, mounted on horseback and armed with pistols, accompanied the patriot force and aided in the command. She was seized in her castle of Muehlan, imprisoned in a house of correction at Munich, and afterward carried to Strasburg, was deprived of the whole of her property, ignominiously treated, and threatened with death, but never lost courage.—Beda, Water's Tyrol. Wintersteller was a descendant of the brave host of the same name who, in 1703, adorned his house, which was afterward occupied by Wintersteller, with the trophies won from the Bavarians.]

[Footnote 11: When incessantly pursued and ready to drop with fatigue, they found a cask of wine, and a drummer, knocking off its head, stooped down to drink, when he was pierced with a bullet, and his blood mingled with the liquor, which was, nevertheless, greedily swallowed by the famishing soldiery.—Jacob's Campaign of the Gotha-Altenburgers.]

[Footnote 12: The Tyrolese aimed at the windows and shot every one who looked out. As soon as the houses were, by this means, filled with the dead and wounded, they stormed them and took the survivors prisoner. Two hundred and thirty men of Weimar and Coburg, commanded by Major Germar, defended themselves to the last; the house in which they were being at length completely surrounded and set on fire by the Tyrolese, they surrendered. This spot was afterward known as the "Sachsenklemme." Seven hundred Saxon prisoners escaped from their guards and took refuge on the Krimmer Tauern, where they were recaptured by the armed women and girls.]

[Footnote 13: Bartholdy relates that Lefebvre, disguised as a common soldier, mingled with the cavalry in order to escape the balls of the Tyrolese sharpshooters. A man of Passeyr is said to have captured a three-pounder and to have carried it on his shoulders across the mountain. The Tyrolese would even carry their wounded enemies carefully on their shoulders to their villages. A Count Mohr greatly distinguished himself among the people of Vintschgau. The spirit shown by an old man above eighty years of age, who, after shooting a number of the enemy from a rock on which he had posted himself, threw himself, exclaiming "Juhhe! in God's name!" down the precipice, with a Saxon soldier, by whom he had been seized, is worthy of record.]

[Footnote 14: Von Seebach, in his History of the Ducal Saxon Regiment, graphically describes the flight. During the night time, all the mountains around the beautiful valley of Innsbruck were lighted up with watch-fires. Lefebvre ordered his to be kept brightly burning while his troops silently withdrew.]

[Footnote 15: He did not set himself above his equals and followed his former simple mode of life. The emperor of Austria sent him a golden chain and three thousand ducats, the first money received by the Tyrol from Austria; but Hofer's pride was not raised by this mark of favor, and the naivete of his reply on this occasion has often been a subject of ridicule: "Sirs, I thank you. I have no news for you to-day. I have, it is true, three couriers on the road, the Watscher-Hiesele, the Sixten-Seppele, and the Memmele-Franz, and the Schwanz ought long to have been here; I expect the rascal every hour." The honest fellow permitted no pillage, no disorderly conduct; he even guarded the public morals with such strictness as to publish the following orders against the half-naked mode, imported by the French, at that time followed by the women: "Many of my good fellow-soldiers and defenders of their country have complained that the women of all ranks cover their bosoms and arms too little, or with transparent dresses, and by these means raise sinful desires highly displeasing to God and to all piously-disposed persons. It is hoped that they will, by better behavior, preserve themselves from the punishment of God, and, in case of the contrary, must solely blame themselves should they find themselves disagreeably covered. Andre Hofer, chief in command in the Tyrol."]

[Footnote 16: During the pillage of the monastery of Seeben by the French, a nun, in order to escape from their hands, cast herself from the summit of the rock into the valley.]

[Footnote 17: Donay had devoted himself to the service of the church, but having committed a theft, had been refused ordination. Napoleon rewarded him for his treachery with ordination and the appointment of chaplain in the Santa Casa at Loretto.]

[Footnote 18: Four hours before his execution he wrote to his brother-in-law, Poehler, "My beloved, the hostess, is to have mass read for my soul at St. Marin by the rosy-colored blood. She is to have prayers read in both parishes, and is to let the sub-landlord give my friends soup, meat, and half a bottle of wine each. The money I had with me I have distributed to the poor; as for the rest, settle my accounts with the people as justly as you can. All in the world adieu, until we all meet in heaven eternally to praise God. Death appears to me so easy that my eyes have not once been wet on that account. Written at five o'clock in the morning, and at nine o'clock I set off with the aid of all the saints on my journey to God."]



CCLVIII. Napoleon's Supremacy

Napoleon had, during the great war in Austria, during the intermediate time between the battles of Aspern and Wagram, caused the person of the pope, Pius VII., to be seized, and had incorporated the state of the church with his Italian kingdom. The venerable pope, whose energies were called forth by misfortune, astonished Christendom by his bold opposition to the ruler over the destinies of Europe, before whom he had formerly bent in humble submission, and for whose coronation he had condescended to visit Paris in person. The reestablishment of Catholicism in France by Napoleon had rendered the pope deeply his debtor, but Napoleon's attempt to deprive him of all temporal power, and to render him, as the first bishop of his realm, subordinate to himself, called forth a sturdy opposition. Napoleon no sooner spoke the language of Charlemagne than the pope responded in the words of Gregory VII. and of Innocent IV.: "Time has produced no change in the authority of the pope; now as ever does the pope reign supreme over the emperors and kings of the earth." The diplomatic dispute was carried on for some time, owing to Napoleon's expectation of the final compliance of the pope.[1] But on his continued refusal to submit, the peril with which Napoleon's Italian possessions were threatened by the landing of a British force in Italy and by the war with Austria, induced him, first of all, to throw a garrison into Ancona, and afterward to take possession of Rome, and, as the pope still continued obstinate, finally to seize his person, to carry him off to France, and to annex the Roman territory to his great empire. The anathema hurled by the pope upon Napoleon's head had at least the effect of creating a warmer interest in behalf of the pontiff in the hearts of the Catholic population and of increasing their secret antipathy toward his antagonist.

In 1810, Napoleon annexed Holland and East Friesland "as alluvial lands" to France. His brother Louis, who had vainly labored for the welfare of Holland, selected a foreign residence and scornfully refused to accept the pension settled upon him by Napoleon. The first act of the new sovereign of Holland was the imposition of an income tax of fifty per cent. Instruction in the French language was enforced in all the schools, and all public proclamations and documents were drawn up in both Dutch and French.[2] Holland was formed into two departments, which were vexed by two prefects, the Conte de Celles and Baron Staffart, Belgian renegades and blind tools of the French despot, and was, moreover, harassed by the tyrannical and cruel espionage, under Duvillieres, Duterrage, and Marivaux, which, in 1812, occasioned several ineffectual attempts to throw off the yoke.[3] In 1811, Holland was also deprived of Batavia, her sole remaining colony, by the British.

Lower Saxony, as far as the Baltic, the principalities of Oldenburg, Salm, and Aremberg, the Hanse towns, Hamburg, Bremen, and Lubeck, were, together with a portion of the kingdom of Westphalia, at the same time also incorporated by Napoleon with France, under pretext of putting a stop to the contraband trade carried on on those coasts, more particularly from the island of Heligoland. He openly aimed at converting the Germans, and they certainly discovered little disinclination to the metamorphosis, into French. He pursued the same policy toward the Italians, and, had he continued to reign, would have followed a similar system toward the Poles. The subjection of the whole of Italy, Germany, and Poland lay within his power, but, to the nations inhabiting those countries he must, notwithstanding their incorporation with his universal empire, have guaranteed the maintenance of their integrity, a point he had resolved at all hazards not to concede. He, consequently, preferred dividing these nations and allowing one-half to be governed by princes inimical to him, but whose power he despised. His sole dread was patriotism, the popular love of liberty. Had he placed himself, as was possible in 1809, on the imperial throne of Germany, the consequent unity of that empire must, even under foreign sway, have endangered the ruler: he preferred gradually to gallicize Germany as she had been formerly romanized by her ancient conquerors. His intention to sever the Rhenish provinces and Lower Saxony entirely from Germany was clear as day. They received French laws, French governors, no German book was allowed to cross their frontiers without previous permission from the police, and in each department but one newspaper, and that subject to the revision of the prefect, was allowed to be published.—In Hamburg, one Baumhauer was arrested for an anti-gallic expression and thrown into the subterranean dungeons of Magdeburg, where he pined to death. The same tyranny was exercised even on the German territory belonging to the Rhenish confederation. Becker, privy-councillor of the duke of Gotha, was transported beyond the seas for having published a pamphlet against France. Several authors were compelled to retire into Sweden and Russia; several booksellers were arrested, numerous books were confiscated. Not the most trifling publication was permitted within the Rhenish confederated states that even remotely opposed the interests of France. The whole of the princes of the Rhenish confederation were, consequently, under the surveillance of French censors and of the literary spies of Germany in the pay of France. Hormayr's Archives contain a pamphlet well worthy of perusal, in which an account is given of all the arrests and persecutions that took place on account of matters connected with the press.—Madame de Stael was exiled for having spoken favorably of the German character in her work "de l'Allemagne," and the work itself was suppressed; Napoleon, on giving these orders, merely said, "Ce livre n'est pas Francais,"

His treatment of Switzerland was equally unindulgent. The Valais, which, although not forming part of Switzerland, still retained a sort of nominal independence, was formally incorporated with France; the canton of Tessin was, as arbitrarily, occupied by French troops, an immense quantity of British goods was confiscated, the press was placed under the strictest censorship, the Erzaehler of Muller- Friedeberg, the only remaining Swiss newspaper of liberal tendency, was suppressed, while Zschokke unweariedly lauded Napoleon to the skies as the regenerator of the liberties of Switzerland and as the savior of the world. A humble entreaty of the Swiss for mercy was scornfully refused by Napoleon. Instead of listening to their complaints, he reproached their envoys, who were headed by Reinhard of Zurich, in the most violent terms, charged the Swiss with conspiracy, and said that a certain Sydler had ventured to speak against him in the federal diet, etc.; nor could his assumed anger be pacified save by the instant dissolution of the federal diet, by the extension of the levy of Swiss recruits for the service of France, and by the threat of a terrible punishment to all Swiss who ventured to enter the service of England and Spain. The Swiss merely bound their chains still closer without receiving the slightest alleviation to their sufferings. Reinhard wrote in 1811, the time of this ill-successful attempt on the part of the Swiss, "a petty nation possesses no means of procuring justice." Why then did the great German nation sever itself into so many petty tribes?

The marriage of Napoleon on the 2d of April, 1810, with Maria Louisa, the daughter of the emperor of Austria, surrounded his throne with additional splendor. This marriage had a double object; that of raising an heir to his broad empire, his first wife, Josephine Beauharnais, whom he divorced, having brought him no children, and that of legitimating his authority and of obliterating the stain of low birth by intermingling his blood with that of the ancient race of Habsburg. Strange as it must appear for the child of revolution to deny the very principles to which he owed his being and to embrace the aristocratic ideas of a bygone age, for the proud conqueror of all the sovereigns of Europe anxiously to solicit their recognition of him as their equal in birth, these apparent contradictions are easily explained by the fact that men of liberal ideas were the objects of Napoleon's greatest dread and hatred, and that he was consequently driven to favor the ancient aristocracy, as he had formerly favored the ancient church, and to use them as his tools. Young and rising nations, not the ancient families of Europe, threatened his power, and he therefore sought to confirm it by an alliance against the former with the ancient dynasties.[4] The nuptials were solemnized with extraordinary pomp at Paris. The conflagration of the Austrian ambassador's, Prince von Schwarzenberg's, house during a splendid fete given by him to the newly-wedded pair, and which caused the death of several persons, among others, of the Princess Pauline Schwarzenberg, the ambassador's sister-in-law, who rushed into the flaming building to her daughter's rescue, clouded the festivities with ominous gloom. In the ensuing year, 1811, the youthful empress gave birth to a prince, Napoleon Francis, who was laid in a silver cradle, and provisionally entitled "King of Rome," in notification of his future destiny to succeed his father on the throne of the Roman empire.[5]

Austria offered a melancholy contrast to the magnificence of France. Exhausted by her continual exertions for the maintenance of the war, the state could no longer meet its obligations, and, on the 15th of March, 1811, Count Wallis, the minister of finance, lowered the value of one thousand and sixty millions of bank paper to two hundred and twelve millions, and the interest upon the whole of the state debts to half the new paper issue. This fearful state bankruptcy was accompanied by the fall of innumerable private firms; trade was completely at a standstill, and the contributions demanded by Napoleon amounted to a sum almost impossible to realize. Prussia, especially, suffered from the drain upon her resources. The beautiful and high-souled queen, Louisa, destined not to see the day of vengeance and of victory, died, in 1810, of a broken heart.[6]

While Germany lay thus exhausted and bleeding in her chains, Napoleon and Alexander put the plans, agreed to between them at Erfurt, into execution. Napoleon threw himself with redoubled violence on luckless Spain, and the Russians invaded Sweden.

The Germans acted a prominent part in the bloody wars in the Peninsula. Four Swiss regiments, that had at an earlier period been in the Spanish service, and the German Legion, composed of Hanoverian refugees to England, upheld the Spanish cause, while all sorts of troops of the Rhenish confederation, those of Bavaria and Wurtemberg excepted, several Dutch and four Swiss regiments, fought for Napoleon.

The troops of the Rhenish confederation formed two corps. The fate of one of them has been described by Captain Rigel of Baden. The Baden regiment was, in 1808, sent to Biscay and united under Lefebvre with other contingents of the Rhenish confederation, for instance, with the Nassauers under the gallant Von Schaefer, the Dutch under General Chasse, the Hessians, the Primates (Frankforters), and Poles. As early as October, they fought against the Spaniards at Zornoza, and at the pillage of Portugalete first became acquainted with the barbarous customs of this terrible civil war. The most implacable hatred, merciless rage, the assassination of prisoners, plunder, destruction, and incendiarism, equally distinguished both sides. The Germans garrisoned Bilboa, gained some successes at Molinar and Valmaseda, were afterward placed under the command of General Victor, who arrived with a fresh army, were again victorious at Espinosa and Burgos, formed a junction with Soult and finally with Napoleon, and, in December, 1808, entered Madrid in triumph.—In January, 1809, the German troops under Victor again advanced upon the Tagus, and, after a desperate conflict, took the celebrated bridge of Almaraz by storm. This was followed by the horrid sacking of the little town of Arenas, during which a Nassauer named Hornung, not only, like a second Scipio, generously released a beautiful girl who had fallen into his hands, but sword in hand defended her from his fellow-soldiers. In the following March, the Germans were again brought into action, at Mesa de Ibor, where Schaefer's Nassauers drove the enemy from their position, under a fearful fire, which cut down three hundred of their number; and at Medelin, where they were again victorious and massacred numbers of the armed Spanish peasantry. Four hundred prisoners were, after the battle, shot by order of Marshal Victor. Among the wounded on the field of battle there lay, side by side, Preusser, the Nassauer, and a Spanish corporal, both of whom had severely suffered. A dispute arose between them, in the midst of which they discovered that they were brothers. One had entered the French, the other the Spanish service.—A Dutch battalion under Storm de Grave, abandoned at Merida to the vengeance of the enraged people, was furiously assailed, but made a gallant defence and fought its way through the enemy.

In the commencement of 1809, Napoleon had again quitted Spain in order to conduct the war on the Danube in person. His marshals, left by him in different parts of the Peninsula, took Saragossa, drove the British under Sir John Moore out of the country, and penetrated into Portugal, but were ere long again attacked by a fresh English army under the Duke of Wellington. This rendered the junction of the German troops with the main body of the French army necessary, and they consequently shared in the defeats of Talavera and Almoncid. Their losses, more particularly in the latter engagement, were very considerable, amounting in all to two thousand six hundred men; among others, General Porbeck of Baden, an officer of noted talent, fell: five hundred of their wounded were butchered after the battle by the infuriated Spaniards. But Wellington suddenly stopped short in his victorious career. It was in December, 1809, when the news of the fresh peace concluded by Napoleon with Austria arrived. On the Spaniards hazarding a fresh engagement, Wellington left them totally unassisted, and, on the 19th of November, they suffered a dreadful defeat at Ocasia, where they lost twenty-five thousand men. The Rhenish confederated troops were, in reward for the gallantry displayed by them on this occasion, charged with the transport of the prisoners into France, and were exposed to the whole rigor of the climate and to every sort of deprivation while the French withdrew into winter quarters. The fatigues of this service greatly thinned their ranks. The other German regiments were sent into the Sierra Morena, where they were kept ever on the alert guarding that key to Spain, while the French under Soult advanced as far as Cadiz, those under Massena into Portugal; but Soult being unable to take Cadiz, and Massena being forced by the Duke of Wellington to retire, the German troops were also driven from their position, and, in 1812, withdrew to Valencia, but, in the October of the same year, again advanced with Soult upon Madrid.

The second corps of the Rhenish confederated troops was stationed in Catalonia, where they were fully occupied. Their fate has been described by two Saxon officers, Jacobs and Von Seebach. In the commencement of 1809, Reding the Swiss, who had, in 1808, chiefly contributed to the capture of the French army at Baylen, commanded the whole of the Spanish forces in Catalonia, consisting of forty thousand Spaniards and several thousand Swiss; but these guerilla troops, almost invincible in petty warfare, were totally unable to stand in open battle against the veterans of the French emperor, and Reding was completely routed by St. Cyr at Taragona. In St. Cyr's army were eight thousand Westphalians under General Morio, three thousand Berglanders, fifteen hundred Wurzburgers, from eight to nine hundred men of Schwarzburg, Lippe, Waldeck, and Reuss, all of whom were employed in the wearisome siege of Gerona, which was defended by Don Alvarez, one of Spain's greatest heroes. The popular enthusiasm was so intense that even the women took up arms (in the company of St. Barbara) and aided in the defence of the walls. The Germans, ever destined to head the assault, suffered immense losses on each attempt to carry the place by storm. In one attack alone, on the 3d of July, in which they met with a severe repulse, they lost two thousand of their men. Their demand of a truce for the purpose of carrying their wounded off the field of battle was answered by a Spaniard, Colonel Blas das Furnas, "A quarter of an hour hence not one of them will be alive!" and the whole of the wounded men were, in fact, murdered in cold blood by the Spaniards. During a second assault on the 19th of September, sixteen hundred of their number and the gallant Colonel Neuff, an Alsatian, who had served in Egypt, fell. Gerona was finally driven by famine to capitulate, after a sacrifice of twelve thousand men, principally Germans, before her walls. Of the eight thousand Westphalians but one battalion remained. St. Cyr was, in 1810, replaced by Marshal Augereau, but the troops were few in number and worn out with fatigue; a large convoy was lost in an unlucky engagement, in which numbers of the Germans deserted to the Spanish, and Augereau retired to Barcelona, the metropolis of Catalonia, in order to await the arrival of reinforcements, among which was a Nassau regiment, one of Anhalt, and the identical Saxon corps that had so dreadfully suffered in the Tyrol.[7] The Saxon and Nassau troops, two thousand two hundred strong, under the command of General Schwarz, an Alsatian, advanced from Barcelona toward the celebrated mountain of Montserrat, whose hermitages, piled up one above another en amphitheatre, excite the traveller's wonder. Close in its vicinity lay the city of Manresa, the focus of the Catalonian insurrection. The German troops advanced in close column, although surrounded by infuriated multitudes, by whom every straggler was mercilessly butchered. The two regiments, nevertheless, succeeded in making themselves masters of Manresa, where they were instantly shut in, furiously assailed, and threatened with momentary destruction. The Anhalt troops and a French corps, despatched by Augereau to their relief, were repulsed with considerable loss. Schwarz now boldly sallied forth, fought his way through the Spaniards, and, after losing a thousand men, succeeded in reaching Barcelona, but was shortly afterward, after assisting at the taking of Hostalrich, surprised at La Bisbal and taken prisoner with almost all the Saxon troops. The few that remained fell victims to disease.[8] The fate of the prisoners was indeed melancholy. Several thousand of them died on the Balearic Islands, chiefly on the island of Cabrera, where, naked and houseless, they dug for themselves holes in the sand and died in great numbers of starvation. They often also fell victims to the fury of the inhabitants. The Swiss engaged in the Spanish service, sometimes saved their lives at the hazard of their own.

Opposed to them was the German Legion, composed of the brave Hanoverians, who had preferred exile in Britain to submission to Jerome, and had been sent in British men-of-war to Portugal, whence they had, in conjunction with the troops of England and Spain, penetrated, in 1808, into the interior of Spain.[9] At Benavente, they made a furious charge upon the French and took their long-delayed revenge. Linsingen's cavalry cut down all before them; arms were severed at a blow, heads were split in two; one head was found cut in two across from one ear to the other. A young Hanoverian soldier took General Lefebvre prisoner, but allowed himself to be deprived of his valuable captive by an Englishman.—The Hanoverians served first under Sir John Moore. On the death of that commander at Corunna, the troops under his command returned to England: a ship of the line, with two Hanoverian battalions on board, was lost during the passage. The German Legion afterward served under the Duke of Wellington, and shared the dangers and the glory of the war in the Peninsula. "The admirable accuracy and rapidity of the German artillery under Major Hartmann greatly contributed to the victory of Talavera, and received the personal encomiums of the Duke."

Langwerth's brigade gained equal glory. The German Legion was, however, never in full force in Spain. A division was, in 1809, sent to the island of Walcheren, but shared the ill-success attending all the attempts made in the North Sea during Napoleon's reign. The conquest and demolition of Vliessingen in August was the only result. A pestilence broke out among the troops, and, on Napoleon's successes in Austria, it was compelled to return to England. A third division, consisting of several Hanoverian regiments, was sent to Sicily, accompanied the expedition to Naples in 1809, and afterward guarded the rocks of Sicily. The Hanoverians in Spain were also separated into various divisions, each of which gained great distinction, more particularly so, the corps of General Alten in the storming of Ciudad-Rodrigo. In 1812, the Hanoverian cavalry broke three French squares at Garcia Hernandez.

The Russians had, meanwhile, invaded Sweden. Gustavus Adolphus, hitherto Russia's firmest ally, was suddenly and treacherously attacked. General Buxhovden overran Finland, inciting the people, as he advanced, to revolt against their lawful sovereign. But the brave Finlanders stoutly resisted the attempted imposition of the yoke of the barbarous Russ, and, although ill-supported by Sweden, performed prodigies of valor. Gustavus Adolphus was devoid of military knowledge, and watched, as if sunk in torpor, the ill-planned operations of his generals. While the flower of the Swedish troops was uselessly employed against Denmark and Norway, Finland was allowed to fall into the grasp of Russia.[10] The Russians were already expected to land in Sweden, when a conspiracy broke out among the nobility and officers of the army, which terminated in the seizure of the king's person and his deposition, March, 1809. His son, Gustavus Vasa, the present ex-king of Sweden, was excluded from the succession, and his uncle Charles, the imbecile and unworthy duke of Sudermania,[11] was proclaimed king under the title of Charles XIII. He was put up as a scarecrow by the conspirators. Gustavus Adolphus IV. had, at all events, shown himself incapable of saving Sweden. But the conspirators were no patriots, nor was their object the preservation of their country; they were merely bribed traitors, weak and incapable as the monarch they had dethroned. They were composed of a party among the ancient nobility, impatient of the restrictions of a monarchy, and of the younger officers in the army, who were filled with enthusiasm for Napoleon. The rejoicings on the occasion of the abdication of Gustavus Adolphus were heightened by the news of the victory gained by Napoleon at Ratisbon, which, at the same time, reached Stockholm. The new and wretched Swedish government instantly deferred everything to Napoleon and humbly solicited his favor; but Napoleon, to whom the friendship of Russia was, at that time, of higher importance than the submission of a handful of intriguants in Sweden, received their homage with marked coldness. Finland, shamefully abandoned in her hour of need, was immediately ceded to Russia, in consideration of which, Napoleon graciously restored Rugen and Swedish-Pomerania to Sweden. Charles XIII. adopted, as his son and successor, Christian Augustus, prince of Holstein-Augustenburg, who, falling dead off his horse at a review,[12] the aged and childless monarch was compelled to make a second choice, which fell upon the French general, Bernadotte, who had, at one time, been a furious Jacobin and had afterward acted as Napoleon's general and commandant in Swedish-Pomerania, where he had, by his mildness, gained great popularity. The majority in Sweden deemed him merely a creature of Napoleon, whose favor they hoped to gain by this flattering choice; others, it may be, already beheld in him Napoleon's future foe, and knew the value of the sagacity and wisdom with which he was endowed, and of which the want was so deeply felt in Sweden at a period when intrigue and cunning had succeeded to violence. The Freemasons, with whom he had placed himself in close communication, appear to have greatly influenced his election.[13] The unfortunate king, Gustavus Adolphus, after being long kept a close prisoner in the castle of Gripsholm, where his strong religious bias had been strengthened by apparitions,[14] was permitted to retire into Germany; he disdainfully refused to accept of a pension, separated himself from his consort, a princess of Baden, and lived in proud poverty, under the name of Colonel Gustavson, in Switzerland.— Bernadotte, the newly adopted prince, took the title of Charles John, crown prince of Sweden. Napoleon, who was in ignorance of this intrigue, was taken by surprise, but, in the hope of Bernadotte's continued fidelity, presented him with a million en cadeau; Bernadotte had, however, been long jealous of Napoleon's fortune, and, solely intent upon gaining the hearts of his future subjects, deceived him and secretly permitted the British to trade with Sweden, although publicly a party in the continental system.

This system was at this period enforced with exaggerated severity by Napoleon. He not only prohibited the importation of all British goods, but seized all already sent to the continent and condemned them to be publicly burned. Millions evaporated in smoke, principally at Amsterdam, Hamburg, Frankfort, and Leipzig. The wealthiest mercantile establishments were made bankrupt.

In addition to the other blows at that time zealously bestowed upon the dead German lion, the king of Denmark attempted to extirpate the German language in Schleswig, but the edict to that effect, published on the 19th of January, 1811, was frustrated by the courage of the clergy, schoolmasters, and peasantry, who obstinately refused to learn Danish.[15]

[Footnote 1: The pope, among other things, long refused his consent to the second marriage of the king of Westphalia, although that prince's first wife was merely a Protestant and an American citizen.]

[Footnote 2: Bilderdyk, whom the Dutch consider as their greatest poet, was, nevertheless, at that time, Napoleon's basest flatterer, and ever expressed a hypochondriacal and senseless antipathy to Germany.]

[Footnote 3: At Amsterdam, in 1811; in the district around Leyden, in 1812. Insurrections of a similar character were suppressed in April, 1811, in the country around Liege; in December, 1812, at Aix-la- Chapelle; the East Frieslanders also rebelled against the conscription.]

[Footnote 4: It was during this year that Napoleon caused the seamless coat of the Saviour, which had, during the Revolution, taken refuge at Augsburg, to be borne in a magnificent procession to Treves and to be exposed for eighteen days to public view. The pilgrims amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand.—Hormayr, who had, during the foregoing year, summoned the Tyrolese to arms against Napoleon, said in his Annual for 1811, "By the marriage of the emperor Napoleon with Maria Louisa, the Revolution may be considered as completely terminated and peace durably settled throughout Europe."]

[Footnote 5: His birth was celebrated by numerous German poets and by general public rejoicings, but with the basest adulation in Switzerland. Meyer of Knonau relates, in his History of Switzerland, that the king of Rome was at one of the festivals termed "the blessed infant." Goethe's poem in praise of Napoleon appeared at this time. The clergy also emulated each other in servility.]

[Footnote 6: At that time the noble-hearted poet, Seume, who had formerly been a victim of native tyranny, died of sorrow and disgust at the rule of the foreigner in Germany, at Toeplitz, 1810.]

[Footnote 7: This regiment was merely rewarded by Napoleon for its gallantry with 15 gros (1s. 6-1/4d.) per man, in order to drink to his health on his birthday.—Von Seebach.]

[Footnote 8: What the feeling among the Germans was is plainly shown by the charge against General Beurmann for general ill-treatment of his countrymen, whom he was accused of having allowed to perish in the hospitals, in order to save the expense of their return home. Out of seventy officers and two thousand four hundred and twenty-three privates belonging to the Saxon regiment, but thirty-nine officers and three hundred and nineteen privates returned to their native country. Vide Jacob's Campaigns of the Gotha-Altenburgers and Von Seebach's History of the Campaigns of the Saxony Infantry. Von Seebach, who was taken prisoner on his return from Manresa, has given a particularly detailed and graphic account of the campaign.]

[Footnote 9: Beamish has recounted their exploits in detail. The "Recollections of a Legionary," Hanover, 1826, is also worthy of perusal.]

[Footnote 10: The gallant acts of the Finlanders and the brutality of the Russians are brought forward in Arndt's "Swedish Histories."]

[Footnote 11: When regent, on the death of Gustavus III., he had spared his murderers and released those criminated in the conspiracy. On the present occasion, he yielded in everything to the aristocracy, and voted for the dethronement of his own house, which, as he had no children, infallibly ensued on the exclusion of the youthful Gustavus.]

[Footnote 12: An extremely suspicious accident, which gave rise to many reports.]

[Footnote 13: Vide Posselt's Sixth Annual.]

[Footnote 14: This castle was haunted by the ghost of King Eric XIV., who had long pined here in close imprisonment, and who had once before, during a sumptuous entertainment given by Gustavus Adolphus IV. to his brother-in-law, the Margrave of Baden, struck the whole court with terror by his shrieks and groans.]

[Footnote 15: Wimpfen, History of Schleswig.]



CCLIX. The Russian Campaign

An enormous comet that, during the whole of the hot summer of 1811, hung threatening in the heavens, appeared as the harbinger of great and important vicissitudes to the enslaved inhabitants of the earth, and it was in truth by an act of Divine providence that a dispute arose between the two giant powers intent upon the partition of Europe.

Napoleon was over-reached by Russia, whose avarice, far from being glutted by the possession of Finland, great part of Prussian and Austrian Poland, Moldavia, and Wallachia, still craved for more, and who built her hopes of Napoleon's compliance with her demands on his value for her friendship. Belgrade was seized, Servia demanded, and the whole of Turkey in Europe openly grasped at. Napoleon was, however, little inclined to cede the Mediterranean to his Russian ally, to whose empire he gave the Danube as a boundary. Russia next demanded possession of the duchy of Warsaw, which was refused by Napoleon. The Austrian marriage was meanwhile concluded. Napoleon, prior to his demand for the hand of the archduchess Maria Louisa, had sued for that of the grandduchess Anna, sister to the emperor Alexander, who was then in her sixteenth year, but, being refused by her mother, the empress Maria, a princess of Wurtemberg, and Alexander delaying a decisive answer, he formed an alliance with the Habsburg. This event naturally led Russia to conclude that she would no longer be permitted to aggrandize herself at the expense of Austria, and Alexander consequently assumed a threatening posture and condescended to listen to the complaints, hitherto condemned to silence, of the agricultural and mercantile classes. No Russian vessel durst venture out to sea, and a Russian fleet had been seized by the British in the harbors of Lisbon. At Riga lay immense stores of grain in want of a foreign market. On the 31st of December, 1810, Alexander published a fresh tariff permitting the importation of colonial products under a neutral flag (several hundred English ships arrived under the American flag), and prohibiting the importation of French manufactured goods. Not many weeks previously, on the 13th of December, Napoleon had annexed Oldenburg to France. The duke, Peter, was nearly related to the emperor of Russia, and Napoleon, notwithstanding his declared readiness to grant a compensation, refused to allow it to consist of the grandduchy of Warsaw, and proposed a duchy of Erfurt, as yet uncreated, which Russia scornfully rejected.

The alliance between Russia, Sweden, and England was now speedily concluded. Sweden, who had vainly demanded from Napoleon the possession of Norway and a large supply of money, assumed a tone of indignation, threw open her harbors to the British merchantmen, and so openly carried on a contraband trade in Pomerania that Napoleon, in order to maintain the continental system, was constrained to garrison Swedish-Pomerania and Rugen, and to disarm the Swedish inhabitants. Bernadotte, upon this, ranged himself entirely on the side of his opponents, without, however, coming to an open rupture, for which he awaited a declaration on the part of Russia. The expressions made use of by Napoleon on the birth of the king of Rome at length filled up the measure of provocation. Intoxicated with success, he boasted, in an address to the mercantile classes, that he would in despite of Russia maintain the continental system, for he was lord over the whole of continental Europe; that if Alexander had not concluded a treaty with him at Tilsit he would have compelled him to do so at Petersburg.—The pride of the haughty Russian was deeply wounded, and a rupture was nigh at hand.

Two secret systems were at this period undermining each other in Prussia, that of the Tugendbund founded by Stein and Scharnhorst, whose object being the liberation of Germany at all hazards from the yoke of Napoleon, consequently, favored Russia, and that of Hardenberg, which aimed at a close union with France. Hardenberg, whose position as chancellor of state gave him the upper hand, had compromised Prussia by the servility with which he sued for an alliance long scornfully refused and at length conceded on the most humiliating terms by Napoleon.[1]

Russia had, meanwhile, made preparations for a war unanticipated by Napoleon. As early as 1811, a great Russian army stood ready for the invasion of Poland, and might, as there were at that time but few French troops in Germany, easily have advanced as far as the Elbe. It remained, nevertheless, in a state of inactivity.[2] Napoleon instantly prepared for war and fortified Dantzig. His continual proposals of peace, ever unsatisfactory to the ambition of the czar, remaining at length unanswered, he declared war. The Rhenish confederation followed as usual in his train, and Austria, from an interested motive, the hope of regaining in the East by Napoleon's assistance all she had lost by opposing him in the West, or that of regaining her station as the third European power when the resources of the two ruling powers, whose coalition had threatened her existence, had been exhausted by war. Prussia also followed the eagles of Napoleon: the Hardenberg party, with a view of conciliating him, and, like the Rhenish confederation, from motives of gain: the Tugendbund, which predominated in the army, with silent but implacable hate.

In the spring of 1812, Napoleon, after leaving a sufficient force to prosecute the war with activity in Spain and to guard France, Italy, and Germany,[3] led half a million men to the Russian frontiers. Before taking the field, he convoked all the princes of Germany to Dresden, where he treated them with such extreme insolence as even to revolt his most favored and warmest partisans. Tears were seen to start in ladies' eyes, while men bit their lips with rage at the petty humiliations and affronts heaped on them by their powerful but momentary lord. The empress of Austria[4] and the king of Prussia[5] appear, on this occasion, to have felt this most acutely.

For the first time—an event unknown in the history of the world—the whole of Germany was reduced to submission. Napoleon, greater than conquering Attila, who took the field at the head of one-half of Germany against the other, dragged the whole of Germany in his train. The army led by him to the steppes of Russia was principally composed of German troops, who were so skilfully mixed up with the French as not to be themselves aware of their numerical superiority. The right wing, composed of thirty thousand Austrians under Schwarzenberg, was destined for the invasion of Volhynia; while the left wing, consisting of twenty thousand Prussians under York and several thousand French, under the command of Marshal Macdonald, was ordered to advance upon the coasts of the Baltic and without loss of time to besiege Riga. The centre or main body consisted of the troops of the Rhenish confederation, more or less mixed up with French; of thirty-eight thousand Bavarians under Wrede and commanded by St. Cyr; of sixteen thousand Wurtembergers under Scheeler, over whom Marshal Ney was allotted the chief command; single regiments, principally cavalry, were drawn off in order more thoroughly to intermix the Germans with the French; of seventeen thousand Saxons under Reynier; of eighteen thousand Westphalians under Vandamme; also of Hessians, Badeners, Frankforters, Wurzburgers, Nassauers, in short, of contingents furnished by each of the confederated states. The Swiss were mostly concentrated under Oudinot. The Dutch, Hanseatic, Flemish, in fine, all the Germans on the left bank of the Rhine, were at that time crammed among the French troops. Upward of two hundred thousand Germans, at the lowest computation, marched against Russia, a number far superior to that of the French in the army, the remainder of which was made up by several thousand Italians, Portuguese, and Spaniards, who had been pressed into the service.[6]

The Prussians found themselves in the most degraded position. Their army, weak as it was in numbers, was placed under the command of a French general. The Prussian fortresses, with the exception of Colberg, Graudenz, Schweidnitz, Neisse, and Glatz, were already garrisoned with French troops, or, like Pillau near Koenigsberg, newly occupied by them. In Berlin, the French had unlimited sway. Marshal Augereau was stationed with sixty thousand men in Northern Germany for the purpose of keeping that part of the country, and more particularly Prussia, in check to Napoleon's rear; the Danish forces also stood in readiness to support him in case of necessity. Napoleon's entire army moreover marched through Prussia and completely drained that country of its last resources. Napoleon deemed it unnecessary to take measures equal in severity toward Austria, where the favor of the court seemed to be secured by his marriage, and the allegiance of the army by the presence of Schwarzenberg, who neither rejected nor returned his confidence. A rich compensation was, by a secret compact, secured to Austria in case the cession of Galicia should be necessitated by the expected restoration of the kingdom of Poland, with which Napoleon had long flattered the Poles, who, misled by his promises, served him with the greatest enthusiasm. But, notwithstanding the removal of the only obstacle, the jealousy of Austria in regard to Galicia, by this secret compact, his promises remained unfulfilled, and he took possession of the whole of Poland without restoring her ancient independence. The petitions addressed to him on this subject by the Poles received dubious replies, and he pursued toward his unfortunate dupes his ancient system of dismembering and intermingling nations, of tolerating no national unity. Napoleon's principal motive, however, was his expectation of compelling the emperor by a well-aimed blow to conclude peace, and of forming with him an alliance upon still more favorable terms against the rest of the European powers. The friendship of Russia was of far more import to him than all the enthusiasm of the Poles.

The deep conviction harbored by Napoleon of his irresistible power led him to repay every service and to regard every antagonist with contempt. Confident of victory, he deviated from the strict military discipline he had at one time enforced and of which he had given an example in his own person, dragged in his train a multitude of useless attendants fitted but for pomp and luxury, permitted his marshals and generals to do the same, and an incredible number of private carriages, servants, women, etc., to follow in the rear of the army, to hamper its movements, create confusion, and aid in consuming the army stores, which being, moreover, merely provided for a short campaign, speedily became insufficient for the maintenance of the enormous mass. Even in Eastern Prussia, numbers of the soldiery were constrained by want to plunder the villages.—On the 24th of June, 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen, the Russian frontier, not far from Kowno. The season was already too far advanced. It may be that, deceived by the mildness of the winter of 1806 to 1807, he imagined it possible to protract the campaign without peril to himself until the winter months. No enemy appeared to oppose his progress. Barclay de Tolly,[7] the Russian commander-in-chief, pursued the system followed by the Scythians against Darius, and, perpetually retiring before the enemy, gradually drew him deep into the dreary and deserted steppes. This plan originated with Scharnhorst, by whom General Lieven was advised not to hazard an engagement until the winter, and to turn a deaf ear to every proposal of peace.[8] General Lieven, on reaching Barclay's headquarters, took Colonel Toll, a German, Barclay's right hand, and Lieutenant-Colonel Clausewitz, also a German, afterward noted for his strategical works, into his confidence. General Pfull, another German, at that time high in the emperor's confidence, and almost all the Russian generals opposed Scharnhorst's plan and continued to advance with a view of giving battle; but, on Napoleon's appearance at the head of an army greatly their superior in number before the Russians had been able to concentrate their forces, they were naturally compelled to retire before him, and, on the prevention, for some weeks, of the junction of a newly-levied Russian army under Prince Bragation with the forces under Barclay, owing to the rapidity of Napoleon's advance, Scharnhorst's plan was adopted as the only one feasible.

Napoleon, in the hope of overtaking the Russians and of compelling them to give battle, pushed onward by forced marches; the supplies were unable to follow, and numbers of the men and horses sank from exhaustion owing to over-fatigue, heat, and hunger.[9] On the arrival of Napoleon in Witebst, of Schwarzenberg in Volhynia, of the Prussians before Riga, the army might have halted, reconquered Poland have been organized, the men put into winter quarters, the army have again taken the field early in the spring, and the conquest of Russia have been slowly but surely completed. But Napoleon had resolved upon terminating the war in one rapid campaign, upon defeating the Russians, seizing their metropolis, and dictating terms of peace, and incessantly pursued his retreating opponent, whose footsteps were marked by the flames of the cities and villages and by the devastated country to their rear. The first serious opposition was made at Smolensko,[10] whence the Russians, however, speedily retreated after setting the city on fire. On the same day, the Bavarians, who had diverged to one side during their advance, had a furious encounter—in which General Deroy, formerly distinguished for his services in the Tyrol, was killed—at Poloczk with a body of Russian troops under Wittgenstein. The Bavarians remained stationary in this part of the country for the purpose of watching the movements of that general, while Napoleon, careless of the peril with which he was threatened by the approach of winter and by the multitude of enemies gathering to his rear, advanced with the main body of the grand army from Smolensko across the wasted country upon Moscow, the ancient metropolis of the Russian empire.

Russia, at that time engaged in a war with Turkey, whose frontiers were watched by an immense army under Kutusow, used her utmost efforts, in which she was aided by England, to conciliate the Porte in order to turn the whole of her forces against Napoleon. By a master-stroke of political intrigue,[11] the Porte, besides concluding peace at Bucharest on the 28th of May, ceded the province of Bessarabia (not Moldavia and Wallachia) to Russia. A Russian army under Tschitschakow was now enabled to drive the Austrians out of Volhynia, while a considerable force under Kutusow joined Barclay. Had the Russians at this time hazarded an engagement, their defeat was certain. Moscow could not have been saved. Barclay consequently resolved not to come to an engagement, but to husband his forces and to attack the French during the winter. The intended surrender of Moscow without a blow was, nevertheless, deeply resented as a national disgrace; the army and the people[12] raised a clamor, the venerable Kutusow was nominated commander-in-chief, and, taking up a position on the little river Moskwa near Borodino, about two days' journey from Moscow, a bloody engagement took place there on the 7th of September, in which Napoleon, in order to spare his guards, neglected to follow up his advantage with his usual energy and allowed the defeated Russians, whom he might have totally annihilated, to escape. Napoleon triumphed; but at what a price! After a fearful struggle, in which he lost forty thousand men in killed and wounded,[13] the latter of whom perished almost to a man, owing to want and neglect.[14]

Moscow was now both defenceless and void of inhabitants. Napoleon traversed this enormous city, containing two hundred and ninety-five churches and fifteen hundred palaces rising from amid a sea of inferior dwellings, and took possession of the residence of the czars, the 14th of November, 1812. The whole city was, however, deserted, and scarcely had the French army taken up its quarters in it than flames burst from the empty and closely shut-up houses, and, ere long, the whole of the immense city became a sea of fire and was reduced, before Napoleon's eyes, to ashes. Every attempt to extinguish the flames proved unavailing. Rostopchin, the commandant of Moscow, had, previously to his retreat, put combustible materials, which were ignited on the entrance of the French by men secreted for that purpose, into the houses.[15] A violent wind aided the work of destruction. The patriotic sacrifice was performed, nor failed in its object. Napoleon, instead of peace and plenty, merely found ashes in Moscow.

Instead of pursuing the defeated Russians to Kaluga, where, in pursuance of Toll's first laid-down plan, they took up a position close upon the flank of the French and threatened to impede their retreat; instead of taking up his winter quarters in the fertile South or of quickly turning and fixing himself in Lithuania in order to collect reinforcements for the ensuing year, Napoleon remained in a state of inaction at Moscow until the 19th of October, in expectation of proposals of peace from Alexander. The terms of peace offered by him on his part to the Russians did not even elicit a reply. His cavalry, already reduced to a great state of exhaustion, were, in the beginning of October, surprised before the city of Tarutino and repulsed with considerable loss. This at length decided Napoleon upon marching upon Kaluga, but the moment for success had already passed. The reinforced and inspirited Russians made such a desperate resistance at Malo-Jaroslawez that he resolved to retire by the nearest route, that by which he had penetrated up the country, marked by ashes and pestilential corpses, into Lithuania. Winter had not yet set in, and his ranks were already thinned by famine.[16] Kutusow, with the main body of the Russian army, pursued the retreating French and again overtook them at Wiazma, the 3d November. Napoleon's hopes now rested on the separate corps d'armee left to his rear on his advance upon Moscow, but they were, notwithstanding the defeat of Wittgenstein's corps by the Bavarians under Wrede, kept in check by fresh Russian armies and exposed to all the horrors of winter.[17] In Volhynia, Schwarzenberg had zealously endeavored to spare his troops,[18] and had, by his retreat toward the grandduchy of Warsaw, left Tschitschakow at liberty to turn his arms against Napoleon, against whom Wittgenstein also advanced in the design of blocking up his route, while Kutusow incessantly assailed his flank and rear. On the 6th of November, the frost suddenly set in. The horses died by thousands in a single night; the greater part of the cavalry was consequently dismounted, and it was found necessary to abandon part of the booty and artillery. A deep snow shortly afterward fell and obstructed the path of the fugitive army. The frost became more and more rigorous; but few of the men had sufficient strength left to continue to carry their arms and to cover the flight of the rest. Most of the soldiers threw away their arms and merely endeavored to preserve life. Napoleon's grand army was scattered over the boundless snow-covered steppes, whose dreary monotony was solely broken by some desolate half-burned village. Gaunt forms of famine, wan, hollow-eyed, wrapped in strange garments of misery, skins, women's clothes, etc., and with long-grown beards, dragged their faint and weary limbs along, fought for a dead horse whose flesh was greedily torn from the carcass, murdered each other for a morsel of bread, and fell one after the other in the deep snow, never again to rise. Bones of frozen corpses lay each morn around the dead ashes of the night fires.[19] Numbers were seen to spring, with a horrid cry of mad exultation, into the flaming houses. Numbers fell into the hands of the Russian boors, who stripped them naked and chased them through the snow. Smolensko was at length reached, but the loss of the greater part of the cannon, the want of ammunition and provisions, rendered their stay in that deserted and half-consumed city impossible. The flight was continued, the Russians incessantly pursuing and harassing the worn-out troops, whose retreat was covered by Ney with all the men still under arms. Cut off at Smolensko, he escaped almost by miracle, by creeping during the night along the banks of the Dnieper and successively repulsing the several Russian corps that threw themselves in his way.[20] A thaw now took place, and the Beresina, which it was necessary to cross, was full of drift-ice, its banks were slippery and impassable, and moreover commanded by Tschitschakow's artillery, while the roar of cannon to the rear announced Wittgenstein's approach. Kutusow had this time failed to advance with sufficient rapidity, and Napoleon, the river to his front and enclosed between the Russian armies, owed his escape to the most extraordinary good luck. The corps d'armee under Oudinot and Victor, that had been left behind on his advance upon Moscow, came at the moment of need with fresh troops to his aid. Tschitschakow quitted the bank at the spot where Napoleon intended to make the passage of the Beresina under an idea of the attempt being made at another point. Napoleon instantly threw two bridges across the stream, and all the able-bodied men crossed in safety. At the moment when the bridges, that had several times given way, were choked up by the countless throng bringing up the rear, Wittgenstein appeared and directed his heavy artillery upon the motionless and unarmed crowd. Some regiments, forming the rearguard, fell, together with all still remaining on the other side of the river, into the hands of the Russians.

The fugitive army was, after this fearful day, relieved, but the temperature again fell to twenty-seven degrees below zero, and the stoutest hearts and frames sank. On the 5th of December, Napoleon, placing himself in a sledge, hurried in advance of his army, nay, preceded the news of his disaster, in order at all events to insure his personal safety and to pass through Germany before measures could be taken for his capture.[21] His fugitive army shortly afterward reached Wilna, but was too exhausted to maintain that position. Enormous magazines, several prisoners, and the rest of the booty, besides six million francs in silver money, fell here into the hands of the Russians. Part of the fugitives escaped to Dantzig, but few crossed the Oder; the Saxons under Reynier were routed and dispersed in a last engagement at Calisch; Poniatowsky and the Poles retired to Cracow on the Austrian frontier, as it were, protected by Schwarzenberg, who remained unassailed by the Russians, and whose neutrality was, not long afterward, formally recognized.

The Prussians, who had been, meanwhile, occupied with the unsuccessful siege of Riga, and who, like the Austrians, had comparatively husbanded their strength,[22] were now the only hope of the fugitive French. The troops under Macdonald, accordingly, received orders to cover the retreat of the grand army, but York, instead of obeying, concluded a neutral treaty with the Russians commanded by Diebitsch of Silesia and remained stationary in Eastern Prussia. The king of Prussia, at that time still at Berlin and in the power of the French, publicly[23] disapproved of the step taken by his general,[24] who was, on the evacuation of Berlin by the French, as publicly rewarded.

The immense army of the conqueror of the world was totally annihilated. Of those who entered Moscow scarcely twenty thousand, of the half million of men who crossed the Russian frontier but eighty thousand, returned.

[Footnote 1: Vide Bignon.]

[Footnote 2: From a letter of Count Minister in Hormayr's Sketches of Life, it appears that Russia still cherished the hope of great concessions being made by Napoleon in order to avoid war and was therefore still reserved in her relations with England and the Prussian patriots.]

[Footnote 3: French troops garrisoned German fortresses and perpetually passed along the principal roads, which were for that purpose essentially improved by Napoleon. In 1810, a great part of the town of Eisenach was destroyed by the bursting of some French powder-carts that were carelessly brought through, and by which great numbers of people were killed.]

[Footnote 4: Who was far surpassed in splendor by her stepdaughter of France.]

[Footnote 5: Segur relates that he was received politely but with distant coolness by Napoleon. There is said to have been question between them concerning the marriage of the crown prince of Prussia with one of Napoleon's nieces, and of an incorporation of the still unconquered Russian provinces on the Baltic, Livonia, Courland, and Esthonia, with Prussia. All was, however, empty show. Napoleon hoped by the rapidity of his successes to constrain the emperor of Russia to conclude not only peace, but a still closer alliance with France, in which case it was as far from his intention to concede the above-mentioned provinces to Prussia as to emancipate the Poles.]

[Footnote 6: Napoleon said at that time to a Russian, "Si vous perdez cinq Russes, ne perds qu un Francais et quatre cochons."]

[Footnote 7: This general, on the opening of the war, published a proclamation to the Germans, summoning them to throw off the yoke of Napoleon.—Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 327. Napoleon replied with, "Whom are you addressing? There are no Germans, there are only Austrians, Prussians, Bavarians, etc."—All. Zeitung, No. 228.]

[Footnote 8: Vide Clausewitz's Works.]

[Footnote 9: At each encampment the men were left in such numbers in hastily erected hospitals that, of thirty-eight thousand Bavarians, for instance, but ten thousand, of sixteen thousand Wuertembergers, but thirteen hundred, reached Smolensko.]

[Footnote 10: The Wuertembergers distinguished themselves here by storming the faubourgs and the bridges across the Dnieper.]

[Footnote 11: The Greek prince, Moruzi, who at that time conducted Turkish diplomacy, accepted a bribe, and concluded peace in the expectation of becoming Prince of Moldavia and Wallachia. Sultan Mahmud refusing to ratify this disgraceful treaty, gold was showered upon the Turkish army, which suddenly dispersed, and the deserted sultan was compelled to yield. Moruzi was deprived of his head, but the Russians had gained their object. It must, moreover, be considered that Napoleon was regarded with distrust by the Porte, against which he had fought in Egypt, which he had afterward enticed into a war with Russia, and had, by the alliance formed at Erfurt with that power, abandoned.]

[Footnote 12: Colonel Toll was insulted during the discussion by Prince Bragation for the firmness with which he upheld Scharnhorst's plan, and avoided hazarding a useless engagement. Prince Bragation was killed in the battle.]

[Footnote 13: A Russian redoubt, the key of the field of battle, was taken and again lost. A Wuertemberg regiment instantly pushed through the fugitive French, retook the redoubt and retained possession of it. It also, on this occasion, saved the life of the king of Naples and delivered him out of the hands of the Russians, who had already taken him prisoner.—Ten Campaigns of the Wurtembergers.]

[Footnote 14: Everything was wanting, lint, linen, even necessary food. The wounded men lay for days and weeks under the open sky and fed upon the carcasses of horses.]

[Footnote 15: This combustible matter had been prepared by Schmid, the Dutchman, under pretext of preparing an enormous balloon from which fire was to be scattered upon the French army.]

[Footnote 16: As early as the 2d of November the remainder of the Wuertembergers tore off their colors and concealed them in their knapsacks.—Roos's Memorabilia of 1812.]

[Footnote 17: On the 18th of October, the Bavarians, who were intermixed with Swiss, performed prodigies of valor, but were so reduced by sufferings of every description as to be unable to maintain Poloczk. Segur says in his History of the War that St. Cyr left Wrede's gallant conduct unmentioned in the military despatches, and that when, on St. Cyr's being disabled by his wounds, Wrede applied for the chief command, which naturally reverted to him, the army being almost entirely composed of Bavarians, Napoleon refused his request. Voelderndorf says in his Bavarian Campaigns that St. Cyr faithlessly abandoned the Bavarians in their utmost extremity, and when all peril was over returned to Poland in order to retake the command. During the retreat from Poloczk he had ordered the bridges to be pulled down, leaving on the other side a Bavarian park of artillery with the army chest and two-and-twenty ensigns, which for better security had been packed upon a carriage. The whole of these trophies fell, owing to St. Cyr's negligence or ill-will, into the hands of the Russians. "The Bavarians with difficulty concealed their antipathy toward the French." On St. Cyr's flight, Wrede kept the remainder of the Bavarians together, covered Napoleon's retreat, and, in conjunction with the Westphalians and Hessians, stood another encounter with the Russians at Wilna. Misery and want at length scattered his forces; he, nevertheless, reassembled them in Poland and was able to place four thousand men, on St. Cyr's return, under his command. He returned home to Bavaria sick. Of these four thousand Bavarians but one thousand and fifty were led by Count Rechberg back to their native soil. A great number of Bavarians, however, remained under General Zoller to garrison Thorn, and about fifteen hundred of them returned home.—At the passage of the Beresina, the Wuertembergers had still about eighty men under arms, and in Poland about three hundred assembled, the only ones who returned free. Some were afterward liberated from imprisonment in Russia.]

[Footnote 18: This was Austria's natural policy. In the French despatches, Schwarzenberg was charged with having allowed Tschitschakow to escape in order to pursue the inconsiderable force under Sacken.]

[Footnote 19: The following anecdote is related of the Hessians commanded by Prince Emilius of Darmstadt. The prince had fallen asleep in the snow, and four Hessian dragoons, in order to screen him from the north wind, held their cloaks as a wall around him and were found next morning in the same position—frozen to death. Dead bodies were seen frozen into the most extraordinary positions, gnawing their own hands, gnawing the torn corpses of their comrades. The dead were often covered with snow, and the number of little heaps lying around alone told that of the victims of a single night.]

[Footnote 20: Napoleon said, "There are two hundred millions lying in the cellars of the Tuileries; how willingly would I give them to save Ney!"]

[Footnote 21: He passed with extreme rapidity, incognito, through Germany. In Dresden he had a short interview with the king of Saxony, who, had he shut him up in Koenigstein, would have saved Europe a good deal of trouble.—Napoleon no sooner reached Paris in safety than, in his twenty-ninth bulletin, he, for the first time, acquainted the astonished world, hitherto deceived by his false accounts of victory, with the disastrous termination of the campaign. This bulletin was also replete with falsehood and insolence. In his contempt of humanity he even said, "Merely the cowards in the army were depressed in spirit and dreamed of misfortune, the brave were ever cheerful." Thus wrote the man who had both seen and caused all this immeasurable misery! The bulletin concluded with, "His Imperial Majesty never enjoyed better health."]

[Footnote 22: In the French despatches, General Huenerbein was accused of not having pursued the Russians under General Lewis.]

[Footnote 23: The secret history of those days is still not sufficiently brought to light. Bagnon speaks of fresh treaties between Hardenberg and Napoleon, in which he is corroborated by Fain. These two Frenchmen, the former of whom was a diplomatist, the other one of Napoleon's private secretaries, admit that Prussia's object at that time was to take advantage of Napoleon's embarrassment and to offer him aid on certain important considerations. Prussian historians are silent in this matter. In Von Rauschnik's biographical account of Bluecher, the great internal schism at that time caused in Prussia by the Hardenberg party and that of the Tugendbund is merely slightly hinted at; the former still managed diplomatic affairs, while York, a member of the latter, had already acted on his own responsibility. Shortly afterward affairs took a different aspect, as if Hardenberg's diplomacy had merely been a mask, and he placed himself at the head of the movement against France. In a memorial of 1811, given by Hormayr in the Sketches from the War of Liberation, Hardenberg declared decisively in favor of the alliance with Russia against France.]

[Footnote 24: Hans Louis David von York, a native of Pomerania, having ventured, when a lieutenant in the Prussian service, indignantly to blame the base conduct of one of his superiors in command, became implicated in a duel, was confined in a fortress, abandoned his country, entered the Dutch service, visited the Cape and Ceylon, fought against the Mahrattas, was wounded, returned home and re-entered the Prussian service in 1794.]



CCLX. The Spring of 1813

The king of Prussia had suddenly abandoned Berlin, which was still in the hands of the French, for Breslau, whence he declared war against France. A conference also took place between him and the emperor Alexander at Calisch, and, on the 28th of February, 1813, an offensive and defensive alliance was concluded between them. The hour for vengeance had at length arrived. The whole Prussian nation, eager to throw off the hated yoke of the foreigner, to obliterate their disgrace in 1806, to regain their ancient name, cheerfully hastened to place their lives and property at the service of the impoverished government. The whole of the able-bodied population was put under arms. The standing army was increased: to each regiment were appended troops of volunteers, Joegers, composed of young men belonging to the higher classes, who furnished their own equipments: a numerous Landwehr, a sort of militia, was, as in Austria, raised besides the standing army, and measures were even taken to call out, in case of necessity, the heads of families and elderly men remaining at home, under the name of the Landsturm.[1] The enthusiastic people, besides furnishing the customary supplies and paying the taxes, contributed to the full extent of their means toward defraying the immense expense of this general arming. Every heart throbbed high with pride and hope. Who would not wish to have lived at such a period, when man's noblest and highest energies were thus called forth! More loudly than even in 1809 in Austria was the German cause now discussed, the great name of the German empire now invoked in Prussia, for in that name alone could all the races of Germany be united against their hereditary foe. The following celebrated proclamation, promising external and internal liberty to Germany, was, with this view, published at Calisch, by Prussia and Russia, on the 25th of March, 1813. It was signed by Prince Kutusow and drawn up by Baron Rehdiger of Silesia.

"The victorious troops of Russia, together with those of his Majesty the king of Prussia, having set foot on German soil, the emperor of Russia and his Majesty the king of Prussia announce simultaneously the return of liberty and independence to the princes and nations of Germany. They come with the sole and sacred purpose of aiding them to regain the hereditary and inalienable national rights of which they have been deprived, to afford potent protection and to secure durability to a newly-restored empire. This great object, free from every interested motive and therefore alone worthy of their Majesties, has solely induced the advance and solely guides the movements of their armies.—These armies, led by generals under the eyes of both monarchs, trust in an omnipotent, just God, and hope to free the whole world and Germany irrevocably from the disgraceful yoke they have so gloriously thrown off. They press forward animated by enthusiasm. Their watchword is 'Honor and Liberty.' May every German, desirous of proving himself worthy of the name, speedily and spiritedly join their ranks. May every individual, whether prince, noble, or citizen, aid the plans of liberation, formed by Russia and Prussia, with heart and soul, with person and property, to the last drop of his blood!—The expectation cherished by their Majesties of meeting with these sentiments, this zeal, in every German heart, they deem warranted by the spirit so clearly betokened by the victories gained by Russia over the enslaver of the world.—They therefore demand faithful cooperation, more especially from every German prince, and willingly presuppose that none among them will be found, who, by being and remaining apostate to the German cause, will prove himself deserving of annihilation by the power of public opinion and of just arms. The Rhenish alliance, that deceitful chain lately cast by the breeder of universal discord around ruined Germany to the destruction of her ancient name, can, as the effect of foreign tyranny and the tool of foreign influence, be no longer tolerated. Their Majesties believe that the declaration of the dissolution of this alliance being their fixed intention will meet the long-harbored and universal desire with difficulty retained within the sorrowing hearts of the people.—The relation in which it is the intention of his Majesty, the emperor of all the Russias, to stand toward Germany and toward her constitution is, at the same time, here declared. From his desire to see the influence of the foreigner destroyed, it can be no other than that of placing a protecting hand on a work whose form is committed to the free, unbiased will of the princes and people of Germany. The more closely this work, in principle, features and outline, coincides with the once distinct character of the German nation, the more surely will united Germany retake her place with renovated and redoubled vigor among the empires of Europe.—His Majesty and his ally, between whom there reigns a perfect accordance in the sentiments and views hereby explained, are at all times ready to exert their utmost power in pursuance of their sacred aim, the liberation of Germany from a foreign yoke.—May France, strong and beauteous in herself, henceforward seek to consolidate her internal prosperity! No external power will disturb her internal peace, no enemy will encroach upon her rightful frontiers.—But may France also learn that the other powers of Europe aspire to the attainment of durable repose for their subjects, and will not lay down their arms until the independence of every state in Europe shall have been firmly secured."

Nor was the appeal vain. It found an echo in every German heart, and such plain demonstrations of the state of the popular feeling on this side the Rhine were made that Davoust sent serious warning to Napoleon, who contemptuously replied, "Pah! Germans never can become Spaniards!" With his customary rapidity, he levied in France a fresh army three hundred thousand strong, with which he so completely awed the Rhenish confederation as to compel it once more to take the field with thousands of Germans against their brother Germans. The troops, however, reluctantly obeyed, and even the traitors were but lukewarm, for they doubted of success. Mecklenburg alone sided with Prussia. Austria remained neutral.

A Russian corps under General Tettenborn had preceded the rest of the troops and reached the coasts of the Baltic. As early as the 24th of March, 1813, it appeared in Hamburg and expelled the French authorities from the city. The heavily oppressed people of Hamburg,[2] whose commerce had been totally annihilated by the continental system, gave way to the utmost demonstrations of delight, received their deliverers with open arms, revived their ancient rights, and immediately raised a Hanseatic corps, destined to take the field against Napoleon. Dornberg, the ancient foe to France, with another flying squadron took the French division under Morand prisoner, and the Prussian, Major Hellwig (the same who, in 1806, liberated the garrison of Erfurt), dispersed, with merely one hundred and twenty hussars, a Bavarian regiment one thousand three hundred strong and captured five pieces of artillery. In January, the peasantry of the upper country had already revolted against the conscription,[3] and, in February, patriotic proclamations had been disseminated throughout Westphalia under the signature of the Baron von Stein. In this month, also, Captain Maas and two other patriots, who had attempted to raise a rebellion, were executed. As the army advanced, Stein was nominated chief of the provisional government of the still unconquered provinces of Western Germany.