[Alexander displeased.]

There was, however, a Power which watched the advance of French dominion into Northern Germany with less complaisance than the Germans themselves. The Czar of Russia had gradually come to understand the part allotted to him by Bonaparte since the Peace of Luneville, and was no longer inclined to serve as the instrument of French ambition. Bonaparte's occupation of Hanover changed the attitude of Alexander into one of coldness and distrust. Alexander saw and lamented the help which he himself had given to Bonaparte in Germany: events that now took place in France itself, as well as the progress of French intrigues in Turkey, [104] threw him into the arms of Bonaparte's enemies, and prepared the way for a new European coalition.

[Bonaparte about to become Emperor.]

[Murder of the Duke of Enghien, March 20, 1804.]

The First Bonaparte Consul had determined to assume the dignity of Emperor. The renewal of war with England excited a new outburst of enthusiasm for his person; nothing was wanting to place the crown on his head but the discovery of a plot against his life. Such a plot had been long and carefully followed by the police. A Breton gentleman, Georges Cadoudal, had formed the design of attacking the First Consul in the streets of Paris in the midst of his guards. Cadoudal and his fellow-conspirators, including General Pichegru, were traced by the police from the coast of Normandy to Paris: an unsuccessful attempt was made to lure the Count of Artois, and other royal patrons of the conspiracy, from Great Britain. When all the conspirators who could be enticed to France were collected within the capital, the police, who had watched every stage of the movement, began to make arrests. Moreau, the last Republican soldier of France, was charged with complicity in the plot. Pichegru and Cadoudal were thrown into prison, there to await their doom; Moreau, who probably wished for the overthrow of the Consular Government, but had no part in the design against Bonaparte's life, [105] was kept under arrest and loaded with official calumny. One sacrifice more remained to be made, in place of the Bourbon d'Artois, who baffled the police of the First Consul beyond the seas. In the territory of Baden, twelve miles from the French frontier, there lived a prince of the exiled house, the Duke of Enghien, a soldier under the first Coalition against France, now a harmless dependent on the bounty of England. French spies surrounded him; his excursions into the mountains gave rise to a suspicion that he was concerned in Pichegru's plot. This was enough to mark him for destruction. Bonaparte gave orders that he should be seized, brought to Paris, and executed. On the 15th of March, 1804, a troop of French soldiers crossed the Rhine and arrested the Duke in his own house at Ettenheim. They arrived with him at Paris on the 20th. He was taken to the fort of Vincennes without entering the city. On that same night a commission of six colonels sat in judgment upon the prisoner, whose grave was already dug, and pronounced sentence of death without hearing a word of evidence. At daybreak the Duke was led out and shot.

[Napoleon Emperor, May 18, 1804.]

If some barbaric instinct made the slaughter of his predecessor's kindred in Bonaparte's own eyes the omen of a successful usurpation, it was not so with Europe generally. One universal sense of horror passed over the Continent. The Court of Russia put on mourning; even the Diet of Ratisbon showed signs of human passion at the indignity done to Germany by the seizure of the Duke of Enghien on German soil. Austria kept silent, but watched the signs of coming war. France alone showed no pity. Before the Duke of Enghien had been dead a week, the Senate besought Napoleon to give to France the security of a hereditary throne. Prefects, bishops, mayors, and councils with one voice repeated the official prayer. A resolution in favour of imperial rule was brought forward in the Tribunate, and passed, after a noble and solitary protest on the part of Carnot. A decree of the Senate embodied the terms of the new Constitution; and on the 18th of May, without waiting for the sanction of a national vote, Napoleon assumed the title of Emperor of the French.

[Title of Emperor of Austria, Aug., 1804.]

In France itself the change was one more of the name than of the substance of power. Napoleon could not be vested with a more absolute authority than he already possessed; but the forms of republican equality vanished; and although the real social equality given to France by the Revolution was beyond reach of change, the nation had to put up with a bastard Court and a fictitious aristocracy of Corsican princes, Terrorist excellencies, and Jacobin dukes. The new dynasty was recognised at Vienna and Berlin: on the part of Austria it received the compliment of an imitation. Three months after the assumption of the Imperial title by Napoleon, the Emperor Francis (Emperor in Germany, but King in Hungary and Bohemia) assumed the title of Emperor of all his Austrian dominions. The true reason for this act was the virtual dissolution of the Germanic system by the Peace of Luneville, and the probability that the old Imperial dignity, if preserved in name, would soon be transferred to some client of Napoleon or to Napoleon himself. Such an apprehension was, however, not one that could be confessed to Europe. Instead of the ruin of Germany, the grandeur of Austria was made the ostensible ground of change. In language which seemed to be borrowed from the scriptural history of Nebuchadnezzar, the Emperor Francis declared that, although no possible addition could be made to his own personal dignity, as Roman Emperor, yet the ancient glory of the Austrian House, the grandeur of the principalities and kingdoms which were united under its dominion, required that the Sovereigns of Austria should hold a title equal to that of the greatest European throne. A general war against Napoleon was already being proposed by the Court of St. Petersburg; but for the present the Corsican and the Hapsburg Caesar exchanged their hypocritical congratulations. [106]

[Pitt again Minister, May, 1804.]

[Coalition of 1805.]

Almost at the same time that Bonaparte ascended the throne, Pitt returned to power in Great Britain. He was summoned by the general distrust felt in Addington's Ministry, and by the belief that no statesman but himself could rally the Powers of Europe against the common enemy. Pitt was not long in framing with Russia the plan of a third Coalition. The Czar broke off diplomatic intercourse with Napoleon in September, 1804, and induced the Court of Vienna to pledge itself to resist any further extension of French power. Sweden entered into engagements with Great Britain. On the opening of Parliament at the beginning of 1805, King George III. announced that an understanding existed between Great Britain and Russia, and asked in general terms for a provision for Continental subsidies. In April, a treaty was signed at St. Petersburg by the representatives of Russia and Great Britain, far more comprehensive and more serious in its provisions than any which had yet united the Powers against France. [107] Russia and England bound themselves to direct their efforts to the formation of a European League capable of placing five hundred thousand men in the field. Great Britain undertook to furnish subsidies to every member of the League; no peace was to be concluded with France but by common consent; conquests made by any of the belligerents were to remain unappropriated until the general peace; and at the termination of the war a Congress was to fix certain disputed points of international right, and to establish a federative European system for their maintenance and enforcement. As the immediate objects of the League, the treaty specified the expulsion of the French from Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Northern Germany; the re-establishment of the King of Sardinia in Piedmont, with an increase of territory; and the creation of a solid barrier against any future usurpations of France. The last expression signified the union of Holland and part of Belgium under the House of Orange. In this respect, as in the provision for a common disposal of conquests and for the settlement of European affairs by a Congress, the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1805 defined the policy actually carried out in 1814. Other territorial changes now suggested by Pitt, including the annexation of the Rhenish Provinces to the Prussian Monarchy, were not embodied in the treaty, but became from this time understood possibilities.

[Policy of Prussia.]

[Prussia neutral.]

England and Russia had, however, some difficulty in securing allies. Although in violation of his promises to Austria, Napoleon had accepted the title of King of Italy from the Senate of the Italian Republic, and had crowned himself with the Iron Crown of Lombardy (March, 1805), the Ministers at Vienna would have preferred peace, if that had been possible; and their master reluctantly consented to a war against Napoleon when war in some form or other seemed inevitable. The policy of Prussia was doubtful. For two years past Napoleon had made every effort to induce Prussia to enter into alliance with himself. After the invasion of Hanover he had doubled his attentions to the Court of Berlin, and had spared nothing in the way of promises and assurances of friendship to win the King over to his side. The neutrality of Prussia was of no great service to France: its support would have been of priceless value, rendering any attack upon France by Russia or Austria almost impossible, and thus enabling Napoleon to throw his whole strength into the combat with Great Britain. In the spring of 1804, the King of Prussia, uncertain of the friendship of the Czar, and still unconvinced of the vanity of Napoleon's professions, had inclined to a defensive alliance with France. The news of the murder of the Duke of Enghien, arriving almost simultaneously with a message of goodwill from St. Petersburg, led him to abandon this project of alliance, but caused no breach with Napoleon. Frederick William adhered to the temporising policy which Prussia had followed since 1795, and the Foreign Minister, Haugwitz, who had recommended bolder measures, withdrew for a time from the Court. [108] Baron Hardenberg, who had already acted as his deputy, stepped into his place. Hardenberg, the negotiator of the peace of Basle, had for the last ten years advocated a system of neutrality. A politician quick to grasp new social and political ideas, he was without that insight into the real forces at work in Europe which, in spite of errors in detail, made the political aims of Pitt, and of many far inferior men, substantially just and correct. So late as the end of the year 1804, Hardenberg not only failed to recognise the dangers to which Prussia was exposed from Napoleon's ambition, but conceived it to be still possible for Prussia to avert war between France and the Allied Powers by maintaining a good understanding with all parties alike. Hardenberg's neutrality excited the wrath of the Russian Cabinet. While Metternich, the Austrian ambassador at Berlin, cautiously felt his way, the Czar proposed in the last resort to force Prussia to take up arms. A few months more passed; and, when hostilities were on the point of breaking out, Hanover was definitely offered to Prussia by Napoleon as the price of an alliance. Hardenberg, still believing that it lay within the power of Prussia, by means of a French alliance, both to curb Napoleon and to prevent a European war, urged the King to close with the offer of the French Emperor. [109] But the King shrank from a decision which involved the possibility of immediate war. The offer of Hanover was rejected, and Prussia connected itself neither with Napoleon nor his enemies.

[State of Austria. The army.]

Pitt, the author of the Coalition of 1805, had formed the most sanguine estimate of the armaments of his allies. Austria was said to have entered upon a new era since the peace of Luneville, and to have turned to the best account all the disasters of its former campaigns. There had indeed been no want of fine professions from Vienna, but Pitt knew little of the real state of affairs. The Archduke Charles had been placed at the head of the military administration, and entrusted with extraordinary powers; but the whole force of routine and corruption was ranged against him. He was deceived by his subordinates; and after three years of reorganisation he resigned his post, confessing that he left the army no nearer efficiency than it was before. Charles was replaced at the War Office by General Mack. Within six months this bustling charlatan imagined himself to have effected the reorganisation of which the Archduke despaired, [110] while he had in fact only introduced new confusion into an army already hampered beyond any in Europe by its variety of races and languages.

[Political condition of Austria.]

If the military reforms of Austria were delusive, its political reforms were still more so. The Emperor had indeed consented to unite the Ministers, who had hitherto worked independently, in a Council of State; but here reform stopped. Cobenzl, who was now First Minister, understood nothing but diplomacy. Men continued in office whose presence was an insuperable bar to any intelligent action: even in that mechanical routine which, in the eyes of the Emperor Francis, constituted the life of the State, everything was antiquated and self-contradictory. In all that affected the mental life of the people the years that followed the peace of Luneville were distinctly retrograde. Education was placed more than ever in the hands of the priests; the censorship of the press was given to the police; a commission was charged with the examination of all the books printed during the reign of the Emperor Joseph, and above two thousand works, which had come into being during that brief period of Austrian liberalism, were suppressed and destroyed. Trade regulations were issued which combined the extravagance of the French Reign of Terror with the ignorance of the Middle Ages. All the grain in the country was ordered to be sold before a certain date, and the Jews were prohibited from carrying on the corn-trade for a year. Such were the reforms described by Pitt in the English Parliament as having effected the regeneration of Austria. Nearer home things were judged in a truer light. Mack's paper-regiments, the helplessness and unreality of the whole system of Austrian officialism, were correctly appreciated by the men who had been most in earnest during the last war. Even Thugut now thought a contest hopeless. The Archduke Charles argued to the end for peace, and entered upon the war with the presentiment of defeat and ruin.

[Plans of campaign, 1805.]

The plans of the Allies for the campaign of 1805 covered an immense field. [111] It was intended that one Austrian army should operate in Lombardy under the Archduke Charles, while a second, under General Mack, entered Bavaria, and there awaited the arrival of the Russians, who were to unite with it in invading France: British and Russian contingents were to combine with the King of Sweden in Pomerania, and with the King of Naples in Southern Italy. At the head-quarters of the Allies an impression prevailed that Napoleon was unprepared for war. It was even believed that his character had lost something of its energy under the influence of an Imperial Court. Never was there a more fatal illusion. The forces of France had never been so overwhelming; the plans of Napoleon had never been worked out with greater minuteness and certainty. From Hanover to Strasburg masses of troops had been collected upon the frontier in readiness for the order to march; and, before the campaign opened, the magnificent army of Boulogne, which had been collected for the invasion of England, was thrown into the scale against Austria.

[Failure of Napoleon's naval designs against England.]

[Nelson and Villeneuve, April-June, 1805.]

Events had occurred at sea which frustrated Napoleon's plan for an attack upon Great Britain. This attack, which in 1797 had been but lightly threatened, had, upon the renewal of war with England in 1803, become the object of Napoleon's most serious efforts. An army was concentrated at Boulogne sufficient to overwhelm the military forces of England, if once it could reach the opposite shore. Napoleon's thoughts were centred on a plan for obtaining the naval superiority in the Channel, if only for the few hours which it would take to transport the army from Boulogne to the English coast. It was his design to lure Nelson to the other side of the Atlantic by a feigned expedition against the West Indies, and, during the absence of the English admiral, to unite all the fleets at present lying blockaded in the French ports, as a cover for the invading armament. Admiral Villeneuve was ordered to sail to Martinique, and, after there meeting with some other ships, to re-cross the Atlantic with all possible speed, and liberate the fleets blockaded in Ferrol, Brest, and Rochefort. The junction of the fleets would give Napoleon a force of fifty sail in the British Channel, a force more than sufficient to overpower all the squadrons which Great Britain could possibly collect for the defence of its shores. Such a design exhibited all the power of combination which marked Napoleon's greatest triumphs; but it required of an indifferent marine the precision and swiftness of movement which belonged to the land-forces of France; it assumed in the seamen of Great Britain the same absence of resource which Napoleon had found among the soldiers of the Continent. In the present instance, however, Napoleon had to deal with a man as far superior to all the admirals of France as Napoleon himself was to the generals of Austria and Prussia. Villeneuve set sail for the West Indies in the spring of 1805, and succeeded in drawing Nelson after him; but, before he could re-cross the Atlantic, Nelson, incessantly pursuing the French squadron in the West-Indian seas, and at length discovering its departure homewards at Antigua (June 13), had warned the English Government of Villeneuve's movement by a message sent in the swiftest of the English brigs. [112] The Government, within twenty-four hours of receiving Nelson's message, sent orders to Sir Robert Calder instantly to raise the blockades of Ferrol and Rochefort, and to wait for Villeneuve off Cape Finisterre. Here Villeneuve met the English fleet (July 22). He was worsted in a partial engagement, and retired into the harbour of Ferrol. The pressing orders of Napoleon forced the French admiral, after some delay, to attempt that movement on Brest and Rochefort on which the whole plan of the invasion of England depended. But Villeneuve was no longer in a condition to meet the English force assembled against him. He put back without fighting, and retired to Cadiz. All hope of carrying out the attack upon England was lost.

[March of French armies on Bavaria, Sept.]

It only remained for Napoleon to avenge himself upon Austria through the army which was baulked of its English prey. On the 1st of September, when the Austrians were now on the point of crossing the Inn, the camp of Boulogne was broken up. The army turned eastwards, and distributed itself over all the roads leading from the Channel to the Rhine and the Upper Danube. Far on the north-east the army of Hanover, commanded by Bernadotte, moved as its left wing, and converged upon a point in Southern Germany half-way between the frontiers of France and Austria. In the fables that long disguised the true character of every action of Napoleon, the admirable order of march now given to the French armies appears as the inspiration of a moment, due to the rebound of Napoleon's genius after learning the frustration of all his naval plans. In reality, the employment of the "Army of England" against a Continental coalition had always been an alternative present to Napoleon's mind; and it was threateningly mentioned in his letters at a time when Villeneuve's failure was still unknown.

[Austrians invade Bavaria, Sept. 8.]

The only advantage which the Allies derived from the remoteness of the Channel army was that Austria was able to occupy Bavaria without resistance. General Mack, who was charged with this operation, crossed the Inn on the 8th of September. The Elector of Bavaria was known to be secretly hostile to the Coalition. The design of preventing his union with the French was a correct one; but in the actual situation of the allied armies it was one that could not be executed without great risk. The preparations of Russia required more time than was allowed for them; no Russian troops could reach the Inn before the end of October; and, in consequence, the entire force operating in Western Germany did not exceed seventy thousand men. Any doubts, however, as to the prudence of an advance through Bavaria were silenced by the assurance that Napoleon had to bring the bulk of his army from the British Channel. [113] In ignorance of the real movements of the French, Mack pushed on to the western limit of Bavaria, and reached the river Iller, the border of Wuertemberg, where he intended to stand on the defensive until the arrival of the Russians.

[Mack at Ulm, October.]

[Capitulation of Ulm, Oct. 17.]

Here, in the first days of October, he became aware of the presence of French troops, not only in front but to the east of his own position. With some misgiving as to the situation of the enemy, Mack nevertheless refused to fall back from Ulm. Another week revealed the true state of affairs. Before the Russians were anywhere near Bavaria, the vanguard of Napoleon's Army of the Channel and the Army of Hanover had crossed North-Western Germany, and seized the roads by which Mack had advanced from Vienna. Every hour that Mack remained in Ulm brought new divisions of the French into the Bavarian towns and villages behind him. Escape was only possible by a retreat into the Tyrol, or by breaking through the French line while it was yet incompletely formed. Resolute action might still have saved the Austrian army; but the only energy that was shown was shown in opposition to the general. The Archduke Ferdinand, who was the titular commander-in-chief, cut his way through the French with part of the cavalry; Mack remained in Ulm, and the iron circle closed around him. At the last moment, after the hopelessness of the situation had become clear even to himself, Mack was seized by an illusion that some great disaster had befallen the French in their rear, and that in the course of a few days Napoleon would be in full retreat. "Let no man utter the word 'Surrender'"—he proclaimed in an order of October 15th—"the enemy is in the most fearful straits; it is impossible that he can continue more than a few days in the neighbourhood. If provisions run short, we have three thousand horses to nourish us." "I myself," continued the general, "will be the first to eat horseflesh." Two days later the inevitable capitulation took place; and Mack with 25,000 men, fell into the hands of the enemy without striking a blow. A still greater number of the Austrians outside Ulm surrendered in detachments. [114]

[Trafalgar, Oct. 21.]

[Effects.]

All France read with wonder Napoleon's bulletins describing the capture of an entire army and the approaching presentation of forty Austrian standards to the Senate at Paris. No imperial rhetoric acquainted the nation with an event which, within four days of the capitulation of Ulm, inflicted a heavier blow on France than Napoleon himself had ever dealt to any adversary. On the 21st of October Nelson's crowning victory of Trafalgar, won over Villeneuve venturing out from Cadiz, annihilated the combined fleets of France and Spain. Nelson fell in the moment of his triumph; but the work which his last hours had achieved was one to which years prolonged in glory could have added nothing. He had made an end of the power of France upon the sea. Trafalgar was not only the greatest naval victory, it was the greatest and most momentous victory won either by land or by sea during the whole of the Revolutionary War. No victory, and no series of victories, of Napoleon produced the same effect upon Europe. Austria was in arms within five years of Marengo, and within four years of Austerlitz; Prussia was ready to retrieve the losses of Jena in 1813; a generation passed after Trafalgar before France again seriously threatened England at sea. The prospect of crushing the British navy, so long as England had the means to equip a navy, vanished: Napoleon henceforth set his hopes on exhausting England's resources by compelling every State on the Continent to exclude her commerce. Trafalgar forced him to impose his yoke upon all Europe, or to abandon the hope of conquering Great Britain. If national love and pride have idealised in our great sailor a character which, with its Homeric force and freshness, combined something of the violence and the self-love of the heroes of a rude age, the common estimate of Nelson's work in history is not beyond the truth. So long as France possessed a navy, Nelson sustained the spirit of England by his victories; his last triumph left England in such a position that no means remained to injure her but those which must result in the ultimate deliverance of the Continent.

[Treaty of Potsdam, Nov. 3.]

[Violation of Prussian territory.]

The consequences of Trafalgar lay in the future; the military situation in Germany after Mack's catastrophe was such that nothing could keep the army of Napoleon out of Vienna. In the sudden awakening of Europe to its danger, one solitary gleam of hope appeared in the attitude of the Prussian Court. Napoleon had not scrupled, in his anxiety for the arrival of the Army of Hanover, to order Bernadotte, its commander, to march through the Prussian territory of Anspach, which lay on his direct route towards Ulm. It was subsequently alleged by the Allies that Bernadotte's violation of Prussian neutrality had actually saved him from arriving too late to prevent Mack's escape; but, apart from all imaginary grounds of reproach, the insult offered to Prussia by Napoleon was sufficient to incline even Frederick William to decided action. Some weeks earlier the approach of Russian forces to his frontier had led Frederick William to arm; the French had now more than carried out what the Russians had only suggested. When the outrage was made known to the King of Prussia, that cold and reserved monarch displayed an emotion which those who surrounded him had seldom witnessed. [115] The Czar was forthwith offered a free passage for his armies through Silesia; and, before the news of Mack's capitulation reached the Russian frontier, Alexander himself was on the way to Berlin. The result of the deliberations of the two monarchs was the Treaty of Potsdam, signed on November 3rd. By this treaty Prussia undertook to demand from Napoleon an indemnity for the King of Piedmont, and the evacuation of Germany, Switzerland, and Holland: failing Napoleon's acceptance of Prussia's mediation upon these terms, Prussia engaged to take the field with 180,000 men.

[French enter Vienna, Nov. 13.]

Napoleon was now close upon Vienna. A few days after the capitulation of Ulm thirty thousand Russians, commanded by General Kutusoff, had reached Bavaria; but Mack's disaster rendered it impossible to defend the line of the Inn, and the last detachments of the Allies disappeared as soon as Napoleon's vanguard approached the river. The French pushed forth in overpowering strength upon the capital. Kutusoff and the weakened Austrian army could neither defend Vienna nor meet the invader in the field. It was resolved to abandon the city, and to unite the retreating forces on the northern side of the Danube with a second Russian army now entering Moravia. On the 7th of November the Court quitted Vienna. Six days later the French entered the capital, and by an audacious stratagem of Murat's gained possession of the bridge connecting the city with the north bank of the Danube, at the moment when the Austrian gunners were about to blow it into the air. [116] The capture of this bridge deprived the allied army of the last object protecting it from Napoleon's pursuit. Vienna remained in the possession of the French. All the resources of a great capital were now added to the means of the conqueror; and Napoleon prepared to follow his retreating adversary beyond the Danube, and to annihilate him before he could reach his supports.

[The Allies and Napoleon in Moravia, Nov.]

The retreat of the Russian army into Moravia was conducted with great skill by General Kutusoff, who retorted upon Murat the stratagem practised at the bridge of Vienna, and by means of a pretended armistice effected his junction with the newly-arrived Russian corps between Olmuetz and Bruenn. Napoleon's anger at the escape of his prey was shown in the bitterness of his attacks upon Murat. The junction of the allied armies in Moravia had in fact most seriously altered the prospects of the war. For the first time since the opening of the campaign, the Allies had concentrated a force superior in numbers to anything that Napoleon could bring against it. It was impossible for Napoleon, while compelled to protect himself on the Italian side, to lead more than 70,000 men into Moravia. The Allies had now 80,000 in camp, with the prospect of receiving heavy reinforcements. The war, which lately seemed to be at its close, might now, in the hands of a skilful general, be but beginning. Although the lines of Napoleon's communication with France were well guarded, his position in the heart of Europe exposed him to many perils; the Archduke Charles had defeated Massena at Caldiero on the Adige, and was hastening northwards; above all, the army of Prussia was preparing to enter the field. Every mile that Napoleon advanced into Moravia increased the strain upon his resources; every day that postponed the decision of the campaign brought new strength to his enemies. Merely to keep the French in their camp until a Prussian force was ready to assail their communications seemed enough to ensure the Allies victory; and such was the counsel of Kutusoff, who made war in the temper of the wariest diplomatist. But the scarcity of provisions was telling upon the discipline of the army, and the Czar was eager for battle. [117] The Emperor Francis gave way to the ardour of his allies. Weyrother, the Austrian chief of the staff, drew up the most scientific plans for a great victory that had ever been seen even at the Austrian head-quarters; and towards the end of November it was agreed by the two Emperors that the allied army should march right round Napoleon's position near Bruenn, and fight a battle with the object of cutting off his retreat upon Vienna.

[Haugwitz comes with Prussian demands to Napoleon, Nov. 28.]

[Haugwitz goes away to Vienna.]

It was in the days immediately preceding the intended battle, and after Napoleon had divined the plans of his enemy, that Count Haugwitz, bearing the demands of the Cabinet of Berlin, reached the French camp at Bruenn. [118] Napoleon had already heard something of the Treaty of Potsdam, and was aware that Haugwitz had started from Berlin. He had no intention of making any of those concessions which Prussia required; at the same time it was of vital importance to him to avoid the issue of a declaration of war by Prussia, which would nerve both Austria and Russia to the last extremities. He therefore resolved to prevent Haugwitz by every possible method from delivering his ultimatum, until a decisive victory over the allied armies should have entirely changed the political situation. The Prussian envoy himself played into Napoleon's hands. Haugwitz had obtained a disgraceful permission from his sovereign to submit to all Napoleon's wishes, if, before his arrival, Austria should be separately treating for peace; and he had an excuse for delay in the fact that the military preparations of Prussia were not capable of being completed before the middle of December. He passed twelve days on the journey from Berlin, and presented himself before Napoleon on the 28th of November. The Emperor, after a long conversation, requested that he would proceed to Vienna and transact business with Talleyrand. He was weak enough to permit himself to be removed to a distance with his ultimatum to Napoleon undelivered. When next the Prussian Government heard of their envoy, he was sauntering in Talleyrand's drawing-rooms at Vienna, with the cordon of the French Legion of Honour on his breast, exchanging civilities with officials who politely declined to enter upon any question of business.

[Austerlitz, Dec. 2.]

[Armistice, Dec. 4.]

Haugwitz once removed to Vienna, and the Allies thus deprived of the certainty that Prussia would take the field, Napoleon trusted that a single great defeat would suffice to break up the Coalition. The movements of the Allies were exactly those which he expected and desired. He chose his own positions between Bruenn and Austerlitz in the full confidence of victory; and on the morning of the 2nd of December, when the mists disappeared before a bright wintry sun, he saw with the utmost delight that the Russian columns were moving round him in a vast arc, in execution of the turning-movement of which he had forewarned his own army on the day before. Napoleon waited until the foremost columns were stretched far in advance of their supports; then, throwing Soult's division upon the gap left in the centre of the allied line, he cut the army into halves, and crushed its severed divisions at every point along the whole line of attack. The Allies, although they outnumbered Napoleon, believed themselves to be overpowered by an army double their own size. The incoherence of the allied movements was as marked as the unity and effectiveness of those of the French. It was alleged in the army that Kutusoff, the commander-in-chief, had fallen asleep while the Austrian Weyrother was expounding his plans for the battle; a truer explanation of the palpable errors in the allied generalship was that the Russian commander had been forced by the Czar to carry out a plan of which he disapproved. The destruction in the ranks of the Allies was enormous, for the Russians fought with the same obstinacy as at the Trebbia and at Novi. Austria had lost a second army in addition to its capital; and the one condition which could have steeled its Government against all thoughts of peace—the certainty of an immediate Prussian attack upon Napoleon—had vanished with the silent disappearance of the Prussian envoy. Two days after the battle, the Emperor Francis met his conqueror in the open field, and accepted an armistice, which involved the withdrawal of the Russian army from his dominions.

[Haugwitz signs Treaty with Napoleon, Dec. 15.]

Yet even now the Czar sent appeals to Berlin for help, and the negotiation begun by Austria would possibly have been broken off if help had been given. But the Cabinet of Frederick William had itself determined to evade its engagements; and as soon as the news of Austerlitz reached Vienna, Haugwitz had gone over heart and soul to the conqueror. While negotiations for peace were carried on between France and Austria, a parallel negotiation was carried on with the envoy of Prussia; and even before the Emperor Francis gave way to the conqueror's demands, Haugwitz signed a treaty with Napoleon at Schoenbrunn, by which Prussia, instead of attacking Napoleon, entered into an alliance with him, and received from him in return the dominion of Hanover (December 15, 1805). [119] Had Prussia been the defeated power at Austerlitz, the Treaty of Schoenbrunn could not have more completely reversed the policy to which King Frederick William had pledged himself six weeks before. While Haugwitz was making his pact with Napoleon, Hardenberg had been arranging with an English envoy for the combination of English and Russian forces in Northern Germany. [120]

There were some among the King's advisers who declared that the treaty must be repudiated, and the envoy disgraced. But the catastrophe of Austerlitz, and the knowledge that the Government of Vienna was entering upon a separate negotiation, had damped the courage of the men in power. The conduct of Haugwitz was first excused, then supported, then admired. The Duke of Brunswick disgraced himself by representing to the French Ambassador in Berlin that the whole course of Prussian policy since the beginning of the campaign had been an elaborate piece of dissimulation in the interest of France. The leaders of the patriotic party in the army found themselves without influence or following; the mass of the nation looked on with the same stupid unconcern with which it had viewed every event of the last twenty years. The King finally decided that the treaty by which Haugwitz had thrown the obligations of his country to the winds should be ratified, with certain modifications, including one that should nominally reserve to King George III. a voice in the disposal of Hanover. [121]

[Treaty of Presburg, Dec. 27.]

[End of the Holy Roman Empire, Aug. 6, 1806.]

Ten days after the departure of the Prussian envoy from Vienna, peace was concluded between France and Austria by the Treaty of Presburg [122] (December 27). At the outbreak of the war Napoleon had declared to his army that he would not again spare Austria, as he had spared her at Campo Formio and at Luneville; and he kept his word. The Peace of Presburg left the Austrian State in a condition very different from that in which it had emerged from the two previous wars. The Treaty of Campo Formio had only deprived Austria of Belgium in order to replace it by Venice; the Settlement of Luneville had only substituted French for Austrian influence in Western Germany: the Treaty that followed the battle of Austerlitz wrested from the House of Hapsburg two of its most important provinces, and cut it off at once from Italy, from Switzerland, and from the Rhine. Venetia was ceded to Napoleon's kingdom of Italy; the Tyrol was ceded to Bavaria; the outlying districts belonging to Austria in Western Germany were ceded to Baden and to Wuertemberg. Austria lost 28,000 square miles of territory and 3,000,000 inhabitants. The Emperor recognised the sovereignty and independence of Bavaria, Baden, and Wuertemberg, and renounced all rights over those countries as head of the Germanic Body. The Electors of Bavaria and Wuertemberg, along with a large increase of territory, received the title of King. The constitution of the Empire ceased to exist even in name. It only remained for its chief, the successor of the Roman Caesars, to abandon his title at Napoleon's bidding; and on the 6th of August, 1806, an Act, published by Francis II. at Vienna, made an end of the outworn and dishonoured fiction of a Holy Roman Empire.

[Naples given to Joseph Bonaparte.]

Though Russia had not made peace with Napoleon, the European Coalition was at an end. Now, as in 1801, the defeat of the Austrian armies left the Neapolitan Monarchy to settle its account with the conqueror. Naples had struck no blow; but it was only through the delays of the Allies that the Neapolitan army had not united with an English and a Russian force in an attack upon Lombardy. What had been pardoned in 1801 was now avenged upon the Bourbon despot of Naples and his Austrian Queen, who from the first had shown such bitter enmity to France. Assuming the character of a judge over the sovereigns of Europe, Napoleon pronounced from Vienna that the House of Naples had ceased to reign (Dec. 27, 1805). The sentence was immediately carried into execution. Ferdinand fled, as he had fled in 1798, to place himself under the protection of the navy of Great Britain. The vacant throne was given by Napoleon to his own brother, Joseph Bonaparte. Ferdinand, with the help of the English fleet, maintained himself in Sicily. A thread of sea two miles broad was sufficient barrier against the Power which had subdued half the Continent; and no attempt was made either by Napoleon or his brother to gain a footing beyond the Straits of Messina. In Southern Italy the same fanatical movements took place among the peasantry as in the previous period of French occupation. When the armies of Austria and Russia were crushed, and the continent lay at the mercy of France, Great Britain imagined that it could effect something against Napoleon in a corner of Italy, with the help of some ferocious villagers. A British force, landing near Maida, on the Calabrian coast, in the summer of 1806, had the satisfaction of defeating the French at the point of the bayonet, of exciting a horde of priests and brigands to fruitless barbarities, and of abandoning them to their well-merited chastisement.

[Battle of Maida, July 6, 1806.]

[The Empire. Napoleonic dynasty and titles.]

The elevation of Napoleon's brother Joseph to the throne of Naples was the first of a series of appointments now made by Napoleon in the character of Emperor of the West. He began to style himself the new Charlemagne; his thoughts and his language were filled with pictures of universal sovereignty; his authority, as a military despot who had crushed his neighbours, became strangely confused in his own mind with that half-sacred right of the Caesars from which the Middle Ages derived all subordinate forms of power. He began to treat the government of the different countries of Western Europe as a function to be exercised by delegation from himself. Even the territorial grants which under the Feudal System accompanied military or civil office were now revived and the commander of a French army-corps or the chief of the French Foreign Office became the titular lord of some obscure Italian principality. [123] Napoleon's own family were to reign in many lands, as the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs had reigned before them, but in strict dependence on their head. Joseph Bonaparte had not long been installed at Naples when his brother Louis was compelled to accept the Crown of Holland. Jerome, for whom no kingdom was at present vacant, was forced to renounce his American wife, in order that he might marry the daughter of the King of Wuertemberg. Eugene Beauharnais, Napoleon's step-son, held the office of Viceroy of Italy; Murat, who had married Napoleon's sister, had the German Duchy of Berg. Bernadotte, Talleyrand, and Berthier found themselves suzerains of districts whose names were almost unknown to them. Out of the revenues of Northern Italy a yearly sum was reserved as an endowment for the generals whom the Emperor chose to raise to princely honours.

[Federation of the Rhine.]

More statesmanlike, more practical than Napoleon's dynastic policy, was his organisation of Western Germany under its native princes as a dependency of France. The object at which all French politicians had aimed since the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the exclusion of both Austria and Prussia from influence in Western Germany, was now completely attained. The triumph of French statesmanship, the consummation of two centuries of German discord, was seen in the Act of Federation subscribed by the Western German Sovereigns in the summer of 1806. By this Act the Kings of Bavaria and Wuertemberg, the Elector of Baden, and thirteen minor princes, united themselves, in the League known as the Rhenish Confederacy, under the protection of the French Emperor, and undertook to furnish contingents, amounting to 63,000 men, in all wars in which the French Empire should engage. Their connection with the ancient Germanic Body was completely severed; the very town in which the Diet of the Empire had held its meetings was annexed by one of the members of the Confederacy. The Confederacy itself, with a population of 8,000,000, became for all purposes of war and foreign policy a part of France. Its armies were organised by French officers; its frontiers were fortified by French engineers; its treaties were made for it at Paris. In the domestic changes which took place within these States the work of consolidation begun in 1801 was carried forward with increased vigour. Scores of tiny principalities which had escaped dissolution in the earlier movement were now absorbed by their stronger neighbours. Governments became more energetic, more orderly, more ambitious. The princes who made themselves the vassals of Napoleon assumed a more despotic power over their own subjects. Old constitutional forms which had imposed some check on the will of the sovereign, like the Estates of Wuertemberg, were contemptuously suppressed; the careless, ineffective routine of the last age gave place to a system of rigorous precision throughout the public services. Military service was enforced in countries hitherto free from it. The burdens of the people became greater, but they were more fairly distributed. The taxes were more equally levied; justice was made more regular and more simple. A career both in the army and the offices of Government was opened to a people to whom the very conception of public life had hitherto been unknown.

[No national unity in Germany.]

The establishment of German unity in our own day after a victorious struggle with France renders it difficult to imagine the voluntary submission of a great part of the race to a French sovereign, or to excuse a policy which, like that of 1806, appears the opposite of everything honourable and patriotic. But what seems strange now was not strange then. No expression more truly describes the conditions of that period than one of the great German poet who was himself so little of a patriot. "Germany," said Goethe, "is not a nation." Germany had indeed the unity of race; but all that truly constitutes a nation, the sense of common interest, a common history, pride, and desire, Germany did not possess at all. Bavaria, the strongest of the western States, attached itself to France from a well-grounded fear of Austrian aggression. To be conquered by Austria was just as much conquest for Bavaria as to be conquered by any other Power; it was no step to German unity, but a step in the aggrandisement of the House of Hapsburg. The interests of the Austrian House were not the interests of Germany any more than they were the interests of Croatia, or of Venice, or of Hungary. Nor, on the other hand, had Prussia yet shown a form of political life sufficiently attractive to lead the southern States to desire to unite with it. Frederick's genius had indeed made him the hero of Germany, but his military system was harsh and tyrannical. In the actual condition of Austria and Prussia, it is doubtful whether the population of the minor States would have been happier united to these Powers than under their own Governments. Conquest in any case was impossible, and there was nothing to stimulate to voluntary union. It followed that the smaller States were destined to remain without a nationality, until the violence of some foreign Power rendered weakness an intolerable evil, and forced upon the better minds of Germany the thought of a common Fatherland.

[What German unity desirable.]

The necessity of German unity is no self-evident political truth. Holland and Switzerland in past centuries detached themselves from the Empire, and became independent States, with the highest advantage to themselves. Identity of blood is no more conclusive reason for political union between Holstein and the Tyrol than between Great Britain and the United States of America. The conditions which determine both the true area and the true quality of German unity are, in fact, something more complex than an ethnological law or an outburst of patriotic indignation against the French. Where local circumstances rendered it possible for a German district, after detaching itself from the race, to maintain a real national life and defend itself from foreign conquest, there it was perhaps better that the connection with Germany should be severed; where, as in the great majority of minor States, independence resulted only in military helplessness and internal stagnation, there it was better that independence should give place to German unity. But the conditions of any tolerable unity were not present so long as Austria was the leading Power. Less was imperilled in the future of the German people by the submission of the western States to France than would have been lost by their permanent incorporation under Austria.

[The Empire of 1806 might have been permanent.]

[Limits of a possible Napoleonic Empire.]

With the establishment of the Rhenish Confederacy and the conquest of Naples, Napoleon's empire reached, but did not overpass, the limits within which the sovereignty of France might probably have been long maintained. It has been usual to draw the line between the sound statesmanship and the hazardous enterprises of Napoleon at the Peace of Luneville: a juster appreciation of the condition of Western Europe would perhaps include within the range of a practical, though mischievous, ideal the whole of the political changes which immediately followed the war of 1805, and which extended Napoleon's dominion to the Inn and to the Straits of Messina. Italy and Germany were not then what they have since become. The districts that lay between the Rhine and the Inn were not more hostile to the foreigner than those Rhenish Provinces which so readily accepted their union with France. The more enterprising minds in Italy found that the Napoleonic rule, with all its faults, was superior to anything that Italy had known in recent times. If we may judge from the feeling with which Napoleon was regarded in Germany down to the middle of the year 1806, and in Italy down to a much later date, the Empire then founded might have been permanently upheld, if Napoleon had abstained from attacking other States. No comparison can be made between the attractive power exercised by the social equality of France, its military glory, and its good administration, and the slow and feeble process of assimilation which went on within the dominions of Austria; yet Austria succeeded in uniting a greater variety of races than France sought to unite in 1806. The limits of a possible France were indeed fixed, and fixed more firmly than by any geographical line, in the history and national character of two other peoples. France could not permanently overpower Prussia, and it could not permanently overpower Spain. But within a boundary-line drawn roughly from the mouth of the Elbe to the head of the Adriatic, that union of national sentiment and material force which checks the formation of empires did not exist. The true turning-point in Napoleon's career was the moment when he passed beyond the policy which had planned the Federation of the Rhine, and roused by his oppression the one State which was still capable of giving a national life to Germany.



CHAPTER VII.

Death of Pitt—Ministry of Fox and Grenville—Napoleon forces Prussia into War with England, and then offers Hanover to England—Prussia resolves on War with Napoleon—State of Prussia—Decline of the Army—Southern Germany with Napoleon—Austria Neutral—England and Russia about to help Prussia, but not immediately—Campaign of 1806—Battles of Jena and Auerstaedt—Ruin of the Prussian Army—Capitulation of Fortresses—Demands of Napoleon—The War continues—Berlin Decree—Exclusion of English Goods from the Continent—Russia enters the War—Campaign in Poland and East Prussia—Eylau—Treaty of Bartenstein—Friedland—Interview at Tilsit—Alliance of Napoleon and Alexander—Secret Articles—English Expedition to Denmark—The French enter Portugal—Prussia after the Peace of Tilsit—Stein's Edict of Emancipation—The Prussian Peasant—Reform of the Prussian Army, and Creation of Municipalities—Stein's other Projects of Reform, which are not carried out.

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

[Coalition Ministry of Fox and Grenville.]

Six weeks after the tidings of Austerlitz reached Great Britain, the statesman who had been the soul of every European coalition against France was carried to the grave. [124] Pitt passed away at a moment of the deepest gloom. His victories at sea appeared to have effected nothing; his combinations on land had ended in disaster and ruin. If during Pitt's lifetime a just sense of the greatness and patriotism of all his aims condoned the innumerable faults of his military administration, that personal ascendancy which might have disarmed criticism even after the disaster of Austerlitz belonged to no other member of his Ministry. His colleagues felt their position to be hopeless. Though the King attempted to set one of Pitt's subordinates in the vacant place, the prospects of Europe were too dark, the situation of the country too serious, to allow a Ministry to be formed upon the ordinary principles of party-organisation or in accordance with the personal preferences of the monarch. The nation called for the union of the ablest men of all parties in the work of government; and, in spite of the life-long hatred of King George to Mr. Fox, a Ministry entered upon office framed by Fox and Grenville conjointly; Fox taking the post of Foreign Secretary, with a leading influence in the Cabinet, and yielding to Grenville the title of Premier. Addington received a place in the Ministry, and carried with him the support of a section of the Tory party, which was willing to countenance a policy of peace.

[Napoleon hopes to intimidate Fox through Prussia.]

Fox had from the first given his whole sympathy to the French Revolution, as the cause of freedom. He had ascribed the calamities of Europe to the intervention of foreign Powers in favour of the Bourbon monarchy: he had palliated the aggressions of the French Republic as the consequences of unjust and unprovoked attack: even the extinction of liberty in France itself had not wholly destroyed his faith in the honour and the generosity of the soldier of the Revolution. In the brief interval of peace which in 1802 opened the Continent to English travellers, Fox had been the guest of the First Consul. His personal feeling towards the French Government had in it nothing of that proud and suspicious hatred which made negotiation so difficult while Pitt continued in power. It was believed at Paris, and with good reason, that the first object of Fox on entering upon office would be the restoration of peace. Napoleon adopted his own plan in view of the change likely to arise in the spirit of the British Cabinet. It was his habit, wherever he saw signs of concession, to apply more violent means of intimidation. In the present instance he determined to work upon the pacific leanings of Fox by adding Prussia to the forces arrayed against Great Britain. Prussia, isolated and discredited since the battle of Austerlitz, might first be driven into hostilities with England, and then be made to furnish the very satisfaction demanded by England as the primary condition of peace.

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

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

At the moment when Napoleon heard of Pitt's death, he was expecting the arrival of Count Haugwitz at Paris for the purpose of obtaining some modification in the treaty which he had signed on behalf of Prussia after the battle of Austerlitz. The principal feature in that treaty had been the grant of Hanover to Prussia by the French Emperor in return for its alliance. This was the point which above all others excited King Frederick William's fears and scruples. He desired to retain Hanover, but he also desired to derive his title rather from its English owner than from its French invader. It was the object of Haugwitz' visit to Paris to obtain an alteration in the terms of the treaty which should make the Prussian occupation of Hanover appear to be merely provisional, and reserve to the King of England at least a nominal voice in its ultimate transfer. In full confidence that Napoleon would agree to such a change, the King of Prussia had concealed the fact of its cession to himself by Napoleon, and published an untruthful proclamation, stating that, in the interests of the Hanoverian people themselves, a treaty had been signed and ratified by the French and Prussian Governments, in virtue of which Hanover was placed under the protection of the King of Prussia until peace should be concluded between Great Britain and France. The British Government received assurances of Prussia's respect for the rights of King George III.: the bitter truth that the treaty between France and Prussia contained no single word reserving the rights of the Elector, and that the very idea of qualifying the absolute cession of Hanover was an afterthought, lay hidden in the conscience of the Prussian Cabinet. Never had a Government more completely placed itself at the mercy of a pitiless enemy. Count Haugwitz, on reaching Paris, was received by Napoleon with a storm of invective against the supposed partisans of England at the Prussian Court. Napoleon declared that the ill faith of Prussia had made an end even of that miserable pact which had been extorted after Austerlitz, and insisted that King Frederick William should openly defy Great Britain by closing the ports of Northern Germany to British vessels, and by declaring himself endowed by Napoleon with Hanover in virtue of Napoleon's own right of conquest. Haugwitz signed a second and more humiliating treaty embodying these conditions; and the Prussian Government, now brought into the depths of contempt, but unready for immediate war, executed the orders of its master. [125] A proclamation, stating that Prussia had received the absolute dominion of Hanover from its conqueror Napoleon, gave the lie to the earlier announcements of King Frederick William. A decree was published excluding the ships of England from the ports of Prussia and from those of Hanover itself (March 28, 1806). It was promptly answered by the seizure of four hundred Prussian vessels in British harbours, and by the total extinction of Prussian maritime commerce by British privateers. [126]

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

Scarcely was Prussia committed to this ruinous conflict with Great Britain, when Napoleon opened negotiations for peace with Mr. Fox's Government. The first condition required by Great Britain was the restitution of Hanover to King George III. It was unhesitatingly granted by Napoleon. [127] Thus was Prussia to be mocked of its prey, after it had been robbed of all its honour. For the present, however, no rumour of this part of the negotiation reached Berlin. The negotiation itself, which dragged on through several months, turned chiefly upon the future ownership of Sicily. Napoleon had in the first instance agreed that Sicily should be left in the hands of Ferdinand of Naples, who had never been expelled from it by the French. Finding, however, that the Russian envoy d'Oubril, who had been sent to Paris with indefinite instructions by the Emperor Alexander, was willing to separate the cause of Russia from that of England, and to sign a separate peace, Napoleon retracted his promise relating to Sicily, and demanded that this island should be ceded to his brother Joseph. D'Oubril signed Preliminaries on behalf of Russia on the 20th of July, and left the English negotiator to obtain what terms he could. Fox had been willing to recognise the order of things established by Napoleon on the Italian mainland; he would even have ceded Sicily, if Russia had urged this in a joint negotiation; but he was too good a statesman to be cheated out of Sicily by a mere trick. He recalled the English envoy from Paris, and waited for the judgment of the Czar upon the conduct of his own representative. The Czar disavowed d'Oubril's negotiations, and repudiated the treaty which he brought back to St. Petersburg. Napoleon had thus completely overreached himself, and, instead of severing Great Britain and Russia by separate agreements, had only irritated and displeased them both. The negotiations went no further; their importance lay only in the effect which they produced upon Prussia, when Napoleon's offer of Hanover to Great Britain became known at Berlin.

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

[Prussia determines on war.]

From the time when Haugwitz' second treaty placed his master at Napoleon's feet, Prussia had been subjected to an unbroken series of insults and wrongs. Murat, as Duke of Berg, had seized upon territory allotted to Prussia in the distribution of the ecclesiastical lands; the establishment of a North German Confederacy under Prussian leadership was suggested by Napoleon himself, only to be summarily forbidden as soon as Prussia attempted to carry the proposal into execution. There was scarcely a courtier in Berlin who did not feel that the yoke of the French had become past endurance; even Haugwitz himself now considered war as a question of time. The patriotic party in the capital and the younger officers of the army bitterly denounced the dishonoured Government, and urged the King to strike for the credit of his country. [128] In the midst of this deepening agitation, a despatch arrived from Lucchesini, the Prussian Ambassador at Paris (August 7), relating the offer of Hanover made by Napoleon to the British Government. For nearly three months Lucchesini had caught no glimpse of the negotiations between Great Britain and France; suddenly, on entering into conversation with the English envoy at a dinner-party, he learnt the blow which Napoleon had intended to deal to Prussia. Lucchesini instantly communicated with the Court of Berlin; but his despatch was opened by Talleyrand's agents before it left Paris, and the French Government was thus placed on its guard against the sudden explosion of Prussian wrath. Lucchesini's despatch had indeed all the importance that Talleyrand attributed to it. It brought that spasmodic access of resolution to the irresolute King which Bernadotte's violation of his territory had brought in the year before. The whole Prussian army was ordered to prepare for war; Brunswick was summoned to form plans of a campaign; and appeals for help were sent to Vienna, to St. Petersburg, and even to the hostile Court of London.

[Condition of Prussia.]

[Ministers not in the King's Cabinet.]

The condition of Prussia at this critical moment was one which filled with the deepest alarm those few patriotic statesmen who were not blinded by national vanity or by slavery to routine. The foreign policy of Prussia in 1805, miserable as it was, had been but a single manifestation of the helplessness, the moral deadness that ran through every part of its official and public life. Early in the year 1806 a paper was drawn up by Stein, [129] exposing, in language seldom used by a statesman, the character of the men by whom Frederick William was surrounded, and declaring that nothing but a speedy change of system could save the Prussian State from utter downfall and ruin. Two measures of immediate necessity were specified by Stein, the establishment of a responsible council of Ministers, and the removal of Haugwitz and all his friends from power. In the existing system of government the Ministers were not the monarch's confidential advisers. The Ministers performed their work in isolation from one another; the Cabinet, or confidential council of the King, was composed of persons holding no public function, and free from all public responsibility. No guarantee existed that the policy of the country would be the same for two days together. The Ministers were often unaware of the turn that affairs had taken in the Cabinet; and the history of Haugwitz' mission to Austerlitz showed that an individual might commit the State to engagements the very opposite of those which he was sent to contract. The first necessity for Prussia was a responsible governing council: with such a council, formed from the heads of the actual Administration, the reform of the army and of the other branches of the public service, which was absolutely hopeless under the present system, might be attended with some chance of success.

[State of the Prussian Army.]

[Higher officers.]

The army of Prussia, at an epoch when the conscription and the genius of Napoleon had revolutionised the art of war, was nothing but the army of Frederick the Great grown twenty years older. [130] It was obvious to all the world that its commissariat and marching-regulations belonged to a time when weeks were allowed for movements now reckoned by days; but there were circumstances less conspicuous from the outside which had paralysed the very spirit of soldiership, and prepared the way for a military collapse in which defeats in the field were the least dishonourable event. Old age had rendered the majority of the higher officers totally unfit for military service. In that barrack-like routine of officialism which passed in Prussia for the wisdom of government, the upper ranks of the army formed a species of administrative corps in time of peace, and received for their civil employment double the pay that they could earn in actual war. Aged men, with the rank of majors, colonels, and generals, mouldered in the offices of country towns, and murmured at the very mention of a war, which would deprive them of half their salaries. Except in the case of certain princes, who were placed in high rank while young, and of a few vigorous patriarchs like Bluecher, all the energy and military spirit of the army was to be found in men who had not passed the grade of captain. The higher officers were, on an average, nearly double the age of French officers of corresponding rank. [131] Of the twenty-four lieutenant-generals, eighteen were over sixty; the younger ones, with a single exception, were princes. Five out of the seven commanders of infantry were over seventy; even the sixteen cavalry generals included only two who had not reached sixty-five. These were the men who, when the armies of Prussia were beaten in the field, surrendered its fortresses with as little concern as if they had been receiving the French on a visit of ceremony. Their vanity was as lamentable as their faint-heartedness. "The army of his Majesty," said General Ruechel on parade, "possesses several generals equal to Bonaparte." Faults of another character belonged to the generation which had grown up since Frederick. The arrogance and licentiousness of the younger officers was such that their ruin on the field of Jena caused positive joy to a great part of the middle classes of Prussia. But, however hateful their manners, and however rash their self-confidence, the vices of these younger men had no direct connection with the disasters of 1806. The gallants who sharpened their swords on the window-sill of the French Ambassador received a bitter lesson from the plebeian troopers of Murat; but they showed courage in disaster, and subsequently gave to their country many officers of ability and honour.

[Common soldiers.]

What was bad in the higher grades of the army was not retrieved by any excellence on the part of the private soldier. The Prussian army was recruited in part from foreigners, but chiefly from Prussian serfs, who were compelled to serve. Men remained with their regiments till old age; the rough character of the soldiers and the frequency of crimes and desertions occasioned the use of brutal punishments, which made the military service an object of horror to the better part of the middle and lower classes. The soldiers themselves, who could be flogged and drilled into high military perfection by a great general like Frederick, felt a surly indifference to their present taskmasters, and were ready to desert in masses to their homes as soon as a defeat broke up the regimental muster and roll-call. A proposal made in the previous year to introduce that system of general service which has since made Prussia so great a military power was rejected by a committee of generals, on the ground that it "would convert the most formidable army of Europe into a militia." But whether Prussia entered the war with a militia or a regular army, under the men who held command in 1806 it could have met with but one fate. Neither soldiery nor fortresses could have saved a kingdom whose generals knew only how to capitulate.

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

All southern Germany was still in Napoleon's hands. As the probability of a war with Prussia became greater and greater, Napoleon had tightened his grasp upon the Confederate States. Publications originating among the patriotic circles of Austria were beginning to appeal to the German people to unite against a foreign oppressor. An anonymous pamphlet, entitled "Germany in its Deep Humiliation," was sold by various booksellers in Bavaria, among others by Palm, a citizen of Nuremberg. There is no evidence that Palm was even acquainted with the contents of the pamphlet; but as in the case of the Duke of Enghien, two years before, Napoleon had required a victim to terrify the House of Bourbon, so now he required a victim to terrify those who among the German people might be inclined to listen to the call of patriotism. Palm was not too obscure for the new Charlemagne. The innocent and unoffending man, innocent even of the honourable crime of attempting to save his country, was dragged before a tribunal of French soldiers, and executed within twenty-four hours, in pursuance of the imperative orders of Napoleon (August 26). The murder was an unnecessary one, for the Bavarians and the Wuertembergers were in fact content with the yoke they bore; its only effect was to arouse among a patient and home-loving class the doubt whether the German citizen and his family might not after all have some interest in the preservation of national independence.

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

When, several years later, the oppressions of Napoleon had given to a great part of the German race at least the transient nobleness of a real patriotism, the story of Palm's death was one of those that kindled the bitterest sense of wrong: at the time, it exercised no influence upon the course of political events. Southern Germany remained passive, and supplied Napoleon with a reserve of soldiers: Prussia had to look elsewhere for allies. Its prospects of receiving support were good, if the war should prove a protracted one, but not otherwise. Austria, crippled by the disasters of 1805, could only hope to renew the struggle if victory should declare against Napoleon. In other quarters help might be promised, but it could not be given at the time and at the place where it was needed. The Czar proffered the whole forces of his Empire; King George III. forgave the despoilers of his patrimony when he found that they really intended to fight the French; but the troops of Alexander lay far in the East, and the action of England in any Continental war was certain to be dilatory and ineffective. Prussia was exposed to the first shock of the war alone. In the existing situation of the French armies, a blow unusually swift and crushing might well be expected by all who understood Napoleon's warfare.

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

[French on the Main.]

[Prussians on the Saale.]

A hundred and seventy thousand French soldiers, with contingents from the Rhenish Confederate States, lay between the Main and the Inn. The last weeks of peace, in which the Prussian Government imagined themselves to be deceiving the enemy while they pushed forward their own preparations, were employed by Napoleon in quietly concentrating this vast force upon the Main (September, 1806). Napoleon himself appeared to be absorbed in friendly negotiations with General Knobelsdorff, the new Prussian Ambassador at Paris. In order to lull Napoleon's suspicions, Haugwitz had recalled Lucchesini from Paris, and intentionally deceived his successor as to the real designs of the Prussian Cabinet. Knobelsdorff confidentially informed the Emperor that Prussia was not serious in its preparations for war. Napoleon, caring very little whether Prussia intended to fight or not, continued at Paris in the appearance of the greatest calm, while his lieutenants in Southern Germany executed those unobserved movements which were to collect the entire army upon the Upper Main. In the meantime the advisers of King Frederick William supposed themselves to have made everything ready for a vigorous offensive. Divisions of the Prussian army, numbering nearly 130,000 men, were concentrated in the neighbourhood of Jena, on the Saale. The bolder spirits in the military council pressed for an immediate advance through the Thuringian Forest, and for an attack upon what were supposed to be the scattered detachments of the French in Bavaria. Military pride and all the traditions of the Great Frederick impelled Prussia to take the offensive rather than to wait for the enemy upon the strong line of the Elbe. Political motives pointed in the same direction, for the support of Saxony was doubtful if once the French were permitted to approach Dresden.

[Confusion of the Prussians.]

On the 23rd of September King Frederick William arrived at the head-quarters of the army, which were now at Naumburg, on the Saale. But his presence brought no controlling mind to the direction of affairs. Councils of war held on the two succeeding days only revealed the discord and the irresolution of the military leaders of Prussia. Brunswick, the commander-in-chief, sketched the boldest plans, and shrank from the responsibility of executing them. Hohenlohe, who commanded the left wing, lost no opportunity of opposing his superior; the suggestions of officers of real ability, like Scharnhorst, chief of the staff, fell unnoticed among the wrangling of pedants and partisans. Brunswick, himself a man of great intelligence though of little resolution, saw the true quality of the men who surrounded him. "Ruechel," he cried, "is a tin trumpet, Moellendorf a dotard, Kalkreuth a cunning trickster. The generals of division are a set of stupid journeymen. Are these the people with whom one can make war on Napoleon? No. The best service that I could render to the King would be to persuade him to keep the peace." [132] It was ultimately decided, after two days of argument, that the army should advance through the Thuringian Forest, while feints on the right and left deceived the French as to its real direction. The diplomatists, however, who were mad enough to think that an ultimatum which they had just despatched to Paris would bring Napoleon on to his knees, insisted that the opening of hostilities should be deferred till the 8th of October, when the term of grace which they had given to Napoleon would expire.

[Prussians at Erfurt, Oct. 4.]

A few days after this decision had been formed, intelligence arrived at head-quarters that Napoleon himself was upon the Rhine. Before the ultimatum reached the hands of General Knobelsdorff in Paris, Napoleon had quitted the capital, and the astonished Ambassador could only send the ultimatum in pursuit of him after he had gone to place himself at the head of 200,000 men. The news that Napoleon was actually in Mainz confounded the diplomatists in the Prussian camp, and produced an order for an immediate advance. This was the wisest as well as the boldest determination that had yet been formed; and an instant assault upon the French divisions on the Main might perhaps even now have given the Prussian army the superiority in the first encounter. But some fatal excuse was always at hand to justify Brunswick in receding from his resolutions. A positive assurance was brought into camp by Lucchesini that Napoleon had laid his plans for remaining on the defensive on the south of the Thuringian Forest. If this were true, there might yet be time to improve the plan of the campaign; and on the 4th of October, when every hour was of priceless value, the forward march was arrested, and a new series of deliberations began at the head-quarters at Erfurt. In the council held on the 4th of October, a total change in the plan of operations was urged by Hohenlohe's staff. They contended, and rightly, that it was the design of Napoleon to pass the Prussian army on the east by the valley of the Saale, and to cut it off from the roads to the Elbe. The delay in Brunswick's movements had in fact brought the French within striking distance of the Prussian communications. Hohenlohe urged the King to draw back the army from Erfurt to the Saale, or even to the east of it, in order to cover the roads to Leipzig and the Elbe. His theory of Napoleon's movements, which was the correct one, was adopted by the council, and the advance into the Thuringian Forest was abandoned; but instead of immediately marching eastwards with the whole army, the generals wasted two more days in hesitations and half-measures. At length it was agreed that Hohenlohe should take post at Jena, and that the mass of the army should fall back to Weimar, with the object of striking a blow at some undetermined point on the line of Napoleon's advance.

[Encounter at Saalfeld, Oct. 10.]

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

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

[Ruin of the Prussian Army.]

Napoleon, who had just received the Prussian ultimatum with unbounded ridicule and contempt, was now moving along the roads that lead from Bamberg and Baireuth to the Upper Saale. On the 10th of October, as the division of Lannes was approaching Saalfeld, it was attacked by Prince Louis Ferdinand at the head of Hohenlohe's advanced guard. The attack was made against Hohenlohe's orders. It resulted in the total rout of the Prussian force. Though the numbers engaged were small, the loss of magazines and artillery, and the death of Prince Louis Ferdinand, the hero of the war-party, gave to this first repulse the moral effect of a great military disaster. Hohenlohe's troops at Jena were seized with panic; numbers of men threw away their arms and dispersed; the drivers of artillery-waggons and provision-carts cut the traces and rode off with their horses. Brunswick, however, and the main body of the army, were now at Weimar, close at hand; and if Brunswick had decided to fight a great battle at Jena, the Prussians might have brought nearly 90,000 men into action. But the plans of the irresolute commander were again changed. It was resolved to fall back upon Magdeburg and the Elbe. Brunswick himself moved northwards to Naumburg; Hohenlohe was ordered to hold the French in check at Jena until this movement was completed. Napoleon reached Jena. He had no intelligence of Brunswick's retreat, and imagined the mass of the Prussian army to be gathered round Hohenlohe, on the plateau before him. He sent Davoust, with a corps 27,000 strong, to outflank the enemy by a march in the direction of Naumburg, and himself prepared to make the attack in front with 90,000 men, a force more than double Hohenlohe's real army. The attack was made on the 14th of October. Hohenlohe's army was dashed to pieces by Napoleon, and fled in wild disorder. Davoust's weak corps, which had not expected to meet with any important forces until it fell upon Hohenlohe's flank, found itself in the presence of Brunswick's main army, when it arrived at Auerstaedt, a few miles to the north. Fortune had given to the Prussian commander an extraordinary chance of retrieving what strategy had lost. A battle conducted with common military skill would not only have destroyed Davoust, but have secured, at least for the larger portion of the Prussian forces, a safe retreat to Leipzig or the Elbe. The French general, availing himself of steep and broken ground, defeated numbers nearly double his own through the confusion of his adversary, who sent up detachment after detachment instead of throwing himself upon Davoust with his entire strength. The fighting was as furious on the Prussian side as its conduct was unskilful. King Frederick William, who led the earlier cavalry charges, had two horses killed under him. Brunswick was mortally wounded. Many of the other generals were killed or disabled. There remained, however, a sufficient number of unbroken regiments to preserve some order in the retreat until the army came into contact with the remnant of Hohenlohe's forces, flying for their lives before the cavalry of Murat. Then all hope was lost. The fugitive mass struck panic and confusion into the retreating columns; and with the exception of a few regiments which gathered round well-known leaders, the soldiers threw away their arms and spread over the country in headlong rout. There was no line of retreat, and no rallying-point. The disaster of a single day made an end of the Prussian army as a force capable of meeting the enemy in the field. A great part of the troops was captured by the pursuing enemy during the next few days. The regiments which preserved their coherence were too weak to make any attempt to check Napoleon's advance, and could only hope to save themselves by escaping to the fortresses on the Oder.

[Haugwitz and Lord Morpeth.]

[Retreat and surrender of Hohenlohe.]

Two days before the battle of Jena, an English envoy, Lord Morpeth, had arrived at the head-quarters of the King of Prussia, claiming the restoration of Hanover, and bearing an offer of the friendship and support of Great Britain. At the moment when the Prussian monarchy was on the point of being hurled to the ground, its Government might have been thought likely to welcome any security that it should not be abandoned in its utmost need. Haugwitz, however, was at head-quarters, dictating lying bulletins, and perplexing the generals with ridiculous arguments of policy until the French actually opened fire. When the English envoy made known his arrival, he found that no one would transact business with him. Haugwitz had determined to evade all negotiations until the battle had been fought. He was unwilling to part with Hanover, and he hoped that a victory over Napoleon would enable him to meet Lord Morpeth with a bolder countenance on the following day. When that day arrived, Ministers and diplomatists were flying headlong over the country. The King made his escape to Weimar, and wrote to Napoleon, begging for an armistice; but the armistice was refused, and the pursuit of the broken army was followed up without a moment's pause. The capital offered no safe halting-place; and Frederick William only rested when he had arrived at Graudenz, upon the Vistula. Hohenlohe's poor remnant of an army passed the Elbe at Magdeburg, and took the road for Stettin, at the mouth of the Oder, leaving Berlin to its fate. The retreat was badly conducted; alternate halts and strained marches discouraged the best of the soldiers. As the men passed their native villages they abandoned the famishing and broken-spirited columns; and at the end of a fortnight's disasters Prince Hohenlohe surrendered to his pursuers at Prenzlau with his main body, now numbering only 10,000 men (Oct. 28).

[Bluecher at Luebeck.]

Bluecher, who had shown the utmost energy and fortitude after the catastrophe of Jena, was moving in the rear of Hohenlohe with a considerable force which his courage had gathered around him. On learning of Hohenlohe's capitulation, he instantly reversed his line of march, and made for the Hanoverian fortress of Hameln, in order to continue the war in the rear of the French. Overwhelming forces, however, cut off his retreat to the Elbe; he was hemmed in on the east and on the west; and nothing remained for him but to throw himself into the neutral town of Luebeck, and fight until food and ammunition failed him. The French were at his heels. The magistrates of Luebeck prayed that their city might not be made into a battle-field, but in vain; Bluecher refused to move into the open country. The town was stormed by the French, and put to the sack. Bluecher was driven out, desperately fighting, and pent in between the Danish frontier and the sea. Here, surrounded by overpowering numbers, without food, without ammunition, he capitulated on the 7th of November, after his courage and resolution had done everything that could ennoble both general and soldiers in the midst of overwhelming calamity.

[Napoleon at Berlin, Oct. 27.]

[Capitulation of Prussian fortresses.]

The honour of entering the Prussian capital was given by Napoleon to Davoust, whose victory at Auerstaedt had in fact far surpassed his own. Davoust entered Berlin without resistance on the 25th of October; Napoleon himself went to Potsdam, and carried off the sword and the scarf that lay upon the grave of Frederick the Great. Two days after Davoust, the Emperor made his own triumphal entry into the capital. He assumed the part of the protector of the people against the aristocracy, ordering the formation of a municipal body and of a civic guard for the city of Berlin. The military aristocracy he treated with the bitterest hatred and contempt. "I will make that noblesse," he cried, "so poor that they shall beg their bread." The disaster of Jena had indeed fearfully punished the insolence with which the officers of the army had treated the rest of the nation. The Guards were marched past the windows of the citizens of Berlin, a miserable troop of captives; soldiers of rank who remained in the city had to attend upon the French Emperor to receive his orders. But calamity was only beginning. The overthrow of Jena had been caused by faults of generalship, and cast no stain upon the courage of the officers; the surrender of the Prussian fortresses, which began on the day when the French entered Berlin, attached the utmost personal disgrace to their commanders. Even after the destruction of the army in the field, Prussia's situation would not have been hopeless if the commanders of fortresses had acted on the ordinary rules of military duty. Magdeburg and the strongholds upon the Oder were sufficiently armed and provisioned to detain the entire French army, and to give time to the King to collect upon the Vistula a force as numerous as that which he had lost. But whatever is weakest in human nature—old age, fear, and credulity—seemed to have been placed at the head of Prussia's defences. The very object for which fortresses exist was forgotten; and the fact that one army had been beaten in the field was made a reason for permitting the enemy to forestall the organisation of another. Spandau surrendered on the 25th of October, Stettin on the 29th. These were places of no great strength; but the next fortress to capitulate, Kuestrin on the Oder, was in full order for a long siege. It was surrendered by the older officers, amidst the curses of the subalterns and the common soldiers: the artillerymen had to be dragged from their guns by force. Magdeburg, with a garrison of 24,000 men and enormous supplies, fell before a French force not numerous enough to beleaguer it (Nov. 8).