CHAP. XLIII. Whether his motive was to increase their confidence, or really to avoid an engagement, Prussia being about to enter the field against him, may be left to conjecture. The Czar sent young Dolgorouki to state his demands. As these amounted not only to the independence of Germany and Italy, but even of Belgium, Napoleon's ire was awakened. But still concealing his sentiments, he gave orders for a backward movement of his whole army to the position of Austerlitz. This corroborated the belief of the Russians that their antagonist was meditating a retreat upon Vienna, and they accordingly pressed forward to fight a battle. The line taken by the Russians in front of the French had the hill or plateau of Pratzen in its centre, which was thus the key of their position. Their first move on the morning of the battle (December 1, 1808) was to abandon it and descend into the marshy plain, so as to turn the right of the French and cut off their retreat upon Vienna. The counter-move of Napoleon was to rush forward to take possession of this height, which was accomplished, and the Russian line thereby broken. There was a great deal of hard fighting both on right and left. On the latter it was almost altogether a cavalry engagement. The Russians soon perceived that the manœuvre of Napoleon to seize and keep the plateau in their centre would be fatal to them if successful, and all the force they could dispose of was directed to this point. Napoleon met them with his reserves. The Russians brought up their guard, and the French guard under Rapp galloped up to oppose them. There ensued a fierce collision, in which the Russian guards were routed and all their cannon taken. Rapp's feat was the decisive one of the day. And the famous picture which records the victory of Austerlitz represents him as bringing the tidings to the Emperor. The battle was soon a rout, the Russians fled everywhere; one division in striving to escape over one of the frozen CHAP. lakes of the marsh, sunk into it and perished.* The Russians lost half their force in killed and wounded, with their guns to the number of 180. The Prince of Lichtenstein came immediately after the battle to the castle of Austerlitz where Napoleon was quartered, demanding an armistice. When the latter required some promise of concession on the part of the enemy, it was agreed that the Emperors of Austria and France should have a personal interview. The potentates met accordingly at a mill between the two armies, and Napoleon was satisfied with the concessions which his adversary was prepared to make. For all this, negotiations for a final peace were complicated and tedious. Napoleon demanded more than the Austrians however vanquished were resigned to give. In Italy he insisted. upon the cession not only of Venetia, but of Istria and Dalmatia to Cattaro. In Germany he required not only that Austria should resign its possessions in Suabia, but the Tyrol and Voralberg, countries of which the population were most attached to the House of Austria. The minister and negotiator, Prince Talleyrand, deprecated this severity of the Emperor towards Austria, which if he thus broke in sunder, its fragments would go to increase the power of Russia, henceforth the only state to be feared by France upon the Continent. Instead of muleting Austria of Dalmatia or the Tyrol, Talleyrand would have given it Moldavia and Wallachia, as an indemnity for the loss of Venetia and its Suabian dependencies. About a month before the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon, then on the Danube, had received tidings of the battle of Trafalgar. He must have congratulated The military writers who describe the battle of Austerlitz are many, especially French. But the best idea of the engagement, and of the skill that decided it, is to be ob tained from Kutusoff's account of XLIII. XLIII. CHAP. himself upon having abandoned his scheme of invading England. And no doubt his appropriation of Dalmatia and the mouths of the Cattaro was the first point of some great scheme for overrunning Turkey and reaching the British dominions in the East, through that country. The importance placed upon Cattaro by Napoleon was so strong, that when he heard of its being given over to Russia, he threatened Austria with a renewal of hostilities. In his subsequent treaty with Russia, Napoleon received back Cattaro, ceding Corfu to the latter. However fatal to his naval hopes, Trafalgar at least produced one result of which Napoleon gladly took advantage. This was the encouragement it gave to the Bourbon court of Naples to embark in hostilities with him. He replied by nominating his brother Joseph King of Naples, and placing under his command an army for the conquest of that country. It was soon achieved. * When Talleyrand recommended the aggrandizement of Austria, he was not aware of the expansion which his sovereign meditated giving to his scheme of reducing the greater part of Germany under his own empire. As the immediate result of Austerlitz, he had rounded the territories and augmented the dignities of the three sovereigns of South Germany, Bavaria, Wurtemburg, and Baden, uniting all by marriages with his imperial house, and severing the links which had previously bound them to Austria. Other German states more central, such as Darmstadt, secing Austria prostrate and Prussia set aside, demanded a similar treatment. And thus was Napoleon led and enabled to form the Confederation of the Rhine, which made him the protector of the minor States of Germany and President of their Diet, all uniting to form a military League of which France was to furnish 200,000, the rest, some 30,000, *Prince Eugène Beauharnais married Princess Augusta of Bavaria, Jerome espoused the Princess Cathe rine of Wurtemburg, and the grandson of the Duke of Baden became the husband of Stephanie Beauharnais. some 12,000, to the amount of 60,000 men. The liberties of Frankfort were annihilated, and the city given to the Duke D'Alberg, as Prince Primate of the new confederation. Austria, under the menace of war if it opposed, sanctioned the new Confederacy by waiving its supremacy over the old and its sovereign's title of Emperor of Germany. These were grave events for Prussia, which was as much set aside as Austria. France, to be sure, had given Hanover in a treaty concluded soon after Austerlitz, but it had at the same time taken Anspach to give to Bavaria, with Berg and Cleves to form a Grand Duchy for Murat. Hanover, too, had scarcely been made over to Prussia, when there was a talk and more than a talk, an intention of recalling it, and restoring it to England,* in the negotiation which then opened with Lords Yarmouth and Lauderdale. Peace with Great Britain was not indeed far from conclusion; Sicily which the English would not give up being the only obstacle. French historians, and Napoleon himself, represent Prussia as actuated by mere court caprice and fatuous folly when rushing into war at this epoch. They depict the quarrel as one inspired by the beautiful and indignant Queen of Prussia, and the young princes in her confidence. But war had been long counselled to Frederic William by his wisest and best statesman, Hardenburg-not war, indeed, after Austria had succumbed in the battle of Austerlitz, but before it, when Russia and Austria were in arms, and when Prussia could have brought 150,000 men to their support. The King's slow and hesitating character, as well as his honourable scruples, allowed the time to pass, and prevented his acting against the French, as he had promised the Emperor Alexander. Napoleon, after Austerlitz, was willing to pardon this weakness, but it Napoleon no sooner heard of Fox's accession to office than he countermanded the transference of Hanover to Prussia, in his hope of CHAP. XLIII. CHAP. was only on the condition that Prussia should at length cordially ally with him, and break decidedly with Russia and with England. Here, again, the King's scruples interfered to prevent his joining France, as it had just prevented him attacking that power. The court of Berlin rejected or sought to modify the first treaty concluded with France after Austerlitz. It shrunk from accepting Hanover, even when greedy to get it. A harsher treaty was sent from Paris and accepted. But all kinds of slights, especially the arrangements respecting the Confederation of the Rhine, were put upon Prussia, which maddened the war party, and enabled it to over-rule the King. Napoleon's bulletins issued after the commencement of hostilities with Prussia, give no untrue account of the manner in which they were precipitated. "The peace signed with Russia on the 10th of July, the negotiations almost brought to a successful conclusion with England, excited the utmost alarm at Berlin. Rumour ran of secret articles in these treaties, that Constantine was to be declared King of Poland, that Austria was to have Silesia instead of Gallicia, that England was to have Hanover." It was also said that Murat was to be King of Westphalia, to which the negotiations of France with regard to Germany, without in the least consulting Prussia, lent probability. Accounts of this nature, brought, not by common fame, but set forth in the despatches from Paris of the Prussian minister Lucchesini, by no means without foundation, notwithstanding the contradiction of the bulletin, reached Berlin on the 11th of August.* This produced an explosion of war resolves, menaces, and preparations. Somewhat calmed by the subsequent intelligence that Russia had not ratified the treaty with France, the Prussian king wrote on the 23rd an * Mémoires tirés des papiers d'un homme d'État. |