explanatory letter to Napoleon. It was too late. Prussia had armed. Napoleon at the same time had lost all hopes of peace by the death of Fox and the rejection of the scarcely signed treaty by the Emperor Alexander. He preferred war with Prussia as the means of at least cutting that knot with the sword. The Prussians were able to muster 180,000 men, of which about one half advanced to oppose the French if they attempted to force their way northward. Erfurt they selected as the best position whence to observe their enemy. The French, with a force fully equal to the Prussians, occupied Wurzburg. From this town Napoleon resolved to push his way towards the Saale and Leipzig by the eastern roads and passes of the Thuringian Forest, whilst the Prussians lay westward of it, vainly guarding the great northern road, which runs from Frankfort to Leipzig. Some cavalry encounters on the 9th and 10th of October at Schleiz and Saalfeld, in one of which Prince Louis of Prussia was killed, first gave warning not only of the French march, but of their having attained the Saale. The Prussians instantly turned back in haste from Erfurt to that river, and both arrived in approximation one to the other near Jena, the Prussians occupying the heights on the left, or westward of this river, the French those on the right. The Duke of Brunswick, who commanded the chief force, and who heard of the approach of the French lower down the Saale, feared that they intended to cut him off from the Elbe, and to prevent it, hurried away with the greater portion of his army in that direction, leaving the rest under Prince Hohenlohe on the heights above Jena. There ensued on the following day, the 14th, a double engagement: one between Prince Hohenlohe and Napoleon on the heights of Jena, the other at Naumbourg four leagues distant, between Marshal Davoust and the main army of the Prussians under the Duke of Bruns CHAP. XLIII. CHAP. wick. French bulletins and history chiefly magnify The In two days after the battles of Jena † and Auerstadt, Napoleon was at Berlin. The scattered Prussian divisions were defeated and made captive, Magdeburg *Bignon excuses this unfairness by alleging that Napoleon was not at first aware of the gravity and importance of Davoust's victory at Anerstadt. His excuse thus admits the unfairness whilst giving a lame explanation of it. For the battle of Jena, and the incapacity of the Duke of Brunswick, see Hopfner, der Krieg von 1806 and 1807. and Spandau surrendering as well as the strong towns on the Baltic, with the exception of those of East Prussia, whither the King had retreated. The tomb of the Great Frederic at Potsdam, where the Prussian King and Russian Emperor had so lately pledged alliance, was visited with emotion by Napoleon, who seized and bore away in triumph the sword and star which lay on the hero's tomb. Napoleon hitherto was like the traveller who limits his exploration by his view, and is contented with having reached the summit of the nearest mountain. To be sure, when one was surmounted, another rose up to tempt his ambition. Italy first, Austria next; but when the last kingdom of Germany, Prussia, so renowned in arms, lay prostrate before him, with no military power beyond it, save that of Russia, which he had already beaten in the field, Napoleon felt as if the world was his. Another campaign might be necessary to humble Russia into due subservience. But this, he wrote, was child's play. The French Emperor was not wrong in the persuasion that Europe lay prostrate before him. He did not perceive, however, that its prostration was that of sovereigns and governments, not of peoples. He professed to be the representative of the great principles of the French Revolution. Were this true, he was in the fittest position to display and to prove it, by breaking the shackles which everywhere fettered the people, and by endowing them with that equality, that liberty, those rights which the Revolution promised. Had he done so he would have been greater than Charlemagne, his throne and European influence founded on the gratitude of millions. But the representative of the great popular Revolution never thought of the people, except of that at home, to feed its vanity, to give it fêtes and edifices, museums and triumphal arches; whilst amongst his military aristocracy he distributed fiefs and titles, principalities and appanages, mimicking the ancient CHAP. XLIII. CHAP. Empire in its worst elements and characteristics, and surpassing it in despotism and faste. The excuse he gave for this was, the necessity of combating England. Yet at Berlin, lord of the continent, he might have shut England from his thoughts. She had swept from the seas all his remaining fleets and vessels. But she was as powerless on the continent as he was at sea, provided the conqueror, even in declining to do anything for its people, had shown anything like a fair spirit to the vanquished. He offered in those days, indeed, his alliance to Austria-Austria whom he had curtailed of half her empire. To which Austria could only reply by observing, that he surely could not be serious.* North Germany he determined to keep in his own hands. And this was his first serious error. For by keeping it in his jurisdiction, and treading down its population by the hoofs of his cavalry, and the exactions of his generals, he not merely made the government and officials his enemies, but the people. His conquest of Italy and of South Germany did not lead to this. If he oppressed and despised, he gave compensation, with a show of consideration and glory. But his occupation of Prussia was a galling tyranny, felt by the lowest as by the highest. And then he entered into his paper war with England. The cabinet of St. James's published about this time the documents relative to the late negotiations with France. This revealed the intention of Napoleon to give Hanover back to England instead of ceding it to Prussia as promised, and in fact showed that the distrust of Prussia, which led to the previous war, was well founded, the French Emperor manifestly playing fast and loose with Berlin. This with the advent of the Tories to power swelled his irritation to the utmost. He declared England in a state of blockade, or rather in a state of political and commercial coventry, and he not only confiscated and imprisoned, but pro * Hardenberg. scribed everything English. He accused the government of that country as barbarous for seizing and capturing persons unconnected with war and solely devoted to commerce, forgetting the number of English travellers whom he had seized and still detained without any reason, but the merest spite. England replied to the Berlin decree,* first by stopping the coasting trade between one continental port and another even in neutral vessels, and later by an Order in Council declaring all these ports to be in a state of blockade. Moreover, the decree went to regulate and order in its own fashion the entire trade of the ocean, forbidding any vessel to approach or trade with France, unless it first traded at an English port. One extravagance was thus made to meet another. The Berlin decree, said Mr. Lafitte, though it did not prevent an English ship from putting to sea, prohibited every continental ship from leaving its port. One of the first effects of the prohibition was to place Holland and its king, Louis Bonaparte, in direct opposition to the French Empire. This rage, rather than enmity against England fell not so much. upon it as upon all the maritime and even inland powers of Europe, which he undertook to coerce in the most extravagant manner for the accomplishment of this fantastic blockade. A more serious consequence was the invasion of Portugal and conquest of Spain by Napoleon, as well as his future invasion of Russia, the pressure of his arms being alone capable of forcing those countries into antagonism with England. Had he merely aroused the impatience and hostility of the governments of those distant lands, it would have been bad enough. But his usurpation and his armies provoked the people against him. And this present See Bourrienne's account of the absurdity of the Berlin decree of the 21st of November 1806. Napoleon punished with death the North Ger mans who smuggled a pound of CHAP XLIII |