The History of Napoleon Buonaparte Part 15

Other events of the same character now crowded on the scene. The king, or rather the queen of Naples, had not failed, during the recent campaign, to manifest the old aversion to the French cause. St. Cyr's army, which on the first rupture of the peace of Amiens had occupied the seaports of that kingdom, being called into the north of Italy to reinforce Ma.s.sena against the Archduke Charles, an Anglo-Russian expedition soon landed in Naples, and were welcomed cordially by the court. Napoleon, immediately after the battle of Austerlitz, issued a proclamation, declaring that "the royal house of Naples had ceased to reign for _ever_." On hearing of the decisive battle, and the retreat of the Czar, the English and Russians evacuated the Neapolitan territories on the mainland of Italy. Joseph Buonaparte conducted a French army towards the frontier; the court pa.s.sed over into Sicily; and Joseph was proclaimed King of Naples.

The King of Sweden, rus.h.i.+ng as hastily and inconsiderately as he of Naples into the war of 1805, landed with a small army in Germany, and besieged Hamelen, a fortress of Hanover, where Bernadotte had left a strong garrison. This movement, had Prussia broken her neutrality, might have been of high importance to the general cause; as events turned out, it was fruitless. The Swedes raised their siege in confusion, on receiving the news of Austerlitz; and Napoleon from that hour meditated the dethronement of the dynasty of Gustavus--but this object was not yet within reach.

The Princ.i.p.alities of Lucca, Ma.s.sa-Carrara, and Garf.a.gnana, were now conferred on Napoleon's sister, Eliza (Madame Bacciochi): on Pauline, the younger sister, who, after the death of General Leclerc, had married the Prince Borghese, the sovereignty of Guastalla was in like manner bestowed.

The Batavian republic had for years been in effect enslaved by France.

On pretence that her leading men, however, still yearned after the alliance of England, and thwarted him in his designs on the commerce of that great enemy, Napoleon now resolved to take away even the shadow of Dutch independence. The Batavian Senate were commanded to ask Louis Buonaparte for their king; and these republicans submitted with the better grace, because the personal character of Louis was amiable, and since Holland must be an appendage to France, it seemed probable that the connection might be rendered the less galling in many circ.u.mstances, were a prince of Napoleon's own blood const.i.tuted her natural guardian.

Louis had married the beautiful Hortense-f.a.n.n.y de Beauharnois, daughter of Josephine--so that, by this act, two members of the imperial house were at once elevated to royalty.--They began their reign at the Hague in May, 1806.

Another great consequence of Austerlitz remains to be mentioned. The Kings of Wirtemberg and Bavaria, the Grand Duke of Berg, and other sovereigns of the West of Germany, were now a.s.sociated together in a close alliance under the style of the _Confederation of the Rhine_: Napoleon added to his other t.i.tles that of _Protector_ of this confederacy; and the princes of the league were bound to place 60,000 soldiers at his command.

Finally, it was on his return from the triumph of Austerlitz, that Napoleon trampled down the last traces of the revolutionary organisation in France, by creating a new order of n.o.bility. Talleyrand became Prince of Benevento, Bernadotte, of Ponte Corvo, Berthier, of Neufchatel; the most distinguished of the Marshals received the t.i.tle of Duke, and a long array of Counts of the Empire filled the lower steps of the throne.

These princedoms and dukedoms were accompanied with grants of extensive estates in the countries which the French arms had conquered; and the great feudatories of the new empire accordingly bore t.i.tles not domestic, but foreign. In everything it was the plan of Napoleon to sink the memory of the Bourbon Monarchy, and revive the image of Charlemagne, Emperor of the West.

[Footnote 51:

"Lamented hero! when to Britain's sh.o.r.e Exulting Fame those awful tidings bore, Joy's bursting shout in whelming grief was drowned And Victory's self unwilling audience found; On every brow the cloud of sadness hung; The sounds of triumph died on every tongue.

Yet not the vows thy weeping country pays; Not that high meed, thy mourning sovereign's praise, Not that the great, the beauteous, and the brave Bend in mute reverence o'er thy closing grave; That with such grief as bathes a kindred bier Collective nations mourn a death so dear; Not these alone shall soothe thy sainted shade, And consecrate the spot where thou art laid-- Not these alone!--but bursting thro' the gloom, With radiant glory from thy trophied tomb, The sacred splendour of thy deathless name Shall grace and guard thy country's martial fame; Far seen shall blaze the unextinguished ray, A mighty beacon lighting glory's way-- With living l.u.s.tre this proud land adorn, And s.h.i.+ne, and save, thro' ages yet unborn."[52]

[Footnote 52: "Ulm and Trafalgar," a poem, by the Rt. Honourable George Canning.]

CHAPTER XX

Discontent of Prussia--Death of Pitt--Negotiation of Lords Yarmouth and Lauderdale broken off--Murder of Palm, the bookseller--Prussia declares War--Buonaparte heads the Army--Naumburg taken--Battle of Jena--Napoleon enters Berlin--Fall of Magdeburg, &c.--Humiliation of Prussia--Buonaparte's cruelty to the Duke of Brunswick--his rapacity and oppression in Prussia.

The establishment of the Confederation of the Rhine rendered Napoleon, in effect, sovereign of a large part of Germany; and seemed to have so totally revolutionised Central Europe, that Francis of Austria declared the Imperial Const.i.tution at an end. He retained the t.i.tle of Emperor as sovereign of his own hereditary dominions; but "The Holy Roman Empire,"

having lasted full one thousand years, was declared to be no more; and of its ancient influence the representative was to be sought for not at Vienna, but at Paris.

The vacillating court of Berlin heard with much apprehension of the formation of the Rhenish confederacy;[53] and with deep resentment of its immediate consequence, the dissolution of the Germanic Empire. The house of Brandenburg had consented to the humiliation of Francis in the hope of succeeding, at the next election, to the imperial crown so long worn by the princes of Austria; and now, not only was that long-cherished hope for ever dispelled, but it appeared that Napoleon had laid the foundation of a new system, under which the influence of the house of Brandenburg must, in all probability, be overruled far more effectually than it ever had been, of recent times, by the imperial prerogative of Austria.

The only method of counteracting the consolidation of French power all over Germany, seemed to be that of creating another confederacy in the northern circles, capable of balancing the league of the Rhine. The Elector of Saxony, however, perceived that Napoleon was not likely to acquiesce in the realisation of this scheme; and his Minister at Berlin continued to decline acceding to the Northern alliance. The Prince of Hesse-Ca.s.sel took a similar view of the case; but acted with a degree of vacillation worthy of the late conduct of Prussia herself, refusing on the one hand to embrace the confederation proposed by the Cabinet of Berlin, and yet declining, on the other, to form part of the Rhenish league, to which effect Buonaparte had frequently and urgently invited this elector. In the reluctance, however, of these princes, Prussia saw nothing but the determination of Napoleon to suppress, in the beginning, any such confederation of the Northern German States as had been contemplated; and irritation and jealousy from day to day increased.

The relations of France and Prussia continued in this dubious state, until the Cabinet of Berlin learned some particulars of a negotiation between Napoleon and the English Government, which took place in the summer of 1806.

Mr. Pitt, who despaired of opposing Buonaparte on the continent after Marengo, did not long survive the disastrous intelligence of Austerlitz.

Worn out and broken by the endless anxieties of his situation, not even the glorious tidings of Trafalgar could revive the sinking spirit of this great minister. He died on the 23rd of January, 1806, and was succeeded in the government by Mr. Fox, the same statesman who had, throughout every variety of fortune, arraigned his conduct of the war as imbecile and absurd, and who all along professed his belief that in the original quarrel between Great Britain and revolutionised France, the blame lay with his own country, and above all with Mr. Pitt.

The personal intercourse which took place between Fox and Napoleon, during the peace of Amiens, has already been alluded to. It was calculated to make all men regard the chances of a solid peace between France and England as increased by the event which transferred the reins of government, in the latter country, into the hands of the ill.u.s.trious opponent of Mr. Pitt. But the peculiar feelings of English politicians have seldom been understood by foreigners--never more widely misunderstood than by Buonaparte. When Fox visited him, as First Consul, at the Tuileries, he complained that the English Government countenanced the a.s.sa.s.sins who were plotting against his life. Mr. Fox, forgetting all his party prejudice when the honour of his country was a.s.sailed, answered in terms such as Napoleon's own military bluntness could not have surpa.s.sed--"Clear your head of that nonsense." And now, in like manner, Mr. Fox, once placed in the responsible management of his country's interests, was found, not a little to the surprise and disappointment of Napoleon, about as close and watchful a negotiator as he could have had to deal with in Pitt himself. The English minister employed on this occasion, first, Lord Yarmouth,[54] one of the _detenus_ of 1803, and afterwards Lord Lauderdale. For some time strong hopes of a satisfactory conclusion were entertained; but, in the end, the negotiation broke up, on the absolute refusal of Napoleon to concede Malta to England, unless England would permit him to conquer Sicily from the unfortunate sovereign whose Italian Kingdom had already been transferred to his brother Joseph. Mr. Fox was lost to his country in September, 1806; and Napoleon ever afterwards maintained that, had that great statesman lived, the negotiation would have been resumed, and pushed to a successful close. Meantime, however, the diplomatic intercourse of the Tuileries and St. James's was at an end, and the course which the negotiation had taken transpired necessarily in Parliament.

It then came out that the article of _Hanover_ had not formed one of the chief difficulties;--in a word, Napoleon had signified that, although the Electorate had been ceded by him to Prussia under the treaty of Vienna, at the close of 1805, Prussia yielding to him in return the princ.i.p.alities of Ans.p.a.ch, Bareuth and Neufchatel, still, if the English Government would agree to abandon Sicily, he, on his part, would offer no opposition to the resumption of Hanover by its rightful sovereign, George III. This contemptuous treachery being ascertained at Berlin, the ill-smothered rage of the court and nation at length burst into a flame.

The beautiful Queen of Prussia, and Prince Louis, brother to the king, two characters whose high and romantic qualities rendered them the delight and pride of the nation, were foremost to nourish and kindle the popular indignation. The young n.o.bility and gentry rose in tumult, broke the windows of the ministers who were supposed to lean to the French interest, and openly whetted their sabres on the threshold-stone of Napoleon's amba.s.sador. The lovely Queen appeared in the uniform of the regiment which bore her name, and rode at its head. The enthusiasm of the people thus roused might be directed, but could hardly be repressed.

Nor was it in Prussia alone that such sentiments prevailed. Split as Germany has for ages been into many independent states, there has always, nevertheless, been felt, and acknowledged, a certain national unity of heart as well as head among all that speak the German language: the dissolution of the empire was felt all over the land as a common wrong and injury: Napoleon's insulting treatment of Prussia was resented as indicative of his resolution to reduce that power also (the only German power now capable of opposing any resistance to French aggression) to a pitch of humiliation as low as that in which Austria was already sunk; and, lastly, another atrocious deed of the French Emperor--a deed as darkly unpardonable as the murder of D'Enghien--was perpetrated at this very crisis, and arrayed against him, throughout all Germany, every feeling, moral and political, which could be touched either by the crimes or the contumelies of a foreign tyrant.

Palm, a bookseller of the free city of Naumburg, having published a pamphlet in which the ambition of Napoleon was arraigned, a party of French gens-d'armes pa.s.sed the frontier, and seized the unsuspecting citizen, exactly as the Duke d'Enghien had been arrested at Ettingen, and Sir George Rumbold at Hamburg, the year before. The bookseller was tried for a libel against Napoleon, at Braunau, before a French court-martial; found guilty, condemned to death, and shot immediately, in pursuance of his sentence. It is needless to dwell upon this outrage: the death of D'Enghien has found advocates or palliators--this mean murder of a humble tradesman, who neither was nor ever had been a subject either of France or Buonaparte, has been less fortunate.

The Emperor of Russia once more visited Berlin, when the feelings of Prussia, and indeed of all the neighbouring states, were in this fever of excitement. He again urged Frederick William to take up arms in the common cause, and offered to back him with all the forces of his own great empire. The English Government, taking advantage of the same crisis, sent Lord Morpeth[55] to Berlin, with offers of pecuniary supplies--about the acceptance of which, however, the anxiety of Prussia on the subject of Hanover created some difficulty. Lastly, Buonaparte, well informed of what was pa.s.sing in Berlin, and desirous, since war must be, to hurry Frederick into the field ere the armies of the Czar could be joined with his, now poured out in the _Moniteur_ such abuse on the persons and characters of the Queen, Prince Louis, and every ill.u.s.trious patriot throughout Prussia, that the general wrath could no longer be held in check. Warlike preparations of every kind filled the kingdom during August and September. On the first of October the Prussian Minister at Paris presented a note to Talleyrand, demanding, among other things, that the formation of a Confederacy in the North of Germany should no longer be thwarted by French interference, and that the French troops within the territories of the Rhenish League should recross the Rhine into France, by the 8th of the same month of October.

But Napoleon was already in person on the German side of the Rhine; and his answer to the Prussian note was a general order to his own troops, in which he called on them to observe in what manner a German sovereign still dared to insult the soldiers of Austerlitz.

The conduct of Prussia, in thus rus.h.i.+ng into hostilities, without waiting for the advance of the Russians, was as rash as her holding back from Austria, during the campaign of Austerlitz, had been cowardly. As if determined to profit by no lesson, the Prussian council also directed their army to advance towards the French, instead of lying on their own frontier--a repet.i.tion of the great leading blunder of the Austrians in the preceding year. The Prussian army accordingly invaded the Saxon provinces, and the Elector, seeing his country treated as rudely as that of Bavaria had been on a similar occasion by the Austrians, and wanting the means to withdraw his own troops as the Bavarian had succeeded in doing under like provocation, was compelled to accept the alliance which the Cabinet of Berlin urged on him, and to join his troops with those of the power by which he had been thus insulted and wronged.

No sooner did Napoleon know that the Prussians had advanced into the heart of Saxony, than he formed the plan of his campaign: and they, persisting in their advance, and taking up their position finally on the Saale, afforded him, as if studiously, the means of repeating, at their expense, the very manuvres which had ruined the Austrians in the preceding campaign. In a word, he perceived that the Prussian army was extended upon too wide a line, and the consequent possibility of destroying it in detail. He further discovered that the enemy had all his princ.i.p.al stores and magazines at Naumburg, to the rearward, not of his centre, but of his extreme right; and resolved to commence operations by an attempt to turn the flank, and seize those magazines, ere the main body of the Prussians, lying at Weimar, could be aware of his movement. The French came forward in three great divisions; the corps of Soult and Ney, in the direction of Hof; Murat, Bernadotte and Davoust, towards Saalburg and Schleitz; and Lannes and Augereau upon Coburg and Saalfield. These last generals were opposed sternly, at Saalfield, by the corps of Prince Louis of Prussia. This brave young officer imprudently abandoned the bridge over the Saale, which he might have defended with success, and came out into the open plain, where his troops were overpowered by the French impetuosity. He himself, fighting hand to hand with a subaltern, was desired to surrender, and replying by a sabre cut, was immediately struck down with a mortal thrust. The Prussians fled; the bridge, which ought to have defended, gave the French access to the country behind the Saale. The flank of the Prussian position was turned: the French army pa.s.sed entirely round them; Napoleon seized Naumburg, and blew up the magazines there,--announcing, for the first time, by this explosion, to the King of Prussia and his Generalissimo, the Duke of Brunswick, that he was in their rear.

From this moment the Prussians were isolated, and cut off from all their resources, as completely as the army of Mack was at Ulm, when the French had pa.s.sed the Danube and overrun Suabia. The Duke of Brunswick hastily endeavoured to concentrate his forces for the purpose of cutting his way back again to the frontier which he had so rashly abandoned. Napoleon, meantime, had posted his divisions so as to watch the chief pa.s.sages of the Saale, and expected, in confidence, the a.s.sault of his outwitted opponent. It was now that he found leisure to answer the manifesto of Frederick William, which had reached Paris a day or two after he himself quitted that capital for the camp. His letter, dated at Gera, is written in the most elaborate style of insult. The King of Prussia (said he) had sent him a silly pamphlet of twenty pages, in very bad French--such a pamphlet as the English ministry were in the habit of commanding their hireling scribblers to put forth--but he acquitted the King of having read this performance. He was extremely anxious to live on the most friendly terms with his "good brother," and begged him, as the first token of equal goodwill, to dismiss the counsellors who had hurried him into the present unjust and unequal war. Such was the language of this famous note. Napoleon, now sure of his prey, desired his own generals to observe how accurately he had already complied with one of the requests of the Prussian Manifesto--"The French army," said he, "has done as it was bidden. This is the 8th of October, and we _have_ evacuated the territories of the Confederation of the Rhine."

The Prussian King understood well, on learning the fall of Naumburg, the imminent danger of his position; and his army was forthwith set in motion, in two great ma.s.ses; the former, where he was in person present, advancing towards Naumburg; the latter attempting, in like manner, to force their pa.s.sage through the French line in the neighbourhood of Jena. The King's march was arrested at Auerstadt by Davoust, who, after a severely contested action, at length repelled the a.s.sailant. Napoleon himself, meanwhile, was engaged with the other great body of the Prussians. Arriving on the evening of the 13th October at Jena, he perceived that the enemy were ready to attempt the advance next morning, while his own heavy train were still six-and-thirty hours' march in his rear. Not discouraged with this adverse circ.u.mstance, the Emperor laboured all night in directing and encouraging his soldiery to cut a road through the rocks, and draw up by that means such light guns as he had at command to a position, on a lofty plateau in front of Jena, where no man could have expected beforehand that any artillery whatever should be planted, and where, accordingly, the effect even of a small park proved more decisive than that of a much larger one might have been under other circ.u.mstances. Buonaparte spent all the night among the men, offering large sums of gold for every piece that should be dragged to the position, and continually reminding his followers that the Prussians were about to fight not for honour, but for safety,--that they were already isolated as completely as Mack's army had been at Ulm, and on stern resistance must needs submit to the fate of the Austrians. Lannes commanded the centre; Augereau the right; Soult the left; and Murat the reserve and cavalry.

Soult had to sustain the first a.s.sault of the Prussians, which was violent--and sudden; for the mist lay so thick on the field that the armies were within half gunshot of each other ere the sun and wind rose and discovered them; and on that instant Mollendorf charged. The battle was contested well for some time on this point; but at length Ney appeared in the rear of the Emperor with a fresh division; and then the French centre advanced to a general charge, before which the Prussians were forced to retire. They moved for some s.p.a.ce in good order; but Murat now poured his ma.s.ses of cavalry on them, storm after storm, with such rapidity and vehemence that their rout became inevitable. It ended in the complete breaking up of the army--horse and foot all flying together, in the confusion of panic, upon the road to Weimar. At that point the fugitives met and mingled with their brethren flying, as confusedly as themselves, from Auerstadt. In the course of this disastrous day 20,000 Prussians were killed or taken; 300 guns, twenty generals, and sixty standards. The Commander-in-Chief, the Duke of Brunswick, being wounded in the face with a grape-shot, was carried early off the field, never to recover. The loss of superior officers on the Prussian side was so great, that of an army which, on the evening of the 13th of October, mustered not less than 150,000, but a few regiments were ever able to act in concert for some time after the 14th. The various routed divisions roamed about the country, seeking separately the means of escape: they were in consequence destined to fall an easy prey. Mollendorf and the Prince of Orange-Fulda laid down their arms at Erfurt. General Kalkreuth's corps was overtaken and surrounded among the Hartz Mountains: Prince Eugene of Wirtemberg, and 16,000 men, surrendered to Bernadotte at Halle. The Prince of Hohenlohe at length drew together not less than 50,000 of these wandering soldiers, and threw himself, at their head, into Magdeburg. But it turned out that that great fortress had been stripped of all its stores for the service of the Duke of Brunswick's army before Jena. Hohenlohe, therefore, was compelled to retreat towards the Oder. He was defeated in a variety of skirmishes; and at length, finding himself devoid of ammunition or provisions, laid down his arms at Prenzlow; 20,000 surrendered with the Prince. His rear, consisting of about 10,000, under the command of the celebrated General Blucher, were so far behind as to render it possible for them to attempt escape. Their heroic leader traversed the country with them for some time unbroken, and sustained a variety of a.s.saults, from far superior numbers, with the most obstinate resolution. By degrees, however, the French, under Soult, hemmed him in on one side, Murat on the other, and Bernadotte appeared close behind him. He was thus forced to throw himself into Lubeck, where a severe action was fought in the streets of the town, on the 6th of November. The Prussian, in this battle, lost 4000 prisoners, besides the slain and wounded: he retreated to Schwerta, and there, it being impossible for him to go farther without violating the neutrality of Denmark, on the morning of the 7th, Blucher at length laid down his arms--having exhibited a specimen of conduct and valour such as certainly had not been displayed by any of his superiors in the campaign.

The strong fortresses of the Prussian monarchy made as ineffectual resistance as the armies in the field. In how far the charge of actual treachery, brought then, and still continued, against the commanders of those places, be just, we know not; but the fact is certain that the Governors of Spandau, Stettin, Custrin, Hamelen, and Magdeburg itself, yielded successively to the French Generals, under circ.u.mstances which roused the indignant suspicion of the Prussian people, as well as the soldiery and their unfortunate King. Buonaparte, in person, entered Berlin on the 25th of October: and before the end of November, except Konigsberg--where the King himself had found refuge, and gathered round him a few thousand troops, the sad relics of an army which had been considered as not unable to withstand the whole power of France,--and a few less important fortresses, the whole of the German possessions of the house of Brandenburg were in the hands of the conqueror. Louis Buonaparte, King of Holland, meanwhile, had advanced into Westphalia, and occupied that territory also, with great part of Hanover, East Friesland, Embden, and the dominions of Hesse-Ca.s.sel.

Thus in the course of a few short weeks, was the proud fabric of the Prussian monarchy levelled with the ground. The government being of a strictly military character, when the army, the pride and strength of the nation, disappeared, every bond of union among the various provinces of the crown seemed to be at once dissolved. To account for the unexampled rapidity of such a downfall, it must be remembered, first, that the Prussian states, many of them the fruits of recent military conquest, were held together by little but the name of the great Frederick, and the terror of the highly disciplined force, which he had bequeathed to his successors; that, in a word, they had not yet had time to be blended and melted thoroughly into a national whole: secondly, that Prussia had rushed into this war not only with imprudent rashness, but with the stain of dishonour on her hands. The acceptance of Hanover, as a bribe, from the French despot, and the hard and brazen reluctance to part with that ill-gotten spoil, even when the preservation of peace with France seemed hopeless--these circ.u.mstances, together with the mean desertion of Austria during the preceding campaign of Austerlitz--had, in effect, injured the government deeply and degradingly in the opinion of its own subjects, as well as of other nations: but, thirdly, the imbecile conduct of the chief Prussian officers, in the campaign of Jena, was as little likely to have been foreseen or expected, as the pusillanimous, if not treacherous, baseness of those who, after the army was defeated, abandoned so easily a chain of the best fortresses in Europe.

The personal character of King Frederick William was never calumniated, even when the measures of his government were most generally and most justly exposed to suspicion and scorn. On the contrary, the misfortunes of this virtuous sovereign and his family were heard of with unmixed regret and compa.s.sion.

These sentiments, and all sentiments likely in their consequences to be injurious to the cause of Napoleon, the conduct of the Conqueror in Prussia, at this time of national humiliation and sorrow, was well calculated to strengthen and confirm. The Duke of Brunswick, retiring wounded from Jena to the capital of his own hereditary princ.i.p.ality, addressed a letter from thence to Napoleon, requesting that the territory of Brunswick might not be confounded with that of Prussia, although he, as an individual, had appeared in Prussian uniform against him. Buonaparte answered with insolence as well as harshness. He styled the Duke "General Brunswick," and said he was determined to destroy his city, and displace his family for ever. The brave, though unfortunate Duke, retired on this to Altona, a Danish town, from which he meant to embark for England; but his wound being inflamed by these untimely movements, he died ere a vessel could be prepared for him. His son, considering him as murdered, vowed eternal revenge--and how he kept his vow, we shall see hereafter. The Prussian n.o.bility and gentry were treated on almost every occasion with like brutality. The great Conqueror did not hesitate to come down from his dignity for the petty pleasure of personally insulting gentlemen, who had done him no injury except that of being loyal to their own prince. The exactions of the victorious military were beyond all former example of licence; and studied contempt was everywhere mingled with their rapacity. It was now that the French laid the foundation of that universal hatred with which the Prussian nation, in the sequel, regarded them, and which a.s.sumed everywhere the virulence of a private and personal pa.s.sion.

In justice to Buonaparte, a solitary instance of generous conduct, which occurred ere he had been long in Berlin, must be noticed. The Prince of Hatzsfeld, continuing to reside in Berlin under his protection, corresponded, nevertheless, with Hohenlohe, then in the field, and sent information of the state and movements of the French army. One of his letters fell into the hands of the French--the Prince was arrested--his wife gained access to the Emperor, and, ignorant of her husband's conduct, spoke with the boldness of innocence in his favour. He handed to her the Prince's letter; and, confounded with the clearness of that evidence, she fell on her knees in silence. "Put the paper in the fire, madam," said Napoleon, "and there will then be no proof."

Perhaps no part of Buonaparte's conduct at this time gave more general disgust than his meanness in robbing the funeral monument of Frederick the Great of his sword and orders. These unworthy trophies he transmitted to Paris, along with the best statues and pictures of the galleries of Berlin and Potsdam, thus dealt with according to the example of Lombardy and Venice.

[Footnote 53: Published 27th July, 1806.]

[Footnote 54: Afterwards third Marquis of Hertford.]

[Footnote 55: Afterwards sixth Earl of Carlisle.]

CHAPTER XXI

The Decrees of Berlin--Napoleon renews the campaign--Warsaw taken--Enthusiasm of the Poles--Retreat of the Russians--Battle of Pultusk--The French go into winter quarters--Battle of Preuss-Eylau--Taking of Dantzick--Battle of Friedland--Armistice--Expeditions of the English to Calabria, Constantinople, Egypt, and Buenos Ayres--Peace of Tilsit.

Napoleon had achieved the total humiliation of the Prussian monarchy in a campaign of a week's duration: yet severe as the exertions of his army had been, and splendid his success, and late as the season was now advanced, there ensued no pause of inaction: the Emperor himself remained but a few days in Berlin.

This brief residence, however, was distinguished by the issue of the famous _decrees of Berlin_; those extraordinary edicts by which Buonaparte hoped to sap the foundations of the power of England--the one power which he had no means of a.s.sailing by his apparently irresistible arms.

Napoleon declared the British Islands to be in a state of blockade: any intercourse with that country was henceforth to be a crime; all her citizens found in any country in alliance with France to be prisoners; every article of English produce or manufacture, wherever discovered, to be confiscated. In a word, wherever France had power, the slightest communication with England was henceforth to be treason against the majesty of Napoleon; and every coast of Europe was to be lined with new armies of _douaniers_ and _gens-d'armes_, for the purpose of carrying into effect what he called "the continental system."