A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 13

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 princ.i.p.al 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 t.i.tle 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 a.s.surances 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 rest.i.tution 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 owners.h.i.+p 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 Amba.s.sador 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 circ.u.mstances less conspicuous from the outside which had paralysed the very spirit of soldiers.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.sed 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 Blucher, all the energy and military spirit of the army was to be found in men who had not pa.s.sed 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 Ruchel 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 cla.s.ses 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 Amba.s.sador 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 cla.s.ses. 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 ma.s.ses 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, ent.i.tled "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 Wurtembergers were in fact content with the yoke they bore; its only effect was to arouse among a patient and home-loving cla.s.s 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 n.o.bleness 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 pa.s.sive, 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 k.n.o.belsdorff, the new Prussian Amba.s.sador 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. k.n.o.belsdorff 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 un.o.bserved 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. "Ruchel," he cried, "is a tin trumpet, Mollendorf 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 k.n.o.belsdorff in Paris, Napoleon had quitted the capital, and the astonished Amba.s.sador 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 a.s.sault 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 a.s.surance 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 pa.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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 Auerstadt, 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 ma.s.s 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 Auerstadt, 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 ma.s.s 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed their native villages they abandoned the famis.h.i.+ng 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).

[Blucher at Lubeck.]

Blucher, who had shown the utmost energy and fort.i.tude 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 Lubeck, and fight until food and ammunition failed him. The French were at his heels.

The magistrates of Lubeck prayed that their city might not be made into a battle-field, but in vain; Blucher refused to move into the open country.

The town was stormed by the French, and put to the sack. Blucher 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 enn.o.ble 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 Auerstadt had in fact far surpa.s.sed 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 a.s.sumed the part of the protector of the people against the aristocracy, ordering the formation of a munic.i.p.al 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 n.o.blesse," 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 generals.h.i.+p, 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, Kustrin 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).

[Napoleon's demands.]

Neither Napoleon himself nor any one else in Europe could have foreseen such conduct on the part of the Prussian commanders. The unexpected series of capitulations made him demand totally different terms of peace from those which he had offered after the battle of Jena. A week after the victory, Napoleon had demanded, as the price of peace, the cession of Prussia's territory west of the Elbe, with the exception of the town of Magdeburg, and the withdrawal of Prussia from the affairs of Germany. These terms were communicated to King Frederick William; he accepted them, and sent Lucchesini to Berlin to negotiate for peace upon this basis.

Lucchesini had scarcely reached the capital when the tidings arrived of Hohenlohe's capitulation, followed by the surrender of Stettin and Kustrin.

The Prussian envoy now sought in vain to procure Napoleon's ratification of the terms which he had himself proposed. No word of peace could be obtained: an armistice was all that the Emperor would grant, and the terms on which the armistice was offered rose with each new disaster to the Prussian arms. On the fall of Magdeburg becoming known, Napoleon demanded that the troops of Prussia should retire behind the Vistula, and surrender every fortress that they still retained, with the single exception of Konigsberg. Much as Prussia had lost, it would have cost Napoleon a second campaign to make himself master of what he now asked; but to such a depth had the Prussian Government sunk, that Lucchesini actually signed a convention at Charlottenburg (November 16), surrendering to Napoleon, in return for an armistice, the entire list of uncaptured fortresses, including Dantzig and Thorn on the Lower Vistula, Breslau, with the rest of the untouched defences of Silesia, Warsaw and Praga in Prussian Poland, and Colberg upon the Pomeranian coast. [133]

[Frederick William continues the war.]