Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume III

The cause of this great distinction between two countries which have so often contended against each other for political power, and for influence in Germany, may be easily traced.

The empire of Austria combines in itself several large kingdoms, the undisturbed and undisputed dominions of a common sovereign, to whose sway they have been long accustomed, and towards whom they nourish the same sentiments of loyalty which their fathers entertained to the ancient princes of the same house. Austria's natural authority therefore rested, and now rests, on this broad and solid base, the general and rooted attachment of the people to their prince, and their identification of his interests with their own.

Prussia had also her native provinces, in which her authority was hereditary, and where the affection, loyalty, and patriotism of the inhabitants were natural qualities, which fathers transmitted to their sons. But a large part of her dominions consist of late acquisitions, obtained at different times by the arms or policy of the great Frederick; and thus her territories, made up of a number of small and distant states, want geographical breadth, while their disproportioned length stretches, according to Voltaire's well-known simile, like a pair of garters across the map of Europe. It follows as a natural consequence, that a long time must intervene betwixt the formation of such a kingdom, and the amalgamation of its component parts, differing in laws, manners, and usages, into one compact and solid monarchy, having respect and affection to their king, as the common head, and regard to each other as members of the same community. It will require generations to pass away, ere a kingdom, so artificially composed, can be cemented into unity and strength; and the tendency to remain disunited, is greatly increased by the disadvantages of its geographical situation.

These considerations alone might explain, why, after the fatal battle of Jena, the inhabitants of the various provinces of Prussia contributed no important personal assistance to repel the invader; and why, although almost all trained to arms, and accustomed to serve a certain time in the line, they did not display any readiness to exert themselves against the common enemy. They felt that they belonged to Prussia only by the right of the strongest, and therefore were indifferent when the same right seemed about to transfer their allegiance elsewhere. They saw the approaching ruin of the Prussian power, not as children view the danger of a father, which they are bound to prevent at the hazard of their lives, but as servants view that of a master, which concerns them no otherwise than as leading to a change of their employers.

There were other reasons, tending to paralyse any effort at popular resistance, which affected the hereditary states of Prussia, as well as her new acquisitions. The power of Prussia had appeared to depend almost entirely upon her standing army, established by Frederick, and modelled according to his rules. When, therefore, this army was at once annihilated, no hope of safety was entertained by those who had so long regarded it as invincible. The Prussian peasant, who would gladly have joined the ranks of his country while they continued to keep the field, knew, or thought he knew, too much of the art of war, to have any hope in the efforts which might be made in a desultory guerilla warfare; which, however, the courage, devotion, and pertinacity of an invaded people have rendered the most formidable means of opposition even to a victorious army.

The ruin of Prussia, to whatever causes it was to be attributed, seemed, in the eyes of astonished Europe, not only universal, but irremediable. The King, driven to the extremity of his dominions, could only be considered as a fugitive, whose precarious chance of restoration to the crown depended on the doubtful success of his ally of Russia, who now, as after the capture of Vienna, had upon his hands, strong as those hands were, not the task of aiding an ally, who was in the act of resistance to the common enemy, but the far more difficult one of raising from the ground a prince who was totally powerless and prostrate. The French crossed the Oder – Glogau and Breslau were invested. Their defence was respectable; but it seemed not the less certain that their fall involved almost the last hopes of Prussia, and that a name raised so high by the reign of one wise monarch, was like to be blotted from the map of Europe by the events of a single day.

Men looked upon this astonishing calamity with various sentiments, according as they considered it with relation to the Prussian administration alone, or as connected with the character of the King and kingdom, and the general interests of Europe. In the former point of view, the mind could not avoid acknowledging, with a feeling of embittered satisfaction, that the crooked and selfish policy of Prussia's recent conduct, – as shortsighted as it was grasping and unconscientious, – had met in this present hour of disaster with no more than merited chastisement. The indifference with which the Prussian Cabinet had viewed the distresses of the House of Austria, which their firm interposition might probably have prevented – the total want of conscience and decency with which they accepted Hanover from France, at the moment when they meditated war with the power at whose hand they received it – the shameless rapacity with which they proposed to detain the Electorate from its legal owner, at the very time when they were negotiating an alliance with Britain – intimated that contempt of the ordinary principles of justice, which, while it renders a nation undeserving of success, is frequently a direct obstacle to their attaining it. Their whole procedure was founded on the principles of a felon, who is willing to betray his accomplice, providing he is allowed to retain his own share of the common booty. It was no wonder, men said, that a government setting such an example to its subjects, of greediness and breach of faith in its public transactions, should find among them, in the hour of need, many who were capable of preferring their own private interests to that of their country. And if the conduct of this wretched administration was regarded in a political instead of a moral point of view, the disasters of the kingdom might be considered as the consequence of their incapacity, as well as the just remuneration of their profligacy. The hurried and presumptuous declaration of war, after every favourable opportunity had been suffered to escape, and indeed the whole conduct of the campaign, showed a degree of folly not far short of actual imbecility, and which must have arisen either from gross treachery, or something like infatuation. So far, therefore, as the ministers of Prussia were concerned, they reaped only the reward due to their political want of morality, and their practical want of judgment.

Very different, indeed, were the feelings with which the battle of Jena and its consequences were regarded, when men considered that great calamity in reference not to the evil counsellors by whom it was prepared, but to the prince and nation who were to pay the penalty. "We are human," and, according to the sentiment of the poet, on the extinction of the state of Venice,244 "must mourn, even when the shadow of that which has once been great passes away." But the apparent destruction of Prussia was not like the departure of the aged man, whose life is come to the natural close, or the fall of a ruined tower, whose mouldering arches can no longer support the incumbent weight. These are viewed with awe indeed, and with sympathy, but they do not excite astonishment or horror. The seeming fate of the Prussian monarchy resembled the agonizing death of him who expires in the flower of manhood. The fall of the House of Brandenburgh was as if a castle, with all its trophied turrets strong and entire, should be at once hurled to the earth by a superhuman power. Men, alike stunned with the extent and suddenness of the catastrophe, were moved with sympathy for those instantly involved in the ruin, and struck with terror at the demolition of a bulwark, by the destruction of which all found their own safety endangered. The excellent and patriotic character of Frederick William, on whose rectitude and honour even the misconduct of his ministers had not brought any stain; the distress of his interesting, high-spirited, and beautiful consort; the general sufferings of a brave and proud people, accustomed to assume and deserve the name of Protectors of the Protestant Faith and of the Liberties of Germany, and whose energies, corresponding with the talents of their leader, had enabled them in former times to withstand the combined force of France, Austria, and Russia – excited deep and general sympathy.

Still wider did that sympathy extend, and more thrilling became its impulse, when it was remembered that in Prussia fell the last state of Germany, who could treat with Napoleon in the style of an equal; and that to the exorbitant power which France already possessed in the south of Europe, was now to be added an authority in the north almost equally arbitrary and equally extensive. The prospect was a gloomy one; and they who felt neither for the fallen authority of a prince, nor the destroyed independence of a kingdom, trembled at the prospect likely to be entailed on their own country by a ruin, which seemed as remediless as it was extensive and astounding.

"But yet the end was NOT." —

Providence, which disappoints presumptuous hopes by the event, is often mercifully pleased to give aid when human aid seems hopeless. Whatever may be thought of the doctrine of an intermediate state of sufferance and purification in an after stage of existence, it is evident from history, that in this world, kingdoms, as well as individuals, are often subjected to misfortunes arising from their own errors, and which prove in the event conducive to future regeneration. Prussia was exposed to a long and painful discipline in the severe school of adversity, by which she profited in such a degree as enabled her to regain her high rank in the republic of Europe, with more honour perhaps to her prince and people, than if she had never been thrust from her lofty station. Her government, it may be hoped, have learned to respect the rights of other nations, from the sufferings which followed the destruction of their own – her people have been taught to understand the difference between the dominion of strangers and the value of independence. Indeed, the Prussians showed in the event, by every species of sacrifice, how fully they had become aware, that the blessing of freedom from foreign control is not to be secured by the efforts of a regular army only, but must be attained and rendered permanent by the general resolution of the nation, from highest to lowest, to dedicate their united exertions to the achievement of the public liberty at every risk, and by every act of self-devotion. Their improvement under the stern lessons which calamity taught them, we shall record in a brighter page. For the time, the cloud of misfortune sunk hopelessly dark over Prussia, of which not merely the renown, but the very national existence seemed in danger of being extinguished for ever.

CHAPTER XXXV

Ungenerous conduct of Buonaparte to the Duke of Brunswick – The approach of the French troops to Brunswick compels the dying Prince to cause himself to be carried to Altona, where he expires – Oath of revenge taken by his Son – At Potsdam and Berlin, the proceedings of Napoleon are equally cruel and vindictive – His clemency towards the Prince of Hatzfeld – His Treatment of the Lesser Powers – Jerome Buonaparte – Seizure of Hamburgh – Berlin Decrees against British Commerce – Napoleon rejects all application from the continental commercial towns to relax or repeal them – Commerce, nevertheless, flourishes in spite of them – Second anticipation called for of the Conscription for 1807 – The King of Prussia applies for an Armistice, which is clogged with such harsh terms, that he refuses them.

The will of Napoleon seemed now the only law, from which the conquered country, that so late stood forth as the rival of France, was to expect her destiny; and circumstances indicated, that, with more than the fortune of Cæsar or Alexander, the Conqueror would not emulate their generosity or clemency.

THE DUKE OF BRUNSWICK.

The treatment of the ill-fated Duke of Brunswick did little honour to the victor. After receiving a mortal wound on the field of battle, he was transported from thence to Altona. Upon his way to his native dominions, in the government of which his conduct had been always patriotic and praiseworthy, he wrote to Napoleon, representing that, although he had fought against him as a general in the Prussian service, he nevertheless, as a Prince of the Empire, recommended his hereditary principality to the moderation and clemency of the victor. This attempt to separate his two characters, or to appeal to the immunities of a league which Napoleon had dissolved, although natural in the duke's forlorn situation, formed a plea not likely to be attended to by the conqueror. But, on other and broader grounds, Buonaparte, if not influenced by personal animosity against the duke, or desirous to degrade, in his person, the father-in-law of the heir of the British crown, might have found reasons for treating the defeated general with the respect due to his rank and his misfortunes. The Duke of Brunswick was one of the oldest soldiers in Europe, and his unquestioned bravery ought to have recommended him to his junior in arms. He was a reigning prince, and Buonaparte's own aspirations towards confirmation of aristocratical rank should have led him to treat the vanquished with decency. Above all, the duke was defenceless, wounded, dying; a situation to command the sympathy of every military man, who knows on what casual circumstances the fate of battle depends. The answer of Napoleon was, nevertheless, harsh and insulting in the last degree. He reproached the departing general with his celebrated proclamation against France in 1792, with the result of his unhappy campaign in that country, with the recent summons by which the French had been required to retreat beyond the Rhine. He charged him as having been the instigator of a war which his counsels ought to have prevented. He announced the right which he had acquired, to leave not one stone standing upon another in the town of Brunswick; and summed up his ungenerous reply by intimating, that though he might treat the subjects of the duke like a generous victor, it was his purpose to deprive the dying prince and his family of their hereditary sovereignty.245

As if to fulfil these menaces, the French troops approached the city of Brunswick; and the wounded veteran, dreading the further resentment of his ungenerous victor, was compelled to cause himself to be removed to the neutral town of Altona, where he expired.246 An application from his son, requesting permission to lay his father's body in the tomb of his ancestors, was rejected with the same sternness which had characterised Buonaparte's answer to the attempt of the duke, when living, to soften his enmity. The successor of the duke vowed, it is believed, to requite these insults with mortal hatred – did much to express it during his life – and bequeathed to his followers the legacy of revenge,247 which the Black Brunswickers had the means of amply discharging upon the 18th of June, 1815.

Some have imputed this illiberal conduct of Buonaparte to an ebullition of spleen against the object of his personal dislike; others have supposed that his resentment was, in whole or in part, affected in order to ground upon it his resolution of confiscating the state of Brunswick, and uniting it with the kingdom of Westphalia, which, as we shall presently see, he proposed to erect as an appanage for his brother Jerome. Whether arising from a burst of temperament, or a cold calculation of interested selfishness, his conduct was equally unworthy of a monarch and a soldier.

At Potsdam and at Berlin, Napoleon showed himself equally as the sworn and implacable enemy, rather than as the generous conqueror. At Potsdam he seized on the sword, belt, and hat of the Great Frederick, and at Berlin he appropriated and removed to Paris the monument of Victory, erected by the same monarch, in consequence of the defeat of the French at Rosbach.248 The finest paintings and works of art in Prussia were seized upon for the benefit of the French National Museum.

The language of the victor corresponded with his actions. His bulletins and proclamations abounded with the same bitter sarcasms against the King, the Queen, and those whom he called the war faction of Prussia. Ascribing the war to the unrepressed audacity of the young nobility, he said, in one of those proclamations, he would permit no more rioting in Berlin, no more breaking of windows; and, in addressing the Count Neale, he threatened, in plain terms, to reduce the nobles of Prussia to beg their bread.249 These, and similar expressions of irritated spleen, used in the hour of conquest, level the character of the great victor with that of the vulgar Englishman in the farce, who cannot be satisfied with beating his enemy, but must scold him also. Napoleon's constant study of the poetry ascribed to Ossian, might have taught him that wrath should fly on eagles' wings from a conquered foe. The soldiers, and even the officers, caught the example of their Emperor, and conceived they met his wishes by behaving more imperiously in quarters, and producing more distress to their hosts, than had been their custom in the Austrian campaigns. Great aggressions, perhaps, were rarely perpetrated, and would have been punished, as contrary to military discipline; but a grinding, constant, and unremitting system of vexation and requisition, was bitterly felt by the Prussians at the time, and afterwards sternly revenged.

THE PRINCE OF HATZFELD.

It is but justice, however, to record an act of clemency of Napoleon amid these severities. He had intercepted a letter containing some private intelligence respecting the motions of the French, sent by Prince Hatzfeld, late the Prussian governor of Berlin, to Prince Hohenloe, then still at the head of an army. Napoleon appointed a military commission for the trial of Hatzfeld; and his doom, for continuing to serve his native prince after his capital had been occupied by the enemy, would have been not less certain than severe. His wife, however, threw herself at Napoleon's feet, who put into her hands the fatal document which contained evidence of what was called her husband's guilt, with permission to throw it into the fire.250 The French Emperor is entitled to credit for the degree of mercy he showed on this occasion; but it must be granted at the same time, that to have proceeded to sentence and execution upon such a charge, would have been an act of great severity, if not of actual atrocity. If, as has been alleged, the correspondence of Prince Hatzfeld was dated before, not after the capitulation of Berlin, his death would have been an unqualified murder.251

HESSE-CASSEL.

The victor, who had all at his disposal, was now to express his pleasure concerning those satellites of Prussia, which, till her fall, had looked up to her as their natural protector and ally. Of these, Saxony and Hesse-Cassel were the principal; and, in his proceedings towards them, Buonaparte regarded the train of his own policy much more than the merits which the two electors might have respectively pleaded towards France.

Saxony had joined her arms to those of Prussia – forced, as she said, by the arguments which a powerful neighbour can always apply to a weaker – still she had joined her, and fought on her side at the battle of Jena. The apology of compulsion was admitted by Buonaparte; the Saxon troops were dismissed upon their parole, and their prince raised to the rank of a King, shortly afterwards admitted as a member of the Confederacy of the Rhine, and treated by Buonaparte with much personal consideration. The Dukes of Saxe-Weimar and Saxe-Gotha also were permitted to retain their dominions, on acknowledging a similar vassalage to the French empire.

The Landgrave, or Elector, of Hesse-Cassel, might have expected a still more favourable acceptance in the eyes of the victor; for he had refused to join Prussia, and, in spite of threats and persuasions, had observed neutrality during the brief contest. But Napoleon remembered, to the prejudice of the landgrave, that he had resisted all previous temptations to enter into the Confederation of the Rhine. He imputed his neutrality to fear, not choice. He alleged, that it had not been strictly observed; and, treating the inaction of Hesse, whose inclinations were with Prussia, as a greater crime than the actual hostilities of Saxony, whose will was with France, he declared, according to his usual form of dethronement, that the House of Hesse-Cassel had ceased to reign. The doom was executed even before it was pronounced. Louis Buonaparte, with Marshal Mortier, had possessed himself of Hesse-Cassel by the 1st of November.252 The army of the landgrave made no resistance – a part of them passed under the banners of France, the rest were disbanded.

The real cause of seizing the territories of an unoffending prince, who was totally helpless, unless in so far as right or justice could afford him protection, was Buonaparte's previous resolution, already hinted at, to incorporate Hesse-Cassel with the adjacent territories, for the purpose of forming a kingdom to be conferred on his youngest brother Jerome. This young person bore a gay and dissipated character; and, though such men may at times make considerable sacrifices for the indulgence of transient passion, they are seldom capable of retaining for a length of time a steady affection for an object, however amiable. Jerome Buonaparte, as before stated, had married an American young lady, distinguished for her beauty and her talents, and had thus lost the countenance of Napoleon, who maintained the principle, that segregated as his kindred were from the nation at large, by their connexion with him, his rank, and his fortunes, they were not entitled to enter into alliances according to the dictates of their own feelings, but were bound to form such as were most suitable to his policy. Jerome was tempted by ambition finally to acquiesce in this reasoning, and sacrificed the connexion which his heart had chosen, to become the tool of his brother's ever-extending schemes of ambition. The reward was the kingdom of Westphalia, to which was united Hesse-Cassel, with the various provinces which Prussia had possessed in Franconia, Westphalia Proper, and Lower Saxony; as also the territories of the unfortunate Duke of Brunswick. Security could be scarcely supposed to attend upon a sovereignty, where the materials were acquired by public rapine, and the crown purchased by domestic infidelity.

About the middle of November, Mortier formally re-occupied Hanover in the name of the Emperor, and, marching upon Hamburgh, took possession of that ancient free town, so long the emporium of commerce for the north of Europe. Here, as formerly at Leipsic, the strictest search was made for British commodities and property, which were declared the lawful subject of confiscation. The Moniteur trumpeted forth, that these rigorous measures were accompanied with losses to British commerce which would shake the credit of the nation. This was not true. The citizens of Hamburgh had long foreseen that their neutrality would be no protection, and, in spite of the fraudful assurances of the French envoy, designed to lull them into security, the merchants had availed themselves of the last two years to dispose of their stock, call in their capital, and wind up their trade; so that the rapacity of the French was in a great measure disappointed. The strict search after British property, and the confiscation which was denounced against it at Hamburgh and elsewhere, were no isolated acts of plunder and spoliation, but made parts of one great system for destroying the commerce of England, which was shortly after laid before the world by the celebrated decrees of Berlin.253

It was frequently remarked of Buonaparte, that he studied a sort of theatrical effect in the mode of issuing his decrees and proclamations, the subject matter of which formed often a strange contrast with the date; the latter, perhaps, being at the capital of some subdued monarch, while the matter promulgated respected some minute regulation affecting the municipality of Paris. But there was no such discrepancy in the date and substance of the Berlin decrees against British enterprise. It was when Buonaparte had destroyed the natural bulwark which protected the independence of the north of Germany, and had necessarily obtained a corresponding power on the shores of the Baltic, that he seriously undertook to promulgate his sweeping plan of destroying the commerce of his Island foe.254