Chapter 36

THE DEVASTATION OF PRUSSIA[38]

[Footnote 38: References: As before, and especially for 1806-07 Bailleu: Diplomatische Correspondenzen, and the "Briefwechsel" of Frederick William and Louisa with the Czar; the Russian archives published by Woronzoff and Tratchefski; Stern: Abhandlungen und Aktenstücke aus der Preussischen Reformzeit; the published memoirs, correspondence, and lives of Metternich, Gagern, Gentz, Hardenberg, Montgelas, Ompteda, Stein, Varnhagen von Ense, Archduke Charles, Schwarzenberg, Frederick William III, Queen Louisa, Alexander I, Blücher, Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, Czartoryski, Nesselrode, Speranski, and Toll; the general histories of Oncken, Hassel, Häusser, Perthes, Treitschke, Beer, Fournier, Krones, Wertheimer, Bernhardi, Bogdanowitch, Golovine, Schiemann, Schilder, Lelewel, and Oginski; Duncker: Preussen während der Französischen Okkupation; Muffling: Aus meinem Leben. Lettow-Vorbeck: Der Krieg von 1806-07; Foucart: Campagne de Prusse.]

The Effects of Jena and Auerstädt -- Degeneracy of the French Soldiers -- Napoleon's Abuse of Queen Louisa -- The Occupation of Berlin -- Conduct of the French Generals -- Turkey and Russia at War -- Prussia and Russia -- Treatment of Minor German States -- Napoleon as the Liberator of Poland -- Condition of the Country -- The Retort to Trafalgar.

The moral effect of Jena upon Prussia was pitiful. All the years of irresponsible government, of absolutism and militarism, seemed revenged upon monarchy at a single blow. The nation, with no experience of independent action, was stunned, and did not run to arms, except in a few abortive instances. In his flight Frederick William had with difficulty kept together his royal state, and the day after Jena he sent an envoy to ask for an armistice. This was ostensibly a reply to Napoleon's suggestions of a peace sent three days earlier to the King, probably as a ruse; but the Emperor now declared that he would dictate his terms only from Berlin, and his army continued its advance. The Prussian court, with a few thousand men under Lestocq, retreated through West Prussia and took refuge in Königsberg. So thoroughly did Napoleon organize the pursuit, and so carefully did he estimate the total result of his victory, that nothing escaped him. The French soldiers carried everything before them. A Prussian reserve corps was easily beaten at Halle by Bernadotte, and fled for refuge to the unprovisioned fortress of Magdeburg. Lannes seized Dessau; Davout, Wittenberg; while Murat, Soult, and Ney proceeded to invest Magdeburg, which for those days was the strategic key of the Elbe valley. It resisted until November, but eventually fell, as did also Erfurt. In fact, the French ransacked the land. Even Hohenlohe did not escape them. Being overtaken by the infantry of Lannes and the cavalry of Murat, he was first driven from Prenzlau, and then, on October twenty-eighth, he surrendered, being a victim partly to the duplicity of Murat, who declared that a hundred thousand French were closing in on him, and partly to the stupidity of his own messenger, who asserted that the tale was true. Frederick William himself would have been captured at Weissensee but for Blücher, who brazenly declared to Klein, the French commander, that an armistice had been granted--a pure falsehood. Stettin capitulated to Lasalle's cavalry on the thirtieth, and Küstrin soon opened its doors. The fortresses of Spandau and Hameln followed their example, all four being surrendered with suspicious facility; in two instances the French and Prussian soldiers actually joined to hiss and execrate the governors, who were undoubtedly both recreant and venal. Blücher, after many gallant but fruitless attempts to collect a force, had reached Lübeck, through many dangers, with his cavalry; but driven thence after a gallant and exceptional resistance, he too surrendered. There remained no organized Prussian force in the lands between the Elbe and the Oder.

It had been accurate foresight which enabled Napoleon to say, in the decree issued from Jena on October fifteenth, that in the battle of the previous day he had conquered all the Prussian lands west of the Vistula. Before long the demoralization of the nation was as complete as the conquest of their country. The treatment of the people by the victorious soldiery was the climax of the long career of French officers and men as plunderers. As Napoleon's success kept pace with his ever-growing schemes of conquest, he laid less and less stress on the means to his end, ever more and more on its accomplishment. The army was once again scattered to obtain subsistence, and it left no opportunity for spoil neglected. As one of the most enthusiastic officers reluctantly declared: "From the moment Napoleon obtained supreme power the soldiers' morals changed, the union of hearts among them disappeared with their poverty, a desire for luxury and the comforts of life began. The Emperor considered it politic to favor this degeneracy. He thought it advantageous and shrewd to make the army absolutely dependent upon him."

The shocking details of Prussia's treatment by Napoleon and his army have been often told. On October twenty-fourth the Emperor arrived at the Hohenzollern residence of Potsdam, and publicly visited the tomb of Frederick the Great. Uttering words expressive of profound reverence for the great general, he nevertheless sent the old hero's sword, belt, and hat as trophies to ornament the Invalides at Paris. "His intellect, his genius, and his affections were kin to those of our nation, which he so esteemed," was the pretext for this act of spoliation. He was equally unscrupulous in his shameful treatment of the unfortunate Queen. Recognizing by swift penetration that in her resided the true spirit not alone of Prussian but of German nationality, that hers was the genius of reform, the temperament of the patriot, and the grace of perseverance, he selected her as the target of his spite. He loathed the use of feminine charm in statecraft, resented her endowment of beauty and intellect, and seems to have feared her influence. In bulletin after bulletin he heaped lying abuse on her devoted head. In one he depicted her as having a sufficiently pretty face, but little wit; in another he asked what mystery had led a woman hitherto absorbed in the serious occupations of her toilet to meddle with politics, stir up the King, and kindle everywhere the fire with which she was herself possessed. The answer, he insinuated, was to be found in the Czar's personal visits to Berlin.

On October twenty-seventh Napoleon made his triumphal entry into the Prussian capital with the utmost splendor he could devise, and at the head of the largest military force he could muster. Coignet, one of his soldiers, wrote of the scene: "The Emperor was grand in his plain clothes, with his little hat and a penny cockade. His staff, on the contrary, wore their dress uniform; and for strangers it was a queer sight to see, in the one man most meanly clad of all, the leader of so fine an army." The city of Berlin, populace, burghers, and aristocracy, was strangely apathetic at the approach and presence of the French. Its general aspect seemed to the invaders one of childish curiosity. But the Emperor was about to launch some of his most far-reaching thunderbolts and scorned any appearance of clemency. To "show himself terrible at the first moment," as he had advised Joseph to do at Naples, an order was issued for the seizure of Prince Hatzfeldt, governor of the capital and the most distinguished Prussian nobleman within reach. He was to be tried by a court-martial on the charge of being a traitor and a spy, his crime being that he had written to his King a letter giving an account of the French entry into Berlin. The epistle was so harmless in its nature that its writer had intrusted it to the mail, in which it was seized and then shown to Napoleon. The prince escaped the first blast of the storm by hiding; his life was afterward granted to the personal and tearful solicitations of his wife as an act of great clemency. As in Italy, the galleries, libraries, collections, and public monuments were stripped of their finest treasures to enrich Paris.

The French soldiers needed no example. Lübeck, which, as was claimed, had been taken by storm, was handed over to the men to work their will, just as Pavia had been. Wherever the troops were billeted, they had but to demand from their terrified entertainers what they desired and their behest was done. They were not modest, and before long both rapine and lust worked their will among the angry but helpless populations. The French generals were too much like their men, and, as in Italy and Austria, the gratification of their boundless greed seemed to meet the Emperor's approval. The castles of the nobility and the houses of the wealthy citizens were of course chosen by them as quarters. It would have been hard for their owners to refuse the unbidden guests any object which met with their expressed approval, and the French officers openly admired many valuable things. All these irregularities, the Emperor believed, attached his generals to himself; and at the same time a threat of examination into their accounts would, he knew, instantly check any manifestations of independence. Masséna was the most avaricious of all; nothing but the love of money could influence him, wrote Napoleon, and "where at first little sums sufficed, now milliards are not sufficient." At another time he said, more generously, that one must bow the knee before Masséna's gifts as a soldier, although he had his faults like another. Bernadotte, on the occasion of a certain surprise, lost the wagon which contained his Lübeck booty. He was inconsolable, and it was considered a delicious joke when he explained that he was so depressed because the loss "prevented him from paying a gratification in money to the men of his corps." Davout before long filled all Poland with the terror of his name. Napoleon's brother Jerome, finding a bin of choice Tokay in a Polish castle, loaded the contents in his baggage-train, and carried them away.

With Prussia thus shattered, disintegrated, and almost annihilated, Napoleon proceeded without the loss of a moment to use his new vantage against both Russia and England. In the Oriental question he could strike both with a single blow. As a result of the thorough knowledge of the East obtained in 1803 through Sebastiani, he had virtually determined to assert his supremacy over Turkey. To this end, however, he must for the present spare the sensibilities of Austria, which, though humbled to the dust, was again rising to her feet; her curiously assorted, heterogeneous peoples showed more spirit than the Prussians, displaying resources and courage comparable to those of France. During the summer of 1806, apparently of his own motion, but in reality by French suggestion, the Sultan Selim III had on August twenty-fourth dismissed the viceroys of Moldavia and Wallachia, both of whom had made themselves conspicuous by their Russian proclivities. At once the Czar Alexander I sent an army to cross the Pruth. The Sultan was terrified when the Russians occupied Bucharest, but on November eleventh, 1806, at the very climax of his peril, he was officially notified that Napoleon now had three hundred thousand men free to attack Russia and save Turkey; the Emperor would himself operate from the Vistula, and a Turkish army must simultaneously appear on the Dniester. The Sultan at once obeyed, and the Czar consequently sent eighty thousand men against the Turks. Two British expeditions were despatched in coöperation, one to Constantinople, one to Egypt: both were failures. Russia was soon fully occupied in her offensive campaign against Napoleon and correspondingly disabled in the East, while the Sultan's janizaries by low intrigue rendered active operations on his part impossible. Austria, mindful, apparently, of Russia's desertion after Austerlitz, displayed neither resentment nor alarm at the course taken by France, and Napoleon, whose material gain was slight, nevertheless won the diplomatic move and felt himself a step nearer both to victory over Russia and to such a protectorate of Turkey as would be a serious menace to England's Eastern empire.

As to Prussia, the ultimate arrangements were held in suspense. Napoleon's first response to a request for peace had been that he would make terms only in Berlin, and shortly after his triumphal entry negotiations were opened. The terms proposed by his ministers at the outset were far in excess of what the Prussian plenipotentiaries thought reasonable; but as one fortress after another opened its gates the demands grew more and more exorbitant. Although other counsels prevailed in the end, there was actually a moment when Napoleon contemplated the extinction of the Hohenzollern power, and the partition among his vassal states of that dynasty's variously acquired and strangely assorted lands, which had so little territorial unity that they extended in two separate parallel lines from northeast to southwest. Voltaire said they stretched over Europe like a pair of garters. The best offer that could be wrung from Napoleon--and, in view of Prussia's absolute prostration, he thought his proposition not ungenerous--was for an armistice, during which the French should occupy all Prussia as far as the Bug; and Frederick William should order the now advancing Russians off his soil. The Prussian minister actually signed this paper, but his sovereign, whose hopes were rising in proportion as the Russian army drew nearer, refused to ratify it. Owing to the general readjustment of the international relations so rudely shattered by the rise of French empire, neither Great Britain nor Russia could settle upon a definite policy, much less Prussia, distracted alike by internal dissensions and the smiting of ruthless foes.

It is not difficult to conceive the desperation of Frederick William as he learned the ominous disposition made of the lands belonging to his allies. The Elector of Hesse-Cassel had remained ostensibly neutral in the war, having requested and been refused membership in the Rhine Confederation. But he had mustered about twenty thousand men on a war footing: his heir was in the Prussian lines. He was rightly suspected of trimming to both currents: his people loathed and despised him. The day after Jena he was informed that the Emperor had been aware of his secret sympathy with the coalition, and that his feelings had been evidenced by the permission granted the Prussian troops to pass through his domain while his own army was (p.~443) ready for action. This conduct made it necessary to occupy his states. Mortier, the French commander at Mainz, was ordered to seize the prince and imprison him in Metz; on November fourth it was curtly announced that the house of Hesse had ceased to reign. The fact was, the territories of that house were needed for a new subsidiary kingdom, the formation of which had been for some time in contemplation. The Elector of Saxony, whose troops had fought with the Prussians at Jena, was, on the other hand, offered the privilege of neutrality, and, abandoning his former ally, he eagerly accepted. The dukes of Saxe-Gotha and Saxe-Weimar followed his example, and obtained immunity by submission. The Duke of Brunswick had withdrawn to his capital. Thence he appealed to his conqueror for mercy in behalf of his dominions. Napoleon's reply was pitiless, recalling the duke's notorious proclamation of 1792 against the French republic, and declaring that it was he also who had been the real instigator of the present war. The sting of this retort was in its truth and the humbled warrior in mortal agony betook himself to Altona, where he expired. Brunswick, Hanover, Hamburg, and their domains were all occupied by French troops and put under martial law.

In the treatment which Hesse-Cassel received, the Emperor of the French, though with much provocation, was simply a despot. In the case of Prussia he could not well pose as a liberator, for as yet there was no widespread sense of oppression and little national spirit among the people. In his dealings with Saxony and the Saxon duchies he appeared in a better light, for among their inhabitants there was a very extended sympathy with the liberal ideas, both political and ecclesiastical, which he was still supposed to represent. But there was a nation of Eastern Europe which longed for him as for a savior, and to whom he was far more than a representative liberal. Unhappy in her constitution, feeble in her political life, assassinated by a conspiracy of her neighbors, Poland was nevertheless still alive, and in her longing for a deliverer the majority of her people had fixed their eyes on Napoleon. From this fact he was anxious to draw the utmost advantage, and that right speedily, for the Czar with ninety thousand men was steadily marching toward the Prussian frontier. On November nineteenth a deputation of Polish nobility arrived in Berlin, and Napoleon, after treating them with impressive distinction, dismissed them with the statement that as France had never acknowledged the partition of their country, it was his interest as Emperor of the French to restore their independence and reconstruct a kingdom which, since it originated with him, would be permanent. A week later he proceeded to Posen, and, entering the city under an arch erected to "the liberator of Poland," awakened such enthusiasm that it far outran his own progress; a volunteer movement was almost instantly set on foot in Warsaw, which resulted in the enlistment of sixty thousand men as a national guard. It is idle to discuss whether Napoleon could or would have resuscitated Poland. Kosciusko and the more enlightened Poles believed not. Some of the Polish nobles demanded an immediate and formal recognition of their country's independence as the antecedent condition of their support. But among the masses the old ideals were revived, and the old spasmodic, misdirected energy was awakened in the service of the new Western Empire.

Such proceedings could not but arouse anxiety in Austria concerning the stability of her authority in the Polish lands under her crown. Andréossy, the French ambassador at Vienna, was instructed to say that such insurgent movements were a necessary consequence of the Emperor's presence in Posen, and that he had no intention of meddling with Austrian Poland; but that, nevertheless, if the Emperor of Austria felt uneasy, he might perhaps be willing to consider the acceptance of a part of Silesia as indemnity for the portion of Poland under Austrian rule. By this sly offer Francis was rendered powerless, for he could not accept Silesia, nor even a portion of it, without embroiling himself with England and Russia, and thereby entering into a virtual partnership with France. In spite of the unwearied efforts to stir up strife made by Napoleon's Corsican countryman, Pozzo di Borgo, who now represented the Czar at Vienna, Francis resolved to preserve a strict neutrality. The Poles were hopelessly divided, one party--that of Kosciusko--holding altogether aloof, a second under Poniatowski throwing themselves heartily on Napoleon's good will, a third under Czartoryski preferring to secure their country's resurrection through the Czar, who passed for an enlightened idealist. Here, as so often before, Napoleon concealed his intentions and movements behind the cloud of contradictory sentiments which he inspired in different classes of men by the assumption of a colorless magnanimity, just as the octopus blinds all alike, the indifferent as well as the hostile, in the inky fluid with which it darkens the clear waters round about.

Perplexity as to continental policies was, however, in marked contrast to the directness of his attack on England. This was in the form of a paper fulmination, a proclamation and a decree; mere print, but for all that a bolt, forged, to be sure, from the substance of French policies, yet novel in the daring with which it was now launched.