Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

C >> C. A. Fyffe >> History of Modern Europe 1792 1878




[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 restitution 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 ownership 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 leadership 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 Ambassador 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
circumstances less conspicuous from the outside which had paralysed the
very spirit of soldiership, 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 passed 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 Bluecher, all the energy and military spirit of the army was
to be found in men who had not passed 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 Ruechel 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 classes 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 Ambassador 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 classes. 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 masses 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, entitled
"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 Wuertembergers were in fact content with the
yoke they bore; its only effect was to arouse among a patient and
home-loving class 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 nobleness 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 passive, 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
crushing 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 Knobelsdorff, the new Prussian Ambassador 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. Knobelsdorff 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 unobserved 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. "Ruechel," he cried, "is a tin trumpet, Moellendorf 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 Knobelsdorff in Paris, Napoleon had
quitted the capital, and the astonished Ambassador 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 assault 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 assurance 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 pass 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 mass 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 Auerstaedt, 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 mass 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 Auerstaedt, 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 mass 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 friendship 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 passed 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 passed their
native villages they abandoned the famishing 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).

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.