Book: History of Modern Europe 1792 1878

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[Bluecher at Luebeck.]

Bluecher, who had shown the utmost energy and fortitude 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 Luebeck, and
fight until food and ammunition failed him. The French were at his heels.
The magistrates of Luebeck prayed that their city might not be made into a
battle-field, but in vain; Bluecher refused to move into the open country.
The town was stormed by the French, and put to the sack. Bluecher 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 ennoble 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 Auerstaedt had in fact far surpassed 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 assumed the part of the
protector of the people against the aristocracy, ordering the formation of
a municipal 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 noblesse," 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 generalship, 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, Kuestrin 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 Kuestrin.
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
Koenigsberg. 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.]

The treaty, however, required the King's ratification. Frederick William,
timorous as he was, hesitated to confirm an agreement which ousted him from
his dominions as completely as if the last soldier of Prussia had gone into
captivity. The patriotic party, headed by Stein, pleaded for the honour of
the country against the miserable Cabinet which now sought to complete its
work of ruin. Assurances of support arrived from St. Petersburg. The King
determined to reject the treaty, and to continue the war to the last
extremity. Haugwitz hereupon tendered his resignation, and terminated a
political career disastrous beyond any recorded in modern times. For a
moment, it seemed as if the real interests of the country were at length to
be recognised in the appointment of Stein to one of the three principal
offices of State. But the King still remained blind to the necessity of
unity in the government, and angrily dismissed Stein when he refused to
hold the Ministry if representatives of the old Cabinet and of the
peace-party were to have places beside him. The King's act was ill
calculated to serve the interests of Prussia, either at home or abroad.
Stein was the one Minister on whom the patriotic party of Prussia and the
Governments of Europe could rely with perfect confidence. [134] His
dismissal at this crisis proved the incurable poverty of Frederick
William's mental nature; it also proved that, so long as any hope remained
of saving the Prussian State by the help of the Czar of Russia, the
patriotic party had little chance of creating a responsible government at
home.

[Napoleon at Berlin.]

[The Berlin decree against English commerce, Nov. 21, 1806.]

Throughout the month of November French armies overran Northern Germany:
Napoleon himself remained at Berlin, and laid the foundations of a
political system corresponding to that which he had imposed upon Southern
Germany after the victory of Austerlitz. The Houses of Brunswick and
Hesse-Cassel were deposed, in order to create a new client-kingdom of
Westphalia; Saxony, with Weimar and four other duchies, entered the
Confederation of the Rhine. A measure more widely affecting the Continent
of Europe dated from the last days of the Emperor's residence at the
Prussian capital. On the 21st of November, 1806, a decree was published at
Berlin prohibiting the inhabitants of the entire European territory allied
with France from carrying on any commerce with Great Britain, or admitting
any merchandise that had been produced in Great Britain or in its colonies.
[135] The line of coast thus closed to the shipping and the produce of the
British Empire included everything from the Vistula to the southern point
of Dalmatia, with the exception of Denmark and Portugal and the Austrian
port of Trieste. All property belonging to English subjects, all
merchandise of British origin, whoever might be the owner, was ordered to
be confiscated: no vessel that had even touched at a British port was
permitted to enter a Continental harbour. It was the fixed purpose of
Napoleon to exhaust Great Britain, since he could not destroy its navies,
or, according to his own expression, to conquer England upon the Continent.
All that was most harsh and unjust in the operation of the Berlin Decree
fell, however, more upon Napoleon's own subjects than upon Great Britain.
The exclusion of British ships from the harbours of the allies of France
was no more than the exercise of a common right in war; even the seizure of
the property of Englishmen, though a violation of international law, bore
at least an analogy to the seizure of French property at sea; but the
confiscation of the merchandise of German and Dutch traders, after it had
lain for weeks in their own warehouses, solely because it had been produced
in the British Empire, was an act of flagrant and odious oppression. The
first result of the Berlin Decree was to fill the trading towns of North
Germany with French revenue-officers and inquisitors. Peaceable tradesmen
began to understand the import of the battle of Jena when French gendarmes
threw their stock into the common furnace, or dragged them to prison for
possessing a hogshead of Jamaica sugar or a bale of Leeds cloth. The
merchants who possessed a large quantity of English or colonial wares were
the heaviest sufferers by Napoleon's commercial policy: the public found
the markets supplied by American and Danish traders, until, at a later
period, the British Government adopted reprisals, and prevented the ships
of neutrals from entering any port from which English vessels were
excluded. Then every cottage felt the stress of the war. But if the full
consequences of the Berlin Decree were delayed until the retaliation of
Great Britain reached the dimensions of Napoleon's own tyranny, the Decree
itself marked on the part of Napoleon the assumption of a power in conflict
with the needs and habits of European life. Like most of the schemes of
Napoleon subsequent to the victories of 1806, it transgressed the limits of
practical statesmanship, and displayed an ambition no longer raised above
mere tyranny by its harmony with forms of progress and with the better
tendencies of the age.

[Napoleon and the Poles.]

Immediately after signing the Berlin Decree, Napoleon quitted the Prussian
capital (Nov. 25). The first act of the war had now closed. The Prussian
State was overthrown; its territory as far as the Vistula lay at the mercy
of the invader; its King was a fugitive at Koenigsberg, at the eastern
extremity of his dominions. The second act of the war began with the
rejection of the armistice which had been signed by Lucchesini, and with
the entry of Russia into the field against Napoleon. The scene of
hostilities was henceforward in Prussian Poland and in the Baltic Province
lying between the lower Vistula and the Russian frontier. Napoleon entered
Poland, as he had entered Italy ten years before, with the pretence of
restoring liberty to an enslaved people. Kosciusko's name was fraudulently
attached to a proclamation summoning the Polish nation to arms; and
although Kosciusko himself declined to place any trust in the betrayer of
Venice, thousands of his countrymen flocked to Napoleon's standard, or
anticipated his arrival by capturing and expelling the Prussian detachments
scattered through their country. Promises of the restoration of Polish
independence were given by Napoleon in abundance; but the cause of Poland
was the last to attract the sympathy of a man who considered the sacrifice
of the weak to the strong to be the first principle of all good policy. To
have attempted the restoration of Polish independence would have been to
make permanent enemies of Russia and Prussia for the sake of an ally weaker
than either of them. The project was not at this time seriously entertained
by Napoleon. He had no motive to face a work of such enormous difficulty as
the creation of a solid political order among the most unpractical race in
Europe. He was glad to enrol the Polish nobles among his soldiers; he knew
the value of their enthusiasm, and took pains to excite it; but, when the
battle was over, it was with Russia, not Poland, that France had to settle;
and no better fate remained, even for the Prussian provinces of Poland,
than in part to be formed into a client-state, in part to be surrendered as
a means of accommodation with the Czar.

[Campaign in Poland against Russia, Dec., 1806.]

The armies of Russia were at some distance from the Vistula when, in
November, 1806, Napoleon entered Polish territory. Their movements were
slow, their numbers insufficient. At the moment when all the forces of the
Empire were required for the struggle against Napoleon, troops were being
sent into Moldavia against the Sultan. Nor were the Russian commanders
anxious to save what still remained of the Prussian kingdom. The disasters
of Prussia, like those of Austria at the beginning of the campaign of 1805,
excited less sympathy than contempt; and the inclination of the Czar's
generals was rather to carry on the war upon the frontier of their own
country than to commit themselves to a distant campaign with a despised
ally. Lestocq, who commanded the remnant of the Prussian army upon the
Vistula, was therefore directed to abandon his position at Thorn and to
move eastwards. The French crossed the Vistula higher up the river; and by
the middle of December the armies of France and Russia lay opposite to one
another in the neighbourhood of Pultusk, upon the Ukra and the Narew. The
first encounter, though not of a decisive character, resulted in the
retreat of the Russians. Heavy rains and fathomless mud checked the
pursuit. War seemed almost impossible in such a country and such a climate;
and Napoleon ordered his troops to take up their winter quarters along the
Vistula, believing that nothing more could be attempted on either side
before the spring.

[Eylau, Feb. 8, 1807.]

[Napoleon and Bennigsen in East Prussia.]

But the command of the Russian forces was now transferred from the aged and
half-mad Kamenski, [136] who had opened the campaign, to a general better
qualified to cope with Napoleon. Bennigsen, the new commander-in-chief, was
an active and daring soldier. Though a German by birth, his soldiership was
of that dogged and resolute order which suits the character of Russian
troops; and, in the mid-winter of 1806, Napoleon found beyond the Vistula
such an enemy as he had never encountered in Western Europe. Bennigsen
conceived the design of surprising the extreme left of the French line,
where Ney's division lay stretched towards the Baltic, far to the
north-east of Napoleon's main body. Forest and marsh concealed the movement
of the Russian troops, and both Ney and Bernadotte narrowly escaped
destruction. Napoleon now broke up his winter quarters, and marched in
great force against Bennigsen in the district between Koenigsberg and the
mouth of the Vistula. Bennigsen manoeuvred and retired until his troops
clamoured for battle. He then took up a position at Eylau, and waited for
the attack of the French. The battle of Eylau, fought in the midst of
snowstorms on the 8th of February, 1807, was unlike anything that Napoleon
had ever yet seen. His columns threw themselves in vain upon the Russian
infantry. Augereau's corps was totally destroyed in the beginning of the
battle. The Russians pressed upon the ground where Napoleon himself stood;
and, although the superiority of the Emperor's tactics at length turned the
scale, and the French began a forward movement, their advance was stopped
by the arrival of Lestocq and a body of 13,000 Prussians. At the close of
the engagement 30,000 men lay wounded or dead in the snow; the positions of
the armies remained what they had been in the morning. Bennigsen's
lieutenants urged him to renew the combat on the next day; but the
confusion of the Russian army was such that the French, in spite of their
losses and discouragement, would probably have gained the victory in a
second battle; [137] and the Russian commander determined to fall back
towards Koenigsberg, content with having disabled the enemy and given
Napoleon such a check as he had never received before. Napoleon, who had
announced his intention of entering Koenigsberg in triumph, fell back upon
the river Passarge, and awaited the arrival of reinforcements.

[Sieges of Dantzig and Colberg, March, 1807.]

[Inaction of England.]

[Fall of Grenville's Ministry, March 24, 1807.]

[Treaty of Barrenstein between Russia, Prussia, England, and Sweden.
April, 1807.]

The warfare of the next few months was confined to the reduction of the
Prussian fortresses which had not yet fallen into the hands of the French.
Dantzig surrendered after a long and difficult siege; the little town of
Colberg upon the Pomeranian coast prolonged a defence as honourable to its
inhabitants as to the military leaders. Two soldiers of singularly
different character, each destined to play a conspicuous part in coming
years, first distinguished themselves in the defence of Colberg. Gneisenau,
a scientific soldier of the highest order, the future guide of Bluecher's
victorious campaigns, commanded the garrison; Schill, a cavalry officer of
adventurous daring, gathered round him a troop of hardy riders, and
harassed the French with an audacity as perplexing to his military
superiors as to the enemy. The citizens, led by their burgomaster, threw
themselves into the work of defence with a vigour in striking contrast to
the general apathy of the Prussian people; and up to the end of the war
Colberg remained uncaptured. Obscure as Colberg was, its defence might have
given a new turn to the war if the Government of Great Britain had listened
to the entreaties of the Emperor Alexander, and despatched a force to the
Baltic to threaten the communications of Napoleon. The task was not a
difficult one for a Power which could find troops, as England now did, to
send to Constantinople, to Alexandria, and to Buenos Ayres; but military
judgment was more than ever wanting to the British Cabinet. Fox had died at
the beginning of the war; his successors in Grenville's Ministry, though
they possessed a sound theory of foreign policy, [138] were not fortunate
in its application, nor were they prompt enough in giving financial help to
their allies. Suddenly, however, King George quarrelled with his Ministers
upon the ancient question of Catholic Disabilities, and drove them from
office (March 24). The country sided with the King. A Ministry came into
power, composed of the old supporters of Pitt, men, with the exception of
Canning and Castlereagh, of narrow views and poor capacity, headed by the
Duke of Portland, who, in 1793, had given his name to the section of the
Whig party which joined Pitt. The foreign policy of the new Cabinet, which
concealed its total lack of all other statesmanship, returned to the lines
laid down by Pitt in 1805. Negotiations were opened with Russia for the
despatch of an English army to the Baltic; arms and money were promised to
the Prussian King. For a moment it seemed as if the Powers of Europe had
never been united in so cordial a league. The Czar embraced the King of
Prussia in the midst of his soldiers, and declared with tears that the two
should stand or fall together. The Treaty of Bartenstein, signed in April
1807 pledged the Courts of St. Petersburg, Stockholm, and Berlin to a joint
prosecution of the war, and the common conclusion of peace. Great Britain
joined the pact, and prepared to fulfil its part in the conflict upon the
Baltic. But the task was a difficult one, for Grenville's Ministry had
dispersed the fleet of transports; and, although Canning determined upon
the Baltic expedition in April, two months passed before the fleet was
ready to sail.

[Summer campaign in East Prussia, 1807.]

[Battle of Friedland.]

In the meantime army upon army was moving to the support of Napoleon, from
France, from Spain, from Holland, and from Southern Germany. The fortresses
of the Elbe and the Oder, which ought to have been his barrier, had become
his base of operations; and so enormous were the forces at his command,
that, after manning every stronghold in Central Europe, he was able at the
beginning of June to bring 140,000 men into the field beyond the Vistula.
The Russians had also received reinforcements, but Bennigsen's army was
still weaker than that of the enemy. It was Bennigsen, nevertheless, who
began the attack; and now, as in the winter campaign, he attempted to
surprise and crush the northern corps of Ney. The same general movement of
the French army followed as in January. The Russian commander, outnumbered
by the French, retired to his fortified camp at Heilsberg. After sustaining
a bloody repulse in an attack upon this position, Napoleon drew Bennigsen
from his lair by marching straight upon Koenigsberg. Bennigsen supposed
himself to be in time to deal with an isolated corps; he found himself face
to face with the whole forces of the enemy at Friedland, accepted battle,
and was unable to save his army from a severe and decisive defeat (June
14). The victory of Friedland brought the French into Koenigsberg. Bennigsen
retired behind the Niemen; and on the 19th of June an armistice closed the
operations of the hostile forces upon the frontiers of Russia. [139]

The situation of Bennigsen's army was by no means desperate. His men had
not been surrounded; they had lost scarcely any prisoners; they felt no
fear of the French. But the general exaggerated the seriousness of his
defeat. Like most of his officers, he was weary of the war, and felt no
sympathy with the motives which led the Emperor to fight for the common
cause of Europe. The politicians who surrounded Alexander urged him to
withdraw Russia from a conflict in which she had nothing to gain. The
Emperor wavered. The tardiness of Great Britain, the continued neutrality
of Austria, cast a doubt upon the wisdom of his own disinterestedness; and
he determined to meet Napoleon, and ascertain the terms on which Russia
might be reconciled to the master of half the Continent.

[Interview of Napoleon and Alexander at Tilsit, June 25.]

On the 25th of June the two sovereigns met one another on the raft of
Tilsit, in the midstream of the river Niemen. The conversation, which is
alleged to have been opened by Alexander with an expression of hatred
towards England, was heard by no one but the speakers. But whatever the
eagerness or the reluctance of the Russian monarch to sever himself from
Great Britain, the purpose of Napoleon was effected. Alexander surrendered
himself to the addresses of a conqueror who seemed to ask for nothing and
to offer everything. The negotiations were prolonged; the relations of the
two monarchs became more and more intimate; and the issue of the struggle
for life or death was that Russia accepted the whole scheme of Napoleonic
conquest, and took its place by the side of the despoiler in return for its
share of the prey. It was in vain that the King of Prussia had rejected
Napoleon's offers after the battle of Eylau, in fidelity to his engagements
towards his ally. Promises, treaties, and pity were alike cast to the
winds. The unfortunate Frederick William received no more embraces; the
friend with whom he was to stand or fall bargained away the larger half of
his dominions to Napoleon, and even rectified the Russian frontier at his
expense. Prussia's continued existence in any shape whatever was described
as a concession made by Napoleon to Alexander. By the public articles of
the Treaties of Tilsit, signed by France, Russia, and Prussia in the first
week of July, the King of Prussia ceded to Napoleon the whole of his
dominions west of the Elbe, and the entire territory which Prussia had
gained in the three partitions of Poland, with the exception of a district
upon the Lower Vistula connecting Pomerania with Eastern Prussia. Out of
the ceded territory on the west of the Elbe a Kingdom of Westphalia was
created for Napoleon's brother Jerome; the Polish provinces of Prussia,
with the exception of a strip made over to Alexander, were formed into the
Grand-Duchy of Warsaw, and presented to Napoleon's vassal, the King of
Saxony. Russia recognised the Napoleonic client-states in Italy, Holland,
and Germany. The Czar undertook to offer his mediation in the conflict
between France and Great Britain; a secret article provided that, in the
event of Great Britain and France being at war on the ensuing 1st of
December, Prussia should declare war against Great Britain.

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