WAR BETWEEN FRANCE AND PRUSSIA, ETC.
This year Prussia awoke from her fatal blindness. That country resolved upon war with France; and England and Sweden became reconciled with her king, while Russia promised him powerful aid. It was in October that a mutual declaration of war took place, and hostilities commenced immediately. A Prussian army, 120,000 strong, was assembled round Erfurt; but though it was composed of valiant soldiers, it was ill commanded, and, therefore, unfit to meet such a master of war as Napoleon. Two battles were fought at Jena and Auerstadt, by which the Prussian power was overthrown; more than 50,000 men were slain. These battles were followed by the capture of Erfurt, Span-dau, Potsdam, Berlin, Luben, Stettin, Kuestrin, Hameln, Nienburg, and Magdeburg; and by victories over Prince Hohenlohe, near Prenzlow; and over the reserve army of Brucher, towards the lower Elbe. Within six weeks after the battle of Jena, all the country, from the Rhine to the other side of the Oder, with a population of nine millions, fell into the hands of Napoleon. The French troops occupied Brunswick and Hesse Cassel, the Hanseatic cities, and finally Mecklenburg and Oldenburg. North Germany groaned under the scourge of the victor; and South Germany paid him homage, and gave him troops and gold. The houses of Brunswick and Hesse Cassel ceased to reign; the electors were dispossessed. The King of Prussia sought refuge with his Russian ally: his sudden fall was an object of terror and grief. With Prussia, the grand bulwark of Russia fell; Napoleon entertained, indeed, a project of raising up an independent throne on the very frontiers of the northern power. The injured Poles were summoned to insurrection, and an auxiliary army was formed in Prussia-Poland. Hopes of success in this enterprise were well founded, because at this time war broke out, through the intrigues of the French ruler, between Russia and the Porte. Operations followed on the Danube, which caused a powerful diversion of the Russian force, which might otherwise have extended a more efficient aid to the Prussian monarch.