I made a capitulation with your Royal Highness:—to-day you announce to me that, without having any respect for it, the Emperor Alexander orders that the garrison of Dantzic shall be sent into Russia as prisoners of war, instead of returning to France.
The 10th Corps d'Armée leaves it to Europe, to history, to posterity, to decide on so extraordinary an infraction of the faith of treaties, against which I solemnly protest.
In consequence of these sacred principles, I have the honour to inform your Royal Highness that, holding strictly to the text of a capitulation, which I must not consider as annihilated because it is violated, I will execute it punctually; and that I am ready this very day to give up to the troops of your Highness, the forts of Weichselmunde, Napoleon, and the Holm, as well as all the magazines, and to leave the fortress with my garrison on the 1st of January next.
At that period, force, and the abuse of power, may drag us to Russia, to Siberia, or wherever they please. We shall submit to suffer, to die even if it be necessary, victims of our confidence in a solemn treaty. The Emperor Napoleon and France are powerful enough, sooner or later, to avenge us.
In this state of things, my Lord, there remains no arrangement for me to make with your Royal Highness; referring myself entirely to the capitulation of the 29th of November, which, I repeat, may be infringed, but cannot be annihilated.
(Signed,) Count Rapp.
Dantzic, December 23, 1813.
Letter from Count Rapp to the Duke of Wurtemberg.
My Lord,