By this time the Prussian army is already in a tight corner, with its back on the Rhine, which, as Napoleon says in his Third Bulletin written on this day, is "assez bizarre, from which very important events should ensue." On the previous day he concludes a letter to Talleyrand—"One cannot conceive how the Duke of Brunswick, to whom one allows some talent, can direct the operations of this army in so ridiculous a manner."
Erfurt.—Here endless discussions, but, as Napoleon says in his bulletin of this day—"Consternation is at Erfurt, ... but while they deliberate, the French army is marching.... Still the wishes of the King of Prussia have been executed; he wished that by October 8th the French army should have evacuated the territory of the Confederation which has been evacuated, but in place of repassing the Rhine, it has passed the Saal."
If she wants to see a battle.—Queen Louise, great-grandmother of the present Emperor William, and in 1806 aged thirty. St. Amand says that "when she rode on horseback before her troops, with her helmet of polished steel, shaded by a plume, her gleaming golden cuirass, her tunic of cloth of silver, her red buskins with golden spurs," she resembled, as the bulletin said, one of the heroines of Tasso. She hated France, and especially Napoleon, as the child of the French Revolution.
No. 4.
I nearly captured him and the Queen.—They escaped only by an hour, Napoleon writes Berthier. Blucher aided their escape by telling a French General about an imaginary armistice, which the latter was severely reprimanded by Napoleon for believing.
No battle was more beautifully worked out than the battle of Jena—Davoust performing specially well his move in the combinations by which the Prussian army was hopelessly entangled, as Mack at Ulm a year before. Bernadotte alone, and as usual, gave cause for dissatisfaction. He had a personal hatred for his chief, caused by the knowledge that his wife (Désirée Clary) had never ceased to regret that she had missed her opportunity of being the wife of Napoleon. Bernadotte, therefore, was loth to give initial impetus to the victories of the French Emperor, though, when success was no longer doubtful, he would prove that it was not want of capacity but want of will that had kept him back. He was the Talleyrand of the camp, and had an equal aptitude for fishing in troubled waters.
I have bivouacked.—Whether the issue of a battle was decisive, or, as at Eylau, only partially so, Napoleon never shunned the disagreeable part of battle—the tending of the wounded and the burial of the dead. Savary tells us that at Jena, as at Austerlitz, the Emperor rode round the field of battle, alighting from his horse with a little brandy flask (constantly refilled), putting his hand to each unconscious soldier's breast, and when he found unexpected life, giving way to a joy "impossible to describe" (vol. ii. 184). Méneval also speaks of his performing this "pious duty, in the fulfilment of which nothing was allowed to stand in his way."
No. 5.
Fatigues, bivouacs ... have made me fat.—The Austerlitz campaign had the same effect. See a remarkable letter to Count Miot de Melito on January 30th, 1806: "The campaign I have just terminated, the movement, the excitement have made me stout. I believe that if all the kings of Europe were to coalesce against me I should have a ridiculous paunch." And it was so!
The great M. Napoleon, aged four, and the younger, aged two, are with Hortense and their grandmother at Mayence, where a Court had assembled, including most of the wives of Napoleon's generals, burning for news. A look-out had been placed by the Empress some two miles on the main-road beyond Mayence, whence sight of a courier was signalled in advance.