The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

by J. G. Lockhart

Mr. Pitt, who despaired of opposing Buonaparte on the continent after Marengo, did not long survive the disastrous intelligence of Austerlitz. Worn out and broken by the endless anxieties of his situation, not even the glorious tidings of Trafalgar could revive the sinking spirit of this great minister. He died on the 23rd of January, 1806, and was succeeded in the government by Mr. Fox, the same statesman who had, throughout every variety of fortune, arraigned his conduct of the war as imbecile and absurd, and who all along professed his belief that in the original quarrel between Great Britain and revolutionised France, the blame lay with his own country, and above all with Mr. Pitt.

The personal intercourse which took place between Fox and Napoleon, during the peace of Amiens, has already been alluded to. It was calculated to make all men regard the chances of a solid peace between France and England as increased by the event which transferred the reins of government, in the latter country, into the hands of the illustrious opponent of Mr. Pitt. But the peculiar feelings of English politicians have seldom been understood by foreigners—never more widely misunderstood than by Buonaparte. When Fox visited him, as First Consul, at the Tuileries, he complained that the English Government countenanced the assassins who were plotting against his life. Mr. Fox, forgetting all his party prejudice when the honour of his country was assailed, answered in terms such as Napoleon's own military bluntness could not have surpassed—"Clear your head of that nonsense." And now, in like manner, Mr. Fox, once placed in the responsible management of his country's interests, was found, not a little to the surprise and disappointment of Napoleon, about as close and watchful a negotiator as he could have had to deal with in Pitt himself. The English minister employed on this occasion, first, Lord Yarmouth,[54] one of the detenus of 1803, and afterwards Lord Lauderdale. For some time strong hopes of a satisfactory conclusion were entertained; but, in the end, the negotiation broke up, on the absolute refusal of Napoleon to concede Malta to England, unless England would permit him to conquer Sicily from the unfortunate sovereign whose Italian Kingdom had already been transferred to his brother Joseph. Mr. Fox was lost to his country in September, 1806; and Napoleon ever afterwards maintained that, had that great statesman lived, the negotiation would have been resumed, and pushed to a successful close. Meantime, however, the diplomatic intercourse of the Tuileries and St. James's was at an end, and the course which the negotiation had taken transpired necessarily in Parliament.

It then came out that the article of Hanover had not formed one of the chief difficulties;—in a word, Napoleon had signified that, although the Electorate had been ceded by him to Prussia under the treaty of Vienna, at the close of 1805, Prussia yielding to him in return the principalities of Anspach, Bareuth and Neufchatel, still, if the English Government would agree to abandon Sicily, he, on his part, would offer no opposition to the resumption of Hanover by its rightful sovereign, George III. This contemptuous treachery being ascertained at Berlin, the ill-smothered rage of the court and nation at length burst into a flame. The beautiful Queen of Prussia, and Prince Louis, brother to the king, two characters whose high and romantic qualities rendered them the delight and pride of the nation, were foremost to nourish and kindle the popular indignation. The young nobility and gentry rose in tumult, broke the windows of the ministers who were supposed to lean to the French interest, and openly whetted their sabres on the threshold-stone of Napoleon's ambassador. The lovely Queen appeared in the uniform of the regiment which bore her name, and rode at its head. The enthusiasm of the people thus roused might be directed, but could hardly be repressed.

Nor was it in Prussia alone that such sentiments prevailed. Split as Germany has for ages been into many independent states, there has always, nevertheless, been felt, and acknowledged, a certain national unity of heart as well as head among all that speak the German language: the dissolution of the empire was felt all over the land as a common wrong and injury: Napoleon's insulting treatment of Prussia was resented as indicative of his resolution to reduce that power also (the only German power now capable of opposing any resistance to French aggression) to a pitch of humiliation as low as that in which Austria was already sunk; and, lastly, another atrocious deed of the French Emperor—a deed as darkly unpardonable as the murder of D'Enghien—was perpetrated at this very crisis, and arrayed against him, throughout all Germany, every feeling, moral and political, which could be touched either by the crimes or the contumelies of a foreign tyrant.

Palm, a bookseller of the free city of Naumburg, having published a pamphlet in which the ambition of Napoleon was arraigned, a party of French gens-d'armes passed the frontier, and seized the unsuspecting citizen, exactly as the Duke d'Enghien had been arrested at Ettingen, and Sir George Rumbold at Hamburg, the year before. The bookseller was tried for a libel against Napoleon, at Braunau, before a French court-martial; found guilty, condemned to death, and shot immediately, in pursuance of his sentence. It is needless to dwell upon this outrage: the death of D'Enghien has found advocates or palliators—this mean murder of a humble tradesman, who neither was nor ever had been a subject either of France or Buonaparte, has been less fortunate.

The Emperor of Russia once more visited Berlin, when the feelings of Prussia, and indeed of all the neighbouring states, were in this fever of excitement. He again urged Frederick William to take up arms in the common cause, and offered to back him with all the forces of his own great empire. The English Government, taking advantage of the same crisis, sent Lord Morpeth[55] to Berlin, with offers of pecuniary supplies—about the acceptance of which, however, the anxiety of Prussia on the subject of Hanover created some difficulty. Lastly, Buonaparte, well informed of what was passing in Berlin, and desirous, since war must be, to hurry Frederick into the field ere the armies of the Czar could be joined with his, now poured out in the Moniteur such abuse on the persons and characters of the Queen, Prince Louis, and every illustrious patriot throughout Prussia, that the general wrath could no longer be held in check. Warlike preparations of every kind filled the kingdom during August and September. On the first of October the Prussian Minister at Paris presented a note to Talleyrand, demanding, among other things, that the formation of a Confederacy in the North of Germany should no longer be thwarted by French interference, and that the French troops within the territories of the Rhenish League should recross the Rhine into France, by the 8th of the same month of October.

But Napoleon was already in person on the German side of the Rhine; and his answer to the Prussian note was a general order to his own troops, in which he called on them to observe in what manner a German sovereign still dared to insult the soldiers of Austerlitz.

The conduct of Prussia, in thus rushing into hostilities, without waiting for the advance of the Russians, was as rash as her holding back from Austria, during the campaign of Austerlitz, had been cowardly. As if determined to profit by no lesson, the Prussian council also directed their army to advance towards the French, instead of lying on their own frontier—a repetition of the great leading blunder of the Austrians in the preceding year. The Prussian army accordingly invaded the Saxon provinces, and the Elector, seeing his country treated as rudely as that of Bavaria had been on a similar occasion by the Austrians, and wanting the means to withdraw his own troops as the Bavarian had succeeded in doing under like provocation, was compelled to accept the alliance which the Cabinet of Berlin urged on him, and to join his troops with those of the power by which he had been thus insulted and wronged.

No sooner did Napoleon know that the Prussians had advanced into the heart of Saxony, than he formed the plan of his campaign: and they, persisting in their advance, and taking up their position finally on the Saale, afforded him, as if studiously, the means of repeating, at their expense, the very manœuvres which had ruined the Austrians in the preceding campaign. In a word, he perceived that the Prussian army was extended upon too wide a line, and the consequent possibility of destroying it in detail. He further discovered that the enemy had all his principal stores and magazines at Naumburg, to the rearward, not of his centre, but of his extreme right; and resolved to commence operations by an attempt to turn the flank, and seize those magazines, ere the main body of the Prussians, lying at Weimar, could be aware of his movement. The French came forward in three great divisions; the corps of Soult and Ney, in the direction of Hof; Murat, Bernadotte and Davoust, towards Saalburg and Schleitz; and Lannes and Augereau upon Coburg and Saalfield. These last generals were opposed sternly, at Saalfield, by the corps of Prince Louis of Prussia. This brave young officer imprudently abandoned the bridge over the Saale, which he might have defended with success, and came out into the open plain, where his troops were overpowered by the French impetuosity. He himself, fighting hand to hand with a subaltern, was desired to surrender, and replying by a sabre cut, was immediately struck down with a mortal thrust. The Prussians fled; the bridge, which ought to have defended, gave the French access to the country behind the Saale. The flank of the Prussian position was turned: the French army passed entirely round them; Napoleon seized Naumburg, and blew up the magazines there,—announcing, for the first time, by this explosion, to the King of Prussia and his Generalissimo, the Duke of Brunswick, that he was in their rear.

From this moment the Prussians were isolated, and cut off from all their resources, as completely as the army of Mack was at Ulm, when the French had passed the Danube and overrun Suabia. The Duke of Brunswick hastily endeavoured to concentrate his forces for the purpose of cutting his way back again to the frontier which he had so rashly abandoned. Napoleon, meantime, had posted his divisions so as to watch the chief passages of the Saale, and expected, in confidence, the assault of his outwitted opponent. It was now that he found leisure to answer the manifesto of Frederick William, which had reached Paris a day or two after he himself quitted that capital for the camp. His letter, dated at Gera, is written in the most elaborate style of insult. The King of Prussia (said he) had sent him a silly pamphlet of twenty pages, in very bad French—such a pamphlet as the English ministry were in the habit of commanding their hireling scribblers to put forth—but he acquitted the King of having read this performance. He was extremely anxious to live on the most friendly terms with his "good brother," and begged him, as the first token of equal goodwill, to dismiss the counsellors who had hurried him into the present unjust and unequal war. Such was the language of this famous note. Napoleon, now sure of his prey, desired his own generals to observe how accurately he had already complied with one of the requests of the Prussian Manifesto—"The French army," said he, "has done as it was bidden. This is the 8th of October, and we have evacuated the territories of the Confederation of the Rhine."