¶ Bismarck’s amazing story we spread before you in detail, but beside that frowning rock we stoop for a moment to pluck the modest violets clinging all unobserved in a gloomy place where the sun seldom comes; these flowers are Louise and their subtle perfume symbolizes the penetrating yet delicate incense of her pathetic life.
¶ Without Louise, our story were soon ended. Otherwise Bismarck himself could not have come into the illustrious pages of history. Noble Prussian queen, heroine of Prussian glory, mother-consoler in the twilight, your gentle spirit hovers like some evening-star, luminous with hope.
17
Napoleon’s hated Continental system of domination causes Prussian downfall—The Queen decides to fight back.
¶ The treaty of Luneville, February, 1801, now seemed to lend color to Napoleon’s greatest delusion of grandeur; he would restore the ancient domain of Charlemagne, comprising France, Germany and Italy! Signing with Prussia and Bavaria, Napoleon confiscated broad Papal domains along the Rhine, lands that had been in possession of the church since Roman times. With this bribe for secular princes, as the price of the readjustment, exactly 112 Teutonic domains, petty in size but all-powerful with the prestige of centuries, vanished from the map. The holy Electors of Treves and Cologne, those empire-makers of ancient days, were stripped of their worldly possessions, and expelled from the Papal lands.
¶ There were even rumors of a French-supported Emperor of Prussia—think of that!
Francis of Austria, for reasons of policy, gave up the high-swelling title, “Holy Roman Emperor,” and more modestly contented himself with “Emperor of Austria.”
¶ And now, when Napoleon’s delusion—Charlemagne—seemed on the very point of realization, there came the third Coalition against him; Prussia joined against France; but Napoleon soon gained the most noted of his victories, Austerlitz; 15,000 prisoners, 12,000 dead on the field, represented Austria’s loss alone, but this was not all.
The victorious French pressed on to Vienna. By the treaty of Pressburg, Austria was excluded from Germany; Wuertemberg, Bavaria and the Rhinelands went over to the French, Napoleon setting himself up as Protector of the Rhine country, with his representative President Karl von Dalberg, former archbishop of Mainz.