At the same time Davoust with twenty-seven thousand French fought the main Prussian force, about double his own, at Auerstädt. Badly commanded by the Duke of Brunswick and the King of Prussia, the Germans fought with desperate valor, but were utterly beaten. Broken and driven, they fled from the field, making for Weimar, and ran into the masses of fugitives who were flying from the field of Jena. Murat’s dreaded cavalry were in hot pursuit, and a scene of the wildest confusion followed. To the beaten army all hope was lost. There was no fixed line of retreat, no rallying-point, no master-mind in control. In hopeless fragments the fugitive host fell apart, and the relentless pursuit was never slackened until the last one of these bands had been captured. With incredible ease and rapidity the Prussian monarchy had been brought to the dust.
CHAPTER XXVIII
There is no doubt that Napoleon had more personal feeling against Prussia than against any foe he had heretofore met, England excepted. In fact, the manner in which Prussia had acted justified much of this enmity. She had tried to blow hot and cold, run with the hare and hold with the hounds in so shameless a manner that even Charles Fox, the sweetest tempered of men, had denounced her to the English Parliament in the bitterest of terms. She had toyed with England, sworn and broke faith with Russia, dallied with and deluded Austria, trifled with and played false to Napoleon, and finally, after taking the Hanover bribe from him, had sent the Duke of Brunswick to St. Petersburg to assure Alexander that Frederick William III. was still his friend, and that the apparent alliance with Napoleon meant no more than that Prussia was glad to get Hanover.
It is no wonder that Napoleon had declared that Prussia was for sale to the highest bidder, and that she would be his because he would pay most. He had paid the price,—Hanover. When he saw that Prussia meant to keep the price, and not the contract, his feeling was that of the average man who finds that where he thought he had made a good trade, he has been swindled.
Therefore, when the Queen of Prussia, Prince Louis, the Duke of Brunswick, and the war party generally, showed their determination to break faith with him; when the young officers insulted his embassy; when the Prussian army launched themselves against a member of his Confederation of the Rhine, Napoleon was genuinely incensed. They had shown him no consideration, and he was inclined to show them none.
He roughly denounced the conduct of the Duke of Weimar, when speaking to the Duchess in her own palace; but when she courageously defended her absent husband, Napoleon’s better nature prevailed, he praised her spirit, and became her friend.
The Duke of Brunswick, mortally wounded at Auerstädt, sent a messenger to Napoleon praying that his rights as Duke of Brunswick might be respected. Napoleon answered that he would not spare the duke, but would respect the general; that Brunswick would be treated as a conquered province, but that the Duke himself should have that consideration shown him which, as an old man and a brave soldier, he deserved. At the same time, and as additional reason for not sparing the Duke as a feudal lord, Napoleon reminded him of the time when he had advanced into France with fire and sword, and had proclaimed the purpose of laying Paris in ashes. The son of the dying Duke took this natural reply much to heart, and swore eternal vengeance against the man who sent it.
Napoleon understood very well that the war had been brought on by the feudal powers in Germany,—those petty lords who had dukedoms and principalities scattered throughout the land, miniature kingdoms in which these lords lived a luxurious life at the expense of the peasantry. These feudal chiefs were desperately opposed to French principles, and dreaded the Confederation of the Rhine. Every elector, prince, duke, or what not, expected, with trembling, the day when he might be “mediatized,” and his little monopoly of a kingdom thrown into the modernized confederation. Hence their eagerness for war, and hence Napoleon’s bitterness toward them. It went abroad that he said that he would make the nobles of Prussia beg their bread. He may have said it, for by this time he was no longer a mute, all-concealing sphinx. He had become one of the most talkative of men; therefore, one of the most imprudent. Unfortunately, he did nothing to separate the cause of the German people from that of the German nobles. His heavy hand fell upon all alike; and it was his own fault that the national spirit of Germany rose against him finally, and helped to overthrow him. Not only did he speak harshly, imprudently of the Prussian nobles, he committed the greater blunder of reviling the Queen. True, she had well-nigh said, as a French empress said later, “This shall be my war!” She had inspired the war party by word and by example. In every way known to a beautiful young sovereign, she had made the war craze the fashion. She had done for Prussia what Eugénie afterward did for France,—led thousands of brave men to sudden death, led her country into a colossal smash-up. Eugénie’s husband, swayed by an unwomanly wife, lost his liberty and his throne. By a mere scratch did Louisa’s husband, as blindly led, escape the same fate. A brazen but patriotic lie, told by old Blücher to the French general, Klein,—“an armistice has been signed,”—saved Frederick William III. from playing Bajazet to the French Tamerlane. A political woman was ever Napoleon’s “pet aversion.” In his creed the place held by women was that of mothers of numerous children, breeders of stout soldiers, wearers of dainty toilets, companions of a lustful or an idle hour, nymphs of the garden walks, sirens of the boudoir, nurses of the sick, comforters of grief, censer bearers in the triumphal progress of great men. A woman who would talk war, put on a uniform, mount a horse, and parade at the head of an army, aroused his anger and excited his disgust. This feeling was the secret of his dislike to the Queen of Prussia, and of his ungentlemanly references to her in his bulletins. But while those references were such as no gentleman should have made, they were infinitely more delicate than those in which the royalist gentlemen of Europe were constantly alluding to Napoleon’s mother, his sisters, his wife, his step-daughter, and himself. It is only fair, in trying to reach just conclusions, to remember the circumstances and the provocations under which a certain thing is said or done. If we constantly keep in view this standard in weighing the acts and words of Napoleon, it will make all the difference in the world in our verdict. Napoleon was no passionless god or devil. His blood was warm like ours; his skin was thin like ours; a blow gave him pain as it pains us; slanders hurt him as they hurt us; infamous lies told about his wife, sisters, and mother wrung from him the same passionate outcries they would wring from us. And this fact also must be kept in mind: before Napoleon stooped to make any personal war upon his sworn enemies, he had appealed to them, time and again, to cease their personal abuse of him and his family.
On October 27, 1806, Napoleon made his triumphal entry into Berlin, giving to the corps of Davoust the place of honor in the march. It was a brilliant spectacle, and the people of Berlin who quietly looked upon the scene were astonished to see the contrast between the Emperor’s plain hat and coat, and the dazzling uniforms of his staff.