But it was foes, not friends, that he found; for Bernadotte had passed Dornburg, and was in control of the Weimar road, having reached Apolda with his van. The awful disappointment unnerved and demoralized both the King and his army; throughout the terrible day the Prussian soldiers had justified their renown, fighting bravely and stubbornly; but now discipline was at an end, and with one or two exceptions the squadrons dissolved and turned into a flying horde. Hohenlohe drew off ten thousand men in good order, marched in swift but dignified retreat through Nordhausen to Magdeburg, and thence continued by Neu-Ruppin to Prenzlau. Blücher escaped with a body of cavalry. The battle of Auerstädt was tactically a separate affair from that of Jena, but strategically and morally they were one. Professional students find in this campaign almost the first complete realization of the hazardous and delicate manœuver known as turning the enemy—common sense shows that the turner, if careless or slow, is himself liable to be turned. The campaign as a whole was never for a moment endangered, because the unprecedented marches of the French made their leader's strategy impregnable. But Bernadotte's conduct, though technically justifiable, would, with any less efficiency on Davout's part, have jeopardized the battle as it was fought. The success of Napoleon was due in part to the fact that, as he himself said, "while others were taking counsel the French army was marching," in part to the still undiminished devotion and capacity of the marshals. Great ventures generally succeed by narrow margins and fail by broad ones. The Prussian campaign was a great one; its successors were to be of even larger dimensions as to conception. When they were successful it was by an even narrower chance; when disastrous, it was with frightful completeness.
CHAPTER XXXV
The Devastation of Prussia[38]
The Effects of Jena and Auerstädt — Degeneracy of the French Soldiers — Napoleon's Abuse of Queen Louisa — The Occupation of Berlin — Conduct of the French Generals — Turkey and Russia at War — Prussia and Russia — Treatment of Minor German States — Napoleon as the Liberator of Poland — Condition of the Country — The Retort to Trafalgar.
The moral effect of Jena upon Prussia was pitiful. All the years of irresponsible government, of absolutism and militarism, seemed revenged upon monarchy at a single blow. The nation, with no experience of independent action, was stunned, and did not run to arms, except in a few abortive instances. In his flight Frederick William had with difficulty kept together his royal state, and the day after Jena he sent an envoy to ask for an armistice. This was ostensibly a reply to Napoleon's suggestions of a peace sent three days earlier to the King, probably as a ruse; but the Emperor now declared that he would dictate his terms only from Berlin, and his army continued its advance. The Prussian court, with a few thousand men under Lestocq, retreated through West Prussia and took refuge in Königsberg. So thoroughly did Napoleon organize the pursuit, and so carefully did he estimate the total result of his victory, that nothing escaped him. The French soldiers carried everything before them. A Prussian reserve corps was easily beaten at Halle by Bernadotte, and fled for refuge to the unprovisioned fortress of Magdeburg. Lannes seized Dessau; Davout, Wittenberg; while Murat, Soult, and Ney proceeded to invest Magdeburg, which for those days was the strategic key of the Elbe valley. It resisted until November, but eventually fell, as did also Erfurt. In fact, the French ransacked the land. Even Hohenlohe did not escape them. Being overtaken by the infantry of Lannes and the cavalry of Murat, he was first driven from Prenzlau, and then, on October twenty-eighth, he surrendered, being a victim partly to the duplicity of Murat, who declared that a hundred thousand French were closing in on him, and partly to the stupidity of his own messenger, who asserted that the tale was true. Frederick William himself would have been captured at Weissensee but for Blücher, who brazenly declared to Klein, the French commander, that an armistice had been granted—a pure falsehood. Stettin capitulated to Lasalle's cavalry on the thirtieth, and Küstrin soon opened its doors. The fortresses of Spandau and Hameln followed their example, all four being surrendered with suspicious facility; in two instances the French and Prussian soldiers actually joined to hiss and execrate the governors, who were undoubtedly both recreant and venal. Blücher, after many gallant but fruitless attempts to collect a force, had reached Lübeck, through many dangers, with his cavalry; but driven thence after a gallant and exceptional resistance, he too surrendered. There remained no organized Prussian force in the lands between the Elbe and the Oder.
It had been accurate foresight which enabled Napoleon to say, in the decree issued from Jena on October fifteenth, that in the battle of the previous day he had conquered all the Prussian lands west of the Vistula. Before long the demoralization of the nation was as complete as the conquest of their country. The treatment of the people by the victorious soldiery was the climax of the long career of French officers and men as plunderers. As Napoleon's success kept pace with his ever-growing schemes of conquest, he laid less and less stress on the means to his end, ever more and more on its accomplishment. The army was once again scattered to obtain subsistence, and it left no opportunity for spoil neglected. As one of the most enthusiastic officers reluctantly declared: "From the moment Napoleon obtained supreme power the soldiers' morals changed, the union of hearts among them disappeared with their poverty, a desire for luxury and the comforts of life began. The Emperor considered it politic to favor this degeneracy. He thought it advantageous and shrewd to make the army absolutely dependent upon him."
The shocking details of Prussia's treatment by Napoleon and his army have been often told. On October twenty-fourth the Emperor arrived at the Hohenzollern residence of Potsdam, and publicly visited the tomb of Frederick the Great. Uttering words expressive of profound reverence for the great general, he nevertheless sent the old hero's sword, belt, and hat as trophies to ornament the Invalides at Paris. "His intellect, his genius, and his affections were kin to those of our nation, which he so esteemed," was the pretext for this act of spoliation. He was equally unscrupulous in his shameful treatment of the unfortunate Queen. Recognizing by swift penetration that in her resided the true spirit not alone of Prussian but of German nationality, that hers was the genius of reform, the temperament of the patriot, and the grace of perseverance, he selected her as the target of his spite. He loathed the use of feminine charm in statecraft, resented her endowment of beauty and intellect, and seems to have feared her influence. In bulletin after bulletin he heaped lying abuse on her devoted head. In one he depicted her as having a sufficiently pretty face, but little wit; in another he asked what mystery had led a woman hitherto absorbed in the serious occupations of her toilet to meddle with politics, stir up the King, and kindle everywhere the fire with which she was herself possessed. The answer, he insinuated, was to be found in the Czar's personal visits to Berlin.
On October twenty-seventh Napoleon made his triumphal entry into the Prussian capital with the utmost splendor he could devise, and at the head of the largest military force he could muster. Coignet, one of his soldiers, wrote of the scene: "The Emperor was grand in his plain clothes, with his little hat and a penny cockade. His staff, on the contrary, wore their dress uniform; and for strangers it was a queer sight to see, in the one man most meanly clad of all, the leader of so fine an army." The city of Berlin, populace, burghers, and aristocracy, was strangely apathetic at the approach and presence of the French. Its general aspect seemed to the invaders one of childish curiosity. But the Emperor was about to launch some of his most far-reaching thunderbolts and scorned any appearance of clemency. To "show himself terrible at the first moment," as he had advised Joseph to do at Naples, an order was issued for the seizure of Prince Hatzfeldt, governor of the capital and the most distinguished Prussian nobleman within reach. He was to be tried by a court-martial on the charge of being a traitor and a spy, his crime being that he had written to his King a letter giving an account of the French entry into Berlin. The epistle was so harmless in its nature that its writer had intrusted it to the mail, in which it was seized and then shown to Napoleon. The prince escaped the first blast of the storm by hiding; his life was afterward granted to the personal and tearful solicitations of his wife as an act of great clemency. As in Italy, the galleries, libraries, collections, and public monuments were stripped of their finest treasures to enrich Paris.
The French soldiers needed no example. Lübeck, which, as was claimed, had been taken by storm, was handed over to the men to work their will, just as Pavia had been. Wherever the troops were billeted, they had but to demand from their terrified entertainers what they desired and their behest was done. They were not modest, and before long both rapine and lust worked their will among the angry but helpless populations. The French generals were too much like their men, and, as in Italy and Austria, the gratification of their boundless greed seemed to meet the Emperor's approval. The castles of the nobility and the houses of the wealthy citizens were of course chosen by them as quarters. It would have been hard for their owners to refuse the unbidden guests any object which met with their expressed approval, and the French officers openly admired many valuable things. All these irregularities, the Emperor believed, attached his generals to himself; and at the same time a threat of examination into their accounts would, he knew, instantly check any manifestations of independence. Masséna was the most avaricious of all; nothing but the love of money could influence him, wrote Napoleon, and "where at first little sums sufficed, now milliards are not sufficient." At another time he said, more generously, that one must bow the knee before Masséna's gifts as a soldier, although he had his faults like another. Bernadotte, on the occasion of a certain surprise, lost the wagon which contained his Lübeck booty. He was inconsolable, and it was considered a delicious joke when he explained that he was so depressed because the loss "prevented him from paying a gratification in money to the men of his corps." Davout before long filled all Poland with the terror of his name. Napoleon's brother Jerome, finding a bin of choice Tokay in a Polish castle, loaded the contents in his baggage-train, and carried them away.
With Prussia thus shattered, disintegrated, and almost annihilated, Napoleon proceeded without the loss of a moment to use his new vantage against both Russia and England. In the Oriental question he could strike both with a single blow. As a result of the thorough knowledge of the East obtained in 1803 through Sebastiani, he had virtually determined to assert his supremacy over Turkey. To this end, however, he must for the present spare the sensibilities of Austria, which, though humbled to the dust, was again rising to her feet; her curiously assorted, heterogeneous peoples showed more spirit than the Prussians, displaying resources and courage comparable to those of France. During the summer of 1806, apparently of his own motion, but in reality by French suggestion, the Sultan Selim III had on August twenty-fourth dismissed the viceroys of Moldavia and Wallachia, both of whom had made themselves conspicuous by their Russian proclivities. At once the Czar Alexander I sent an army to cross the Pruth. The Sultan was terrified when the Russians occupied Bucharest, but on November eleventh, 1806, at the very climax of his peril, he was officially notified that Napoleon now had three hundred thousand men free to attack Russia and save Turkey; the Emperor would himself operate from the Vistula, and a Turkish army must simultaneously appear on the Dniester. The Sultan at once obeyed, and the Czar consequently sent eighty thousand men against the Turks. Two British expeditions were despatched in coöperation, one to Constantinople, one to Egypt: both were failures. Russia was soon fully occupied in her offensive campaign against Napoleon and correspondingly disabled in the East, while the Sultan's janizaries by low intrigue rendered active operations on his part impossible. Austria, mindful, apparently, of Russia's desertion after Austerlitz, displayed neither resentment nor alarm at the course taken by France, and Napoleon, whose material gain was slight, nevertheless won the diplomatic move and felt himself a step nearer both to victory over Russia and to such a protectorate of Turkey as would be a serious menace to England's Eastern empire.