[Footnote 11: He married a Mademoiselle von Geyer. His children had merely the title of Counts von Hochberg, but came, in 1830, on the extinction of the Agnati, to the government.]
[Footnote 12: On the 1st of January, 1806; the Bavarian state newspaper announced it at New Year with the words, "Long live Napoleon, the restorer of the kingdom of Bavaria!" Bavarian authors, more particularly Pallhausen, attempted to prove that the Bavarians had originally been a Gallic tribe under the Gallic kings. It was considered a dishonor to belong to Germany.]
[Footnote 13: In 1797, the anonymous statesman, in the dedication "to the congress of Rastadt," foretold the formation of the Rhenish alliance as a necessary result of the treaty of Basel. "The electors of Brandenburg, Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and all the princes, who defended themselves behind the line of demarcation against their obligations to the empire, and tranquilly awaited the issue of the contest between France and that part of the empire that had taken up arms; all those princes to whom their private interests were dearer than those of the empire, who, devoid of patriotism, formed a separate party against Austria and Southern Germany, from which they severed and isolated themselves, could, none of them, arrogate to themselves a voice in the matter, if Southern Germany, abandoned by them, concluded treaties for herself as her present and future interests demanded.">[
[Footnote 14: "Oldenburg affords a glaring proof of the insecurity and meanness characteristic of the Rhenish alliance. The relation even with Bavaria was not always the purest, and I have sometimes caught a near glimpse of the claws."—Gagern's Share in Politics.]
[Footnote 15: No diet had, since 1770, been held in Wurtemberg, only the committee had continued to treat secretly with the duke. In 1797, Frederick convoked a fresh diet and swore to hold the constitution sacred. Some modern elements appeared in this diet; the old opposition was strengthened by men of the French school. Disputes, consequently, ere long arose between it and the duke, a man of an extremely arbitrary disposition. The Estates discovered little zeal for the war with France, attempted to economize in the preparations, etc., while the duke made great show of patriotism as a prince of the German empire, nor gave the slightest symptom of his one day becoming an enemy to his country, a member of the Rhenish alliance, and the most zealous partisan of France. Moreau, however, no sooner crossed the Rhine than the duke fled, abandoned his states, and afterward not only refused to bear the smallest share of the contributions levied upon the country by the French, but also seized the subsidies furnished by England. The duke, shortly after this, quarrelling with his eldest son, William, the Estates sided with the latter and supplied him with funds, at the same time refusing to grant any of the sums demanded by the duke, who, on his part, omitted the confirmation of the new committee and ordered Grosz, the councillor, Stockmaier, the secretary of the diet, and several others, besides Batz, the agent of the diet at Vienna, to be placed under arrest, their papers to be seized, and a sum of money to be raised from the church property, 1805. Not long after this, rendered insolent by the protection of the great despot of France, he utterly annihilated the ancient constitution of Wurtemberg.]
CCLIV. Prussia's Declaration of War and Defeat
Prussia, by a timely declaration of war against France before the battle of Austerlitz, might have turned the tide against Napoleon, and earned for herself the glory and the gain, instead of being, by a false policy, compelled, at a later period, to make that declaration under circumstances of extreme disadvantage. Her maritime commerce suffered extreme injury from the attacks of the English and Swedes. War was unavoidable, either for or against France. The decision was replete with difficulty. Prussia, by continuing to side with France, was exposed to the attacks of England, Sweden, and probably Russia; it was, moreover, to be feared that Napoleon, who had more in view the diminution of the power of Prussia than that of Austria, might delay his aid. During the late campaign, the Prussian territory had been violated and the fortress of Wesel seized by Napoleon, who had also promised the restoration of Hanover to England as a condition of peace. He had invited Prussia to found, besides the Rhenish, a northern confederation, and had, at the same time, bribed Saxony with a promise of the royal dignity, and Hesse with that of the annexation of Fulda, not to enter into alliance with Prussia. Prussia saw herself scorned and betrayed by France. A declaration of war with France was, however, surrounded with tenfold danger. The power of France, unweakened by opposition, had reached an almost irresistible height. Austria, abandoned in every former campaign and hurried to ruin by Prussia, could no longer be reckoned on for aid. The whole of Germany, once in favor of Prussia, now sided with the foe. Honor at length decided. Prussia could no longer endure the scorn of the insolent Frenchman, his desecration of the memory of the great Frederick, or, with an army impatient for action, tamely submit to the insults of both friend and foe. The presence of the Russian czar, Alexander, at Berlin, his visit to the tomb of Frederick the Great, rendered still more popular by an engraving, had a powerful effect upon public opinion. Louisa, the beautiful queen of Prussia and princess of Mecklenburg, animated the people with her words and roused a spirit of chivalry in the army, which still deemed itself invincible. The younger officers were not sparing of their vaunts, and Prince Louis vented his passion by breaking the windows of the minister Haugwitz. John Muller, who, on the overthrow of Austria, had quitted Vienna and had been appointed Prussian historiographer at Berlin, called upon the people, in the preface to the "Trumpet of the Holy War," to take up arms against France.
War was indeed declared, but with too great precipitation. Instead of awaiting the arrival of the troops promised by Russia or until Austria had been gained, instead of manning the fortresses and taking precautionary measures, the Prussian army, in conjunction with that of Saxony, which lent but compulsory aid, and with those of Mecklenburg and Brunswick, its voluntary allies, took the field without any settled plan, and suddenly remained stationary in the Thuringian forest, like Mack two years earlier at Ulm, waiting for the appearance of Napoleon, 1806. The king and the queen accompanied the army, which was commanded by Ferdinand, duke of Brunswick, a veteran of seventy- two, and by his subordinate in command, Frederick Louis, prince of Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, who constantly opposed his measures. In the general staff the chief part was enacted by Colonel Massenbach, a second Mack, whose counsels were rarely followed. All the higher officers in the army were old men, promotion depending not upon merit but upon length of service. The younger officers were radically bad, owing to their airs of nobility and licentious garrison life; their manners and principles were equally vulgar. Women, horses, dogs, and gambling formed the staple of their conversation; they despised all solid learning, and, when decorated on parade, in their enormous cocked hats and plumes, powdered wigs and queues, tight leather breeches and great boots, they swore at and cudgelled the men, and strutted about with conscious heroism. The arms used by the soldiery were heavy and apt to hang fire, their tight uniform was inconvenient for action and useless as a protection against the weather, and their food, bad of its kind, was stinted by the avarice of the colonels, which was carried to such an extent that soldiers were to be seen, who, instead of a waistcoat, had a small bit of cloth sewn on to the lower part of the uniform where the waistcoat was usually visible. Worst of all, however, was the bad spirit that pervaded the army, the enervation consequent upon immorality. Even before the opening of the war, Lieutenant Henry von Bulow, a retired officer, the greatest military genius at that period in Germany, and, on that account, misunderstood, foretold the inevitable defeat of Prussia, and, although far from being a devotee, declared, "The cause of the national ignorance lies chiefly in the atheism and demoralization produced by the government of Frederick II. The enlightenment, so highly praised in the Prussian states, simply consists in a loss of energy and power."
The main body of the Prussian army was stationed around Weimar and Jena, a small corps under General Tauenzien was pushed forward to cover the rich magazines at Hof, and a reserve of seventeen thousand men under Eugene, duke of Wurtemberg, lay to the rear at Halle. It was remarked that this position, in case of an attack being made by Napoleon, was extremely dangerous, the only alternatives left for the Prussian army being either to advance, form a junction with the gallant Hessians and render the Rhine the seat of war, or to fall back upon the reserve and hazard a decisive battle on the plains of Leipzig. That intriguing impostor, Lucchesini, the oracle of the camp, however, purposely declared that he knew Napoleon, that Napoleon would most certainly not attempt to make an attack. A few days afterward Napoleon, nevertheless, appeared, found the pass at Kosen open, cut off the Prussian army from the right bank of the Saal, from its magazines at Hof and Naumburg, which he also seized, from the reserve corps stationed at Halle, and from Prussia. Utterly astounded at the negligence of the duke of Brunswick, he exclaimed, while comparing him with Mack, "Les Prussiens sont encore plus stupides que les Autrichiens!" On being informed by some prisoners that the Prussians expected him from Erfurt when he was already at Naumburg, he said, "Ils se tromperont furieusement, ces perruques." He would, nevertheless, have been on his part exposed to great peril had the Prussians suddenly attacked him with their whole force from Weimar, Jena, and Halle, or had they instantly retired into Franconia and fallen upon his rear; but the idea never entered the heads of the Prussian generals, who tranquilly waited to be beaten by him one after the other.
After Tauenzien's repulse, a second corps under Prince Louis of Prussia, which had been pushed forward to Saalfeld, imprudently attempting to maintain its position in the narrow valley, was surrounded and cut to pieces. The prince refused to yield, and, after a furious defence, was killed by a French horse-soldier. The news of this disaster speedily reached the main body of the Prussians. The duke of Brunswick, at that time holding a military council in the castle of Weimar, so entirely lost his presence of mind as to ask in the hearing of several young officers, and with embarrassment depicted on his countenance, "What are we to do?" This veteran duke would with painful slowness write down in the neatest hand the names of the villages in which the various regiments were to be quartered, notwithstanding which, it sometimes happened that, owing to his topographical ignorance, several regiments belonging to different corps d'armee were billeted in the same village and had to dispute its possession. He would hesitate for an hour whether he ought to write the name of a village Munchenholzen or Munchholzen.