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BATTLE OF JENA.

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object with the Prussians. The greater part of their army marched, in consequence, with the king and the duke of Brunswick, to dislodge Davoust, whom they met in advance of Nuremberg at Auerstadt.

The rest of the Prussians, under prince Hohenlohe, advanced against the main army of the French, which was at Jena, commanded by Napoleon himself. The two encounters, that at Jena and at Auerstadt, took place on the same day, the 14th of October.

The battle of Jena, taken alone, does not present any masterly or decisive manœuvre. Where Napoleon showed his skill, was in the ordering of his march, which forced these decisive actions. On the field, however, he was not wanting. His force was concentrated upon a high and narrow plain, in front of Jena. His artillery could with great difficulty be brought into position. The emperor, who looked to all himself, was obliged to stand the greater part of the night in seeing a road cleared for it; he himself holding torches, and directing the labors of the pioneers. The morning of the 14th was foggy; the armies could not discern each other; and the Prussians, ignorant of the French position, knew not where to direct their attacks. Ney, however, attacked their left, and was beaten back, till Soult arrived to his support. As the fog cleared up at mid-day, the engagement became general. The Prussians behaved like brave soldiers, and showed a resistance worthy of the army of the great Frederic; but it was more in coolness and strictness of manœuvre, than in that irregular spirit and audacity which characterize the French. Each officer and general of these troops exercised a free-will and judgment; rushed in where they saw an interval or a wavering point; and obeyed more the spirit than the letter of their commander's orders. The German troops, and still more their officers, were not equal to this,— the true reason of their universal defeats. The Prussians could take no advantage of their successful resistance on many points. Charge after charge poured on them; were repelled; and allowed to form again. At length, Augereau arriving against their right with fresh infantry, and Murat coming up with his cavalry, the Prussians were defeated, gave up the field, and fled.

Davoust at the same time had a much harder task than Napoleon. He had to make head against a Prussian force triple his own, led on, moreover, by its sovereign and commander-in-chief. Napoleon was not aware of this; thinking, on the contrary, the main army of the Prussians to be at Jena: neither was Davoust, until engaged. When the latter

sent to Bernadotte to aid him, this general, under the same impressions, and unwilling to act secondary to Davoust, refused; which afterwards proved a great cause, or pretext, of the emperor's severity towards him. At Auerstadt, as at Jena, a fog prevented the armies from observing each other's force, but not from coming to action. There was an obstinate fight. As the day grew clear, the French saw the numerous army which menaced them; utterly destitute, too, as they were, of cavalry. They drew up instantly in squares; and thus withstood all the efforts of the Prussian horse led on by Blucher. When these were obliged to retreat, the French rose and drove in the infantry in front of them, breaking the centre of the Prussians. Again they formed in squares to resist fresh efforts of the duke of Brunswick and prince William of Prussia, who led the cavalry to the charge. Fortune aided the valor of the French. All the Prussian generals were severely wounded, Brunswick himself, Schmettau, Wartensleben, and prince William. Their troops were obliged to retreat. Lastly, the king himself made a gallant effort to restore the fortunes of the day in vain. The centre being broken, all the efforts of the wings could not produce a serious result. The Prussians, with their monarch, turned their backs; and the routed troops from both Jena and Auerstadt, as they mingled in their flight to Weimar, informed each other of the extent of the disaster.

If the statesmanship of the king of Prussia had neither been noble nor wise, he, as well as his family and nation vindicated at least their honor, even on the field which they lost. In his flight, Frederic sent to demand an armistice of Napoleon. It was refused; and on the following day Erfurt surrendered to Murat, with near 100 pieces of artillery, 14,000 men, and numerous magazines. The French pushed on without intermission towards Berlin. The duke of Brunswick had been conveyed to Hamburgh to die. Schmettau, whom his wounds detained at Jena, did not survive. He had served under the great Frederic, and lived long enough to see the glory of the Prussian army overthrown. Napoleon had avenged the defeat of the French at Rosbach, but forgot his wonted generosity in victory, when he took away from the field the commemorative column, and sent it to Paris.*

* After Napoleon's return from Austerlitz, Denon presented him with. divers medals illustrative of his victories. The first represented a French eagle tearing an English leopard. "What's this?" asked the emperor Denon explained. "Thou rascally flatterer, you say that the French eagle crushes the English leopard; yet I cannot put a fishing boat to sea that is not taken: I tell you it is the leopard that strangles the eagle. Melt down the medal, and never bring me such another." He found similar fault with the medal of Austerlitz. "Pu Battle of Austerlitz on one side with the

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He at the same time liberated all his Saxon prisoners, in order to attach that slector to his interests.

On the 27th of October, Napoleon entered Berlin at the head of his guards, in the midst of the silent tears of its population. The 25th he had spent at Potsdam, in the house and apartments of the great Frederic. He descended to the tomb of that warrior, the only character in modern history for which he professed veneration. He showed it, after his fashion, by taking his sword, his order of the Black Eagle, and the colors of his guard, which he sent to the Hôtel des Invalides at Paris. Napoleon showed himself far more severe towards Prussia than towards Austria; yet Prussia had shown him less inveteracy. But he reverenced the antiquity of the Imperial house; whilst his plan of shutting all the seaports of Europe against England rendered it necessary that he should be perfectly master of Prussia. His conduct to the princess of Hatzfield is, however, an exception. The prince, who was civil governor of Berlin, had been rudely received by Napoleon. A letter of his, directed to his fugitive monarch, was intercepted; the emperor caused him to be seized and tried by a court-martial. The fate of Palm, a poor bookseller, who had been condemned for some libel against Napoleon, and executed in consequence, showed that the French cared little for legal forms. The princess therefore hurried to Napoleon, flung herself at his feet, and craved the pardon of her husband. For reply, he handed her the intercepted letter, the proof of the prince's offence, and bade her burn it.

Frederic, in the mean time, had fled behind the Oder. Fortress after fortress surrendered. Spandau had fallen at once; Magdeburgh, the bulwark of the kingdom, after a short siege; and Blucher alone supported in flight the national character for ability and courage. He made a daring retreat amongst the French divisions, which pursued and crossed his path, and at length, shutting him up in Lubeck, forced him to surrender. Thus in one action had the power of Prussia been not only shaken, but destroyed. Austria had made a far more stubborn fight. But the latter had warred with France whilst that country was weak, and had formed her armies ir successive campaigns, learning even from defeat; whereas Prussia, after a long peace, started up against Napoleon in nis might. The superior nationality of Austria also contributed to give her the advantage, but this not so much as is generally argued.

date, the French, Russian, and Austrian eagles on the other, without dis tinction. Posterity will distinguish the vanquished." Mémoires par De Rausset

At Berlin, Napoleon had to enter once more upon the task of organizing a new empire. All the smaller states of Germany were now compelled to make part of his confederation. Saxony was treated with lenience; Hesse Cassel and Brunswick with severity. The emperor had even an idea of converting Prussia into a republic; of which, no doubt, he himself was to become in time president, consul, and king. But he soon gave up the hopeless plan of forcing himself upon the honest allegiance of the Germans. His armies now occupied Hamburgh, a free city, against which the emperor had no assignable cause of war. To strike a great commercial port with nullity, and shut it against the English, was his object. In addition to the occupation of the city, marshal Mortier had orders to seize the treasure kept in the cellars of the Hamburgh bank; an order the execution of which the marshal was persuaded to suspend.

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But all Bonaparte's acts, even his conquests, were surpassed in audacity by the famous Berlin decrees. They were accompanied by numerous reports, and prefaced by such logic as the law of 500,000 bayonets might deign to use. land,” Bonaparte commences by saying, "admits no law of nations, in that she captures the merchant vessels, as well as the armed ships of her enemy, together with the French crews of the former; in that she blockades ports unfortified as well as fortified, and declares in a state of blockade whole coasts and ports before which she can scarcely keep a single vessel." This last is the only plausible charge; those which precede it are mere raving. Since, were Bonaparte's edition of the law of nations to be put in force, France might on land overrun and pillage the whole continent, whilst she might completely shelter her coast from her enemy by destroying the fortifications of every port, and be able at the same time to reap the gains of commerce on one side, and the plunder of war on the other. In order to establish these convenient rules, or rather until they were established, Napoleon decreed Great Britain to be in a state of blockade, forbade all commerce and correspondence with it. Every Englishman found n any country was prisoner of war; all English property, nywhere found, was confiscated.* No ship coming from England or her colonies, or having touched at her ports, was to be received in any harbor; or if any arrived, it was to be confiscated. Such was the decree by which Bonaparte endeavored to shut out England from the Continent at the expense of neutral and independent nations. This he intended to enforce in every port throughout the whole circuit of

* A law already enforced at Hamburgh, at Leipzig, and at Leghorn.

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Europe, from St. Petersburgh round to Constantinople. This scheme of wounding Great Britain by crippling her com merce, resembled, in its magnitude, its impracticability, and its ill success, his plan of destroying her Asiatic commerce by invading Egypt. Both recoiled upon himself: for naught more than the severities of the Continental System, as that f these decrees is called, alienated from Napoleon the affections of the middle classes both of his subjects and of his allies. Whilst the conscription, or its extreme enforcement, wounded their parental affections, the system deprived moderate fortunes of the common and customary luxuries of life. Sugar rose to eight and ten shillings a pound; coffee and all colonial produce tantamount; whilst the temptation to contraband trade, and the corresponding vexations of the excise, excited that perpetual war betwixt government and governed, which is the most fruitful source of disaffection.

Meantime, an attempt at negotiation on the part of the king of Prussia, who had retired to Konigsberg, met with no result. Napoleon demanded the cession of all the country betwixt the Rhine and the Elbe: he had already conceived the project of establishing the kingdom of Westphalia in favor of his young brother Jerome. Although not so severe as those afterwards submitted to by Prussia, her envoy, Lucchesini, refused to sign them. Russia was still unconquered, and Frederic William hoped that the power of Alexander might in a fortunate battle put a check to the ascendency of the French. Unluckily for this hope, war broke out at this moment betwixt Russia and Turkey. A young military envoy, Sebastiani, whom Napoleon had sent to Constantinople, succeeded in a few days of intrigue to destroy the amicable relations existing not only between Russia and the Porte, but between England and that its "ancient ally." In a moment, the invasion of Egypt by France, and its defence by England, were forgotten; and the French ambassador was seen arming the batteries of Constantinople, and commanding its militia, against the British. As war followed upon the Danube, this caused a powerful diversion of the Russian force, which might otherwise have extended to Frederic William a more effectual support.

Napoleon himself now advanced in pursuit of the Prussian monarch, after issuing a proud proclamation to his soldiers, in which he informed them that "they had conquered on the Elbe and the Oder, the French possessions in the Indies, the Cape of Good Hope, and the Spanish colonies." All the glories of Jena and Austerlitz appeared nothing, unless partly won at the expense of England. The emperor was now at