CHAPTER XXXV.

Ungenerous conduct of Buonaparte to the Duke of Bruns wick.-The approach of the French troops to Brunswick compels the dying Prince to cause himself to be carried to Altona, where he expires.- Oath of revenge taken by his Son.-At Potsdam and Berlin, the proceedings of Napoleon are equally cruel and vindictive.—His clemency towards the Prince of Hatzfeld.-His Treatment of the Lesser Powers.-Jerome Buonaparte.-Seizure of Hamburgh.-Berlin Decrees against British Commerce.— Napoleon rejects all application from the continental commercial towns to relax or repeal them.-Commerce, nevertheless, flourishes in spite of them.—Second anticipation called for of the Conscription for 1807.— The King of Prussia applies for an Armistice, which is clogged with such harsh terms, that he refuses them. ›

THE will of Napoleon seemed now the only law, from which the conquered country that so late stood forth as the rival of France, was to expect her destiny; and circumstances indicated, that, with more than the fortune of Cæsar or Alexander, the Conqueror would not emulate their generosity or clemency.

The treatment of the ill-fated Duke of Brunswick did little honour to the victor. After receiving a mortal wound on the field of battle, he was

transported from thence to Altona. Upon his way to his native dominions, in the government of which his conduct had been always patriotic and praiseworthy, he wrote to Napoleon, representing that, although he had fought against him as a general in the Prussian service, he nevertheless, as a Prince of the Empire, recommended his hereditary principality to the moderation and clemency of the victor. This attempt to separate his two characters, or to appeal to the immunities of a league which Napoleon had dissolved, although natural in the duke's forlorn situation, formed a plea not likely to be attendEed to by the conqueror. But, on other and broader grounds, Buonaparte, if not influenced by personal animosity against the duke, or desirous to degrade, in his person, the father-in-law of the heir of the British crown, might have found reasons for treating the defeated general with the respect due to his rank and his misfortunes. The Duke of Brunswick was one of the oldest soldiers in Europe, and his unquestioned bravery ought to have recommended him to his junior in arms. He was a reigning prince, and Buonaparte's own aspirations towards confirmation of aristocratical rank should have led him to treat the vanquished with decency. Above all, the duke was defenceless, wounded, dying; a situation to command the sympathy of every military man, who knows on what casual circumstances the fate of battle depends. The answer of Napoleon was, nevertheless, harsh and insulting in the last degree. He reproached the departing general with his celebrated proclamation against France in 1792, with the result of his unhappy

campaign in that country, with the recent summons by which the French had been required to retreat beyond the Rhine. He charged him as having been the instigator of a war which his counsels ought to have prevented. He announced the right which he had acquired, to leave not one stone standing upon another in the town of Brunswick; and summed up his ungenerous reply by intimating, that though he might treat the subjects of the duke like a generous victor, it was his purpose to deprive the dying prince and his family of their hereditary sovereignty.1

As if to fulfil these menaces, the French troops approached the city of Brunswick; and the wounded veteran, dreading the further resentment of his ungenerous victor, was compelled to cause himself to be removed to the neutral town of Altona, where he expired. An application from his son, requesting permission to lay his father's body in the tomb of his ancestors, was rejected with the same sternness which had characterised Buonaparte's answer to the attempt of the duke, when living, to

[Sixteenth Bulletin of the Grand Army, dated 12th Oct.] ["The Duke of Brunswick's entry into Altona presented a new and striking proof of the instability of fortune. A sovereign prince was beheld, enjoying, right or wrong, a great military reputation, but very lately powerful and tranquil in his own capital, now beaten and mortally wounded, borne into Altona on a miserable litter, carried by ten men, without officers, without domestics, escorted by a crowd of boys and ragamuffins, who pressed about him from curiosity, deposited in a bad inn, and so worn out with fatigue, that the morrow after his arrival, the report of his death was generally credited. His wife joined him on the 1st November; he refused all visits, and died on the 10th." BOURRIENNE, t. vii. p. 159.]

soften his enmity.

The successor of the duke vowed, it is believed, to requite these insults with mortal hatred,-did much to express it during his life, and bequeathed to his followers the legacy of revenge,' which the Black Brunswickers had the means of amply discharging upon the 18th of June, 1815.

Some have imputed this illiberal conduct of Buonaparte to an ebullition of spleen against the object of his personal dislike; others have supposed that his resentment was, in whole or in part, affected in order to ground upon it his resolution of confiscating the state of Brunswick, and uniting it with the kingdom of Westphalia, which, as we shall presently see, he proposed to erect as an appanage for his brother Jerome. Whether arising from a burst of temperament, or a cold calculation of interested selfishness, his conduct was equally unworthy of a monarch and a soldier.

At Potsdam and at Berlin, Napoleon showed himself equally as the sworn and implacable enemy, rather than as the generous conqueror. At Potsdam he seized on the sword, belt, and hat of the Great Frederick, and at Berlin he appropriated and removed to Paris the monument of Victory,

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"Within a window'd niche of that high hall
Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain: he did hear
That sound the first amidst the festival,
And caught its tone with Death's prophetic ear;
And when they smiled because he deem'd it near,
His heart more truly knew that peal too well,
Which stretch'd his Father on a bloody bier,
And roused the Vengeance blood alone could quell.
He rush'd into the field and, foremost fighting, fell."
Childe Harold.]

erected by the same monarch, in consequence of the defeat of the French at Rosbach.1 The finest paintings and works of art in Prussia were seized upon for the benefit of the French National Museum.

The language of the victor corresponded with his actions. His bulletins and proclamations abounded with the same bitter sarcasms against the King, the Queen, and those whom he called the war faetion of Prussia. Ascribing the war to the unrepressed audacity of the young nobility, he said, in one of those proclamations, he would permit no more rioting in Berlin, no more breaking of windows; and, in addressing the Count Neale, he threatened, in plain terms, to reduce the nobles of Prussia to beg their bread. These, and similar expressions of irritated spleen, used in the hour of conquest, level the character of the great victor with that of the vulgar Englishman in the farce, who cannot be satisfied with beating his enemy, but must scold him also. Napoleon's constant study

1 ["The sword of the Great Frederick was easily found at Potsdam, together with the scarf which he wore during the Seven Years' War; also the insignia of the Black Eagle. The Emperor took these trophies with transport, saying, I would rather have these than twenty millions: I shall send them to my old soldiers-I shall present them to the governor of the Invalids: in that hotel they shall remain."""-Nineteenth Bulletin.]

["The good people of Berlin have been the sacrifice of the war; while those who excited it have left them and are become fugitives; I shall reduce those noble courtiers to such extremities that they shall be compelled to beg their bread." To Prince Hatzfeld, the Emperor said, "Do not appear in my presence; I have no need of your services; retire to your estates."Twenty-first Bulletin.]