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New Firebrands - Marginalia on the Tract - Confidential Letters on the Internal Affairs of the Prussian Court since the Death of Frederick II

New Firebrands.

Marginalia on the Tract: Confidential Letters on the Internal Affairs of the Prussian Court since the Death of Frederick II.

By the same Author.

First Volume. First to Third Part.

With a Copperplate.

Amsterdam and Cölln, 1807.
bey Peter Hammer.

New Firebrands.

Published by the Author of the Confidential Letters on the Internal Affairs of the Prussian Court since the Death of Frederick II.

A Journal in Occasional Issues.

First Part.

Amsterdam und Cölln, 1807.
bey Peter Hammer.

Contents.

Section Page
Correspondence. Letter from Jena 1
— Continuation 8
On the Now Universal Degradation of the Prussian Military 14
The Annexation of Great Poland Was Prussia’s Ruin 21
Is it true that in the country where agricultural industry is pursued above all, every kind of tax falls upon the landowners? 25
Prussia’s Imminent Decline after the Battle of Auerstädt, written on 24 October 1806 38
History of the Attack, Blockade, and Surrender of Glogau, by Carl Friedrich Benkowitz 89

[p. 1]

Correspondence

Letter from Jena.

For a long time now I have wished to answer your letter, which took me by surprise, reminding me as it did of our merry years of youth, and to share with you my view of the great world-event that took place here before our very eyes on 14 October — had I not been so very occupied with putting my domestic affairs back in order, which have suffered not a little.

Yes, dear friend, our peaceful valleys, where twenty years ago we strolled so quietly hand in hand, never dreaming what has now been decided here, were filled with warriors, many of whom lie buried here; our vine-clad hills echoed back frightfully the thunder of cannon, which this time was not, as in those days, the signal of a general joy occasioned by the vintage.

All the places so well known to you: Ziegenhayn, Lichtenhayn, Zwetzen, Dorndorf, Appolde, Rötschau,

[p. 2]

the Rauch- and Mühlthal, but above all Weimar, from which we rode home so many a night so merrily, were the seat of terror. Do you still remember your mishap:

how, without knowing it, you rode a stone-blind horse, with which you tumbled into the roadside ditch, the day we had first seen Belmonte and Constanze in Weimar?

That very same ditch was filled with the dead on 14 October. Before 10 October we here in Jena did not believe in the possibility that a Prussian army such as this could ever be beaten.

Never was an army more splendid. It seemed as though the Prussian state had gathered here among us the core, the flower of its entire stock of vigorous men, in order therewith to subdue the world. Never has an army embodied more physical strength, for as long as war has been waged. The most perfect machine of this kind, the most consummate product of nature and art, the result of the old system of war, was to perish under our eyes in our valleys, because no spirit animated this body. Yes, friend, that was the cause of all the misfortune!

I am convinced that, had but one of the younger Prussian officers held command — one who had grasped the new form and the spirit of the age, and who had understood Napoleon in some measure — that man with this

[p. 3]

army would have worked wonders, would perhaps have been beaten, but would never have been cut off from the Elbe. The Duke of Brunswick was the commander; the King of Prussia, mistrusting himself, had handed the command over to him; everything was to proceed from him, but nothing proceeded from him save confusion, neither plan nor disposition; error was in every corner, misunderstandings and contradictory orders. Indeed, the army actually had no position at all, it lacked a centre: for between Hohenlohe’s army and the King’s there was a gap of several hours. At Austerlitz Napoleon had to break through the centre of the enemy in order to conquer; here he had no need of that at all, for there was none.

The most ignorant layman in strategy, who knew that the French army from 5 October onward hurled itself unceasingly in long columns out of Franconia along the right bank of the Saale toward Saxony, its eye always fixed upon the Elbe, could not but smile with pity at the Prussian army, which remained quietly in cantonment, paralyzed in a confused heap on the left bank of the Saale, and which seemed to have laid down its basis of subsistence, its magazines, on the right bank of the Saale at Naumburg, Merseburg, and Halle, precisely so that the enemy might find provisions on his march to the Elbe. Already Tauentzien’s corps had been beaten, the second, that of Prince Louis, annihilated, without the formidable Prussian army either

[p. 4]

having attacked and cut through the French columns while on the march, in order to destroy them, or at least reaching the Elbe and covering the mother country. Indeed, no one even thought of letting the Württemberg corps, 20,000 men strong, advance by forced marches upon Naumburg, in order to occupy this pass and the defiles of Kösen. The corps marched to and fro without purpose, from Küstrin to Berlin, where it lingered for eight days and sang war-songs in the theatre, watched the political pundit (Zinngießer, a variant of the stock figure Kannengießer — literally “pewterer”, the armchair politician), and gaped at the Capuchin in Wallenstein’s Camp, who mocks every soldier. From Berlin it went to Magdeburg, from there to Halle, in order to fall into the enemy’s hands at just the right moment — whereas the shortest way from Berlin to Naumburg runs by way of Wittenberg.

The Duke of Brunswick let nothing free him from the delusion: that Napoleon would take up a defensive position on the Main, and there await the attack, especially since before November the French troops would not be assembled.

This idea had been instilled in him by the ministers Count Haugwitz and Lucchesini, who attended the permanent grand council of war, which from the beginning of October until the day when the army was beaten and

[p. 5]

dissolved, deliberated, conferred, and kept minutes without cease, but decided nothing1.

Napoleon and a defensive posture! Should not a commander and Cabinet Minister who could so much as let such an idea be uttered aloud have been sent home at once?

At length, however, the conviction did come to the Duke: that he was cut off from the Elbe. Even yet he could have saved the army. He had to occupy the fringe of the Saale hills and Kösen and there await the attack, but seek to take Naumburg, and send the Duke of Württemberg to meet the enemy, in order to fall upon his rear by forced marches. But now the pettiest measure in the world was seized upon:

They wanted to fall back across the Unstrut and thus draw nearer to the Elbe; and so they withdrew behind the Saale hills and occupied the passes only weakly, but the Rauchthal not at all. At Dorndorf, for example, there stood 2 grenadier companies of Collin and 40 horse.

On the night of the 13th we noticed at Jena the diligence of the French in climbing the heights and spreading themselves out along the saddle of the range; but we thought to ourselves:

“You’ll arrive soon enough!”

—assuming that everything here was occupied by the Prussians and bristling with cannon.

[p. 6]

But how astonished we were on the 14th to hear:

that the French had climbed the range without resistance, had deployed here, erected batteries, and attacked the enemy.

This bold idea of the Emperor’s was carried out during the night and in the morning under cover of a heavy fog, before Hohenlohe’s army had completed its deployment; this was to be covered by two Silesian cavalry regiments. But they were thrown back at the first onset, and overran a battery which, in order to save itself, was obliged to fire upon friend and foe alike.

Hohenlohe retreated at once, having, so it is said, assumed that he had been outflanked on the left wing and cut off from the Holzendorff Corps, which was supposed to cover it.

Rüchel’s Corps came to his aid from Weimar at the double. Hohenlohe demanded that Rüchel should cover his retreat, but the latter, paying little heed to this, gave the command:

“Eyes left! March!”

After some fortunate success the general fell, and now everyone who could run, ran; the cavalry above all was the swiftest in flight, and it seemed exactly as though the King had had them mounted for the sole purpose of getting away all the more quickly and throwing everything into disorder; for this was entirely the case.

[p. 7]

Suppose a man of head and heart had still arisen and had wished to bring order and unity back into this chaos — he would not have succeeded: for he would have been ridden down by the cavalry fleeing en masse.

It would have been possible (though improbable) that Rüchel might have hurled the French back down into the valleys of the Saale, had he not fallen; but certainly (since he is more of a practical man and more resolute than Hohenlohe) he would in his place have attacked, and would not have begun the retreat on account of a mere supposition. When everything is at stake, one must risk everything upon it. So much for the battle at Jena.

v. **n.

[p. 8]

Letter from Jena. Continuation.

The thunder of the cannon had died away; the battle was decided in favour of the French. For Prussia it was more disastrous in its consequences than in the loss itself which the army had suffered at Auerstädt and Jena. One may boldly assert:

That in every man the fear of death is present — in one more than in another, to be sure, but always in a certain degree. If one asks what it is that drives a man to go forth to meet death and to hold firm in danger, one may answer with certainty: that this is no impulse of the heart, but a sense of duty and honour compelled by the understanding. But a man wins within himself the victory of reason over feeling more easily when a greater measure of hope is in him: that the danger of death is not so great for him, that he is more likely to remain alive than to fall. Hence we see those troops who have conquered repeatedly, one victory after another, go more boldly into battle than those who have always been beaten. We see men grow accustomed to the danger of death,

[p. 9]

and the veteran tread the battlefield more indifferently than the novice. And once a man has fought for years together in war, at last he goes to battle as to a dance, thinking: you have always come off well, why not today too? And if there be added some further interest which spurs the soldier to be brave — that of honour, of self-defence and of property, of booty and of the danger of retreat — then the soldier is formed to do his duty as a machine.

When, amid these reflections, I surveyed the French and Prussian armies against one another, the victory of the former was to me not at all in doubt.

There stood on the one side a single commander who alone directed and moved the hundreds of thousands, in the full ripeness of manhood. For ten years he had fought almost without interruption with the troops of all civilized nations; all their peculiarities, their various ways of waging war, had become known to him. As a skilled theorist he took up the baton of command; a ten-years’ practice completed the commander. He was able to impart to the army what he had learned to value in the art through experience of his enemies and what his own troops lacked. He knew exactly the character of his soldiers, and what made them serviceable for his purposes. Victory was ever his faithful companion. Thirty battles won make one indifferent

[p. 10]

to every danger. The army fighting under his command had never lost a battle under him; it attached the greatest confidence to its leader. To this was added the sense of honour that is present in every Frenchman, but doubly so in him as a soldier, to vanquish a new enemy whose army had until no long time ago been called invincible, and which fourteen years earlier had believed it would conquer France in her capital. The commonest French soldier was exalted by the thought of planting his colours in the Prussian residence.

Finally, the art of waging war was present in this army in the highest degree.

On the other side stood the Prussians, in whom only the afterglow of an old form still shone — a form long since partly discarded, partly improved, and wholly transformed by the most recent experience. At their head an Areopagus held command, at variance with itself, and the commander who had the greatest influence was an old man who, without knowing the new art of war or having grasped it, clung entirely to the old, outworn manner known to him alone, and thereby entered into the most declared opposition to all the younger generals who knew the new ways and wished to introduce them.

The troops themselves, for the most part never having taken part in a battle, therefore had neither self-confidence nor faith in their leader, whom they little knew and whose mediocrity they quite properly noticed,

[p. 11]

since orders so often contradictory were issued, and since, without having been beaten, they suffered want, hunger, and thirst in the most fertile regions, when the war had not yet even begun.

That which had hitherto held the Prussian army together in particular — the military point of honour (point d’honneur) (in the noble officer corps, an idea seized by Frederick from the former spirit of chivalry and so well employed) — had become a rather antiquated formula, for which one gave almost as little as for the cavalier’s word of honour of today’s nobility. For just as the latter has now become so common that no one will lend a farthing upon it — whereas the word of honour of an old German knight was worth as much as an oath and a mortgage — even so is the “Upon my honour!” fallen into disrepute, because our officers flung it about with in every tavern, alehouse, and guardroom.

In the train of these reflections the victory over the Prussians was, as already said, no longer in doubt to me. But once they had lost this first great battle, I could just as easily explain to myself the complete slackening of all Prussian valour, in general and common soldier alike, and it was nothing at all surprising that they now renewed the flight-scenes of Rossbach which they had so often cast in the teeth of the French. But it was remarkable to me: that in the Prussians here

[p. 12]

and there, in individuals, the old spirit reappeared, as it had in the French in the Seven Years’ War.

In the young nobleman who at Halle chose rather to drown in the Saale than to lose his colours, there appeared the true and genuine military point of honour, such as animated Frederick’s hosts in general; and in the French grenadier who at Rossbach fought against three Prussians, and who, when Frederick asked him whether he was invincible, answered: “Yes, Sire, if you were to command me” — there still lived the spirit of Turenne.

But you would rather hear from me the news of the day than philosophical observations.

At Weimar everyone at court had fled, and only the Duchess had remained. The Emperor Napoleon was received by her, lodged in the palace, and when she appeared before him with the address:

“I wish, Sire, that you may have found in my dwelling everything that could afford you refreshment after so much exertion, and I am ready to furnish everything that I, and the country, are to raise for the French army according to your desire” — the Emperor replied:

“Why did the Duke, your husband, take up arms against me?”

The Duchess answers:

“Your Majesty knows: my husband was a Prussian general during peacetime; was he to abandon his

[p. 13]

post in wartime? I and his subjects did indeed harbour this wish: ‘Am I,’ said the Duke, ‘to trample underfoot all the military laws founded upon honour, and thereby disgrace myself and my line?’”

“He was right, Madam,” Napoleon replied, “but now he has done his duty; let him come back now, and I grant peace to the country.”

The Duke came, and peace was given to him and to us.

v. **n.

[p. 14]

On the Now-General Debasement of the Prussian Military.

Could the loss of the battles on the Saale, and the swift surrender of the country’s principal fortresses, alone have produced the contempt that the public now, without hesitation, expresses loudly and openly toward the military? I think not.

Whether or not this disparagement of an entire estate rests on solid grounds, it is at all events exaggerated, and one does many an individual an injustice by condemning the whole. I believe it cannot be uninteresting to recall how the ascendancy of the military over the other estates in Prussia gradually came about.

Under George William, during the Thirty Years’ War, the state maintained some 4,000 soldiers. Their deeds are well known; men esteemed them then exactly as they esteemed the Imperial troops in the Seven Years’ War. The Great Elector infused his fiery, great spirit into this body, and the military, animated by it, now fought (the very same Brandenburg army of which men

[p. 15]

had, shortly before, not known whether it existed or not) against the foremost European troops of that day, and indeed with success — against the Swedes. Nay, the Elector dared to set himself against a Turenne and his army.

Even then the Prussian state owed its flourishing to its military, and even if the latter had received its whole worth from its commander, the public’s applause was nonetheless bestowed also upon the creation that had proceeded from the Prince, whose memory was honoured at Berlin with a statue.

Under Frederick I. this esteem for the soldierly estate was lost again, since this Prince showed no inclination for it, and had more taste for a brilliant court, for the splendour and decorations of the newly acquired royal throne, than for war; and therefore he looked on with fair indifference as Charles XII. set the world in astonishment and began to play the world-conqueror.

How little the military counted in those days is proved by the frequent tables of precedence that were issued, in which this estate was set back, and the Field Marshal had to yield place to the Chamberlain.

As is well known, Frederick William I.’s character was wholly the opposite of his father’s; it was therefore not surprising that he adopted a different system. Frugality took the place of extravagance, brilliant court festivities had to give way to the Tobacco College,

[p. 16]

the civil to the military. The Ensign no longer looked over his shoulder at the Chamberlain, whom men had learned to do without, and a Potsdam grenadier of 12 inches [taller] stood in the front rank of the courtiers. About this time the soldierly estate allowed itself everything, at home and abroad; it was utterly lawless, and whoever offended a tall soldier assailed the King himself. What Frederick William valued only in its form, Leopold von Dessau knew how to develop for its purpose; for war did not remain foreign to this army under his command, and the hero of the dawning century, Charles XII., had to yield at Stralsund itself to Prussian valour.

With the greatest pretensions did this machine, formed in that period to the highest perfection, fall into Frederick’s hands.

For him it existed not merely in its form; he knew, better than any of his predecessors, how to employ it to its purpose. What new creation appeared in the army through his spirit, what was accomplished by it, in what perfection he handed it over to his successor — this I need not repeat, we have all seen it: that since the Seven Years’ War the sense of its worth animated the army, that the officer estate thought itself far exalted above all estates; that Frederick did not weaken this idea, in order to preserve the attraction of the military, so that the wealthiest nobleman,

[p. 17]

the German prince himself, deemed it an honour to serve in this army; that even abroad, wherever a Prussian officer appeared, this title inspired respect; that in a Prussian uniform one remained unmolested throughout the whole world; that the second sex especially worshipped this idol, and the daughter of a millionaire counted herself blessed if she could mount the marriage bed with a Prussian ensign; that the officer boldly entered any society of the first men of the land, where the civilian appeared, anxious and embarrassed, in deepest devotion; that finally the officer punished with death, on the spot, any offence given to a burgher, and that attempts of this kind were little penalized — all this is well enough known.

If our sovereigns liked to see this towering of the military above the other estates, if they favoured, fostered, and cherished it, if they placed themselves at its head, if a King of Prussia never appeared otherwise than in military uniform, this lay wholly within the system of the government:

For the military was, quite properly, the mainstay of the state for Prussia. Only in this estate did the nobility live on in its true spirit, in the old chivalric sense; without this it would long since have faded into oblivion.

That these advantages granted to the military weighed upon the middle estate, that the latter felt itself aggrieved thereby, that the civil sphere in particular took it ill to have

[p. 18]

always to yield place to the military, since it too believed it had merits toward the state, was very natural; hence the burgher estate so gladly sought to exempt itself from the soldierly estate, in which it saw for itself no promotion, no honourable distinction, and where for it there existed only the burden of service, extorted by the corporal’s cane. Hence there were always disputes between the military and civil authorities; and where the latter could set anything in motion only to the vexation of the former, did they not do it gladly?

For this reason the French Revolution made such an impression upon our middle estate, since it annihilated the nobility, promoted in the military according to merit, and, by means of National Guards, won victories over the military.

There, you see, braggarts! went the general cry, that the burgher whom you honour with the name of Philistine can also win battles, and that you could gain nothing over him!

The war on the Rhine still upheld the reputation of the military to some degree; but when isolated engagements in Poland spoke so little to the honour of the Prussian army, and when the siege of Warsaw had to be raised so painfully, the hitherto prevailing respect for this estate sank. The more the standing now fell in public opinion—the standing that the officer estate had maintained for 50 years; as the making of debts spread among them; as they frequently began to grow familiar through intermarriage with the burgher estate;

[p. 19]

as here and there they ceased to play a brilliant role, and stood exposed in their nakedness—the more did they seek by force to assert their old claim; they brusqued, blustered, and prated wherever it was possible; people laughed at them in private, kept out of their way, excluded them from society where it could conveniently be done, and sought to be wholly rid of them.

The military began to feel this want of respect; it well perceived that its preponderance was finished if it did not raise itself anew through a war; hence the general craving in the army to measure itself against the French. It was the death-struggle that the military, in defence of its old rights, began on the Saale, and which ended so unhappily.

And now its standing too is gone, until one day a second Frederick appears and once more makes of the soldier the first pillar of the state.

Now that the so long dreaded military lies annihilated, should one be surprised if the long pent-up fury of the middle estate and the civil orders breaks out over it, and the worth that this military possessed is utterly repudiated, calumny being so busy that it even poisons individual traits that testify to bravery?

This is not noble, but it is entirely commonplace!

[p. 20]

Whatever the military may have been, and however much the officers for the greatest part may have been forward, presumptuous, boastful, and ignorant in their profession, it remains a truth for me that this army, such as it was, would have operated quite differently had another commander than the Duke of Brunswick stood at its head.

Just as Leopold von Dessau was the foremost Prussian general under the kings, so will the Duke be called the last. The former created a Prussian army, the latter annihilated it. I will gladly grant that he did not do so of set purpose; but at his age, feeling his own weakness, he ought to have been wise enough no longer to venture so great a game and to end it childishly.

It is incomprehensibly true: that the Prussian military has probably lost its preponderance for ever, since an idea, once it has been annihilated, can never again be restored.

But what will fill the gap in future? What tendency will the Prussian state have in future, the state that until now was called a military one? Will it take up agriculture, or be called a commercial state? Will not the role be prescribed to it that it is henceforth to carry out? To make all this clear must be left to the time that follows.

v. **n.

[p. 21]

The Annexation of Great Poland Was Prussia’s Ruin.

This assertion must be proved.

Frederick II., who not only completed the Prussian state-machine founded by the Great Elector, decorated by Frederick I., and organized by Frederick William I., but even raised it from a middling power to one of the first rank through the conquest of Silesia, acquired West Prussia and projected the first partition of Poland in order to satisfy Russia and to prevent a war of that empire with Austria and the ruin of the Sublime Porte, as he himself relates in his posthumous works. He has been reproached for this in more recent times, on the grounds that by it the system of balance among the European states was first violated. But this was by no means the case.

Frederick knew all too well the principle of the Russian cabinet — to expand toward the south — which was laid down by Peter I., adopted by all his successors, and in part carried out by the Empress Catherine.

[p. 22]

Long since would the Turks have been driven out of Europe and the Dardanelles opened, had England not held back the arm of the Russian giant, who would have thrown open the gates to the union of the Black and Mediterranean Seas and brought about a lively barter-trade between the commercial ports of both seas.

Prussia could not remain indifferent to the enlargement of the Russian empire at this point, and a piece of Poland was better suited to satisfy the Russian empress’s craving for expansion than Greece. This could all the more readily come about, since Prussia gained extraordinarily by it: in that it gave its provinces a rounding-off (an arrondissement) which they had not previously possessed; and in that it came into possession of the mouth of the Vistula, whereby it brought the whole trade in Poland’s raw products entirely into its power.

Poland was thereby transformed into a colony for the adjacent Prussian states, and just as Martinique had to supply the mother country with coffee, so Prussia obtained grain, wool, cattle, hides, tallow, timber, etc. from Poland at the cheapest prices, since, with the Vistula closed off, Prussia alone generated the demand.

Frederick, who founded his political economy not on physiocratic but on Colbertist principles, and established both military and country grain-magazines, by which he directed prices and

[p. 23]

provisioned the armies cheaply, obtained from Poland sufficient grain and raw material to be worked up for his manufactures. Had these advantages not restrained him, he would surely have voted, even in 1772, for the complete dissolution of the Polish realm; and who would have prevented the three powers from carrying out in 1772 what they completed 20 years later?

Frederick, however, calculated very well:

That the national wealth of Poland, and the share of it which he as sovereign could claim for himself, could only equal the expenditure which sovereignty over this uncultivated land would impose upon him; while at the same time he would lose the advantage of being able to use it as a colony for his states and to profit from the disorder prevailing there, founded upon lawlessness.

For this reason Frederick would never have consented to the complete partition of Poland, into which his successor allowed himself to be recklessly carried away.

What has he gained by it? A land parceled by noblemen into little fragments, in which the people vegetate as a living instrument of tillage, fed like the ox at the manger, and driven to labour with the knout! A land in which every industrious art and every impulse toward development has been scared off.

[p. 24]

He has gained soldiers who in every war with Russia or France will desert their colours, and subjects who will then break the oath of homage extorted from them and rise up in a mass.

Prussia has drawn nearer to the borders of Russia and Austria without being able to occupy them; it has lost all the advantages which the closing of the Vistula brought it. Since this moment its manufactures have been annihilated, and with them the towns and the third estate; the products of primary necessity have been made dearer, and thus the maintenance of the army became more costly. Prussia has therefore gained nothing but an empty space, which it lacks the breath to bring to life.

Poland is therefore the grave of Prussia, and to render this still more palpable, I will append the revenue of these newly acquired provinces.

   
Revenue of South Prussia 1800 2582541 thalers
Expenditure including the military 2903553 —
Deficit against the revenue 321012 thalers
Revenue of New East Prussia 1796 1,059483 thalers
Expenditure including the military 1,005851 —
Surplus 53632 thalers

Since this period the revenues may have risen by enough that the deficit is covered.

[p. 25]

Is it true that in a country in which the agricultural trade is predominantly carried on, every kind of tax falls upon the landed proprietors?

The defenders of the economic system found their opinion upon the principle that the earth produces everything. If by this one means that man draws from the earth all that upon which he has expended his labour, then this is a pure truth; but if one asserts that the earth produces everything that has a value, then this is — false.

Everything that the earth brings forth, and upon which man has not yet expended any labour, has no value; it can therefore be no object of taxation.

Labour produces all that which has a value among men, and is consequently capable of bearing a tax. Among cultivated nations the earth no longer yields any spontaneous products; labour covers the entire surface of the earth with products, as does the snow in a rugged region.

[p. 26]

The earth is an instrument of which labour makes use; here it must be regarded, like all the other instruments that the industry of men invents.

The labourer makes use of the earth in order to transform the first nutritive constituents, or the primal matter of growth, into grain, just as the miller makes use of the grinding mill for the conversion of grain into flour, and the baker of the oven for the transformation of flour into bread. The mill and the oven are sources of income, like the cultivated earth which has brought forth the grain. These three sources were formed, or acquired, through an accumulation of superfluous labour, and have been made profitable through another superfluous labour; and so it is with all sources of income.

As a further example I imagine to myself a coach drawn by horses, a vessel carried along by the current of a river, and a ship running under full sail. These too are sources of income, which owe the effect they produce solely to the labour of men, although the physical effect of the transport was occasioned merely by the horses, the course merely by the river, and the motion by the wind; for if one imagines away, for example, the labour which was gradually expended upon the ship in order to make of it a great transport vessel, and all the

[p. 27]

knowledge necessary to navigation and shipbuilding, then, instead of a ship, nothing else would remain but trees planted in forests, and the wind would blow and storm upon the sea without any determination or effect; this now is the result of every labour that combines and accumulates itself with the labour of the sailors, by which the motion of the ship is brought about.

The same holds true of the labour of the horse and of other physical beings which appear to labour in the place of man. The labourer or day-worker who carries a burden home upon his back performs a natural labour, and he who lays the burden upon a horse performs an artificial labour, whose original value exceeds that of the porter by so much the more as the effect of transport by a horse outweighs that by a porter.

Labour, then, brings forth everything, and that which every physical being accomplishes through the labour of men is the product of man’s artificial labour.

The earth, in the state of cultivation, brings forth all products; yet these, even though it seems as though they had grown up immediately out of the soil, are always a work of man’s industry.

For the rest, one may regard the origin of the earthly products as one will: the earth is, according to the present

[p. 28]

state of things, a source of income which, like all the rest, is gained solely through capital or through superfluous labour; consequently all its products are the result of an accumulation of labour, like the products of all other sources of income, and are subject, like these, to the same laws of equilibrium; there is therefore no ground for asserting that the taxes fall solely and entirely upon the products of the earth.

Thus judges Canard, professor of mathematics in Paris.

In Prussia only the smallest part of the taxes is laid upon the yield of the soil; the greatest part of them falls upon consumption. How the land taxes gradually came into being among us has been clearly shown by Herr von Beguelin and others.

The head of state demanded; the Estates granted at the cost of a third party; hence the great inequality in the repartition. If one seeks out the origin of the land taxes and their gradual increase, one meets always with the principal maxims of feudality and observes the boundaries of sovereignty and territorial supremacy.

The greatest expenditure which the state had to make after the introduction of standing armies was necessary for war. The vassals, who formerly performed the military services personally with their subject-tenants, provided

[p. 29]

in more recent times only these, and let them also raise their pay through the taxes. They exempted themselves, both for their own persons and on account of their demesnes, from service and from the payment of taxes. But for that very reason the nobility, from this moment on, since it existed only at public cost, sank in its luxury, and in Prussia was thereafter held together somewhat by the fact that Frederick granted to it exclusively the officer posts in the military.

Where recently provinces were acquired by conquest, taxes were laid upon the nobility too (as in Silesia, South, West, and New East Prussia); yet always on a lesser scale than upon the other estates.

Wherever land taxes were introduced, the attempt was made everywhere to determine the net yield, of which the state demanded shares. Now, since it is in general very difficult to determine the net yield of a piece of land, this was likewise always the case in this assessment, inasmuch as one took the quality of the soil and ground as the measure. But it is not the soil and ground that gives the yield in greater or lesser degree; rather, even though its quantity has an effect thereon, there are nonetheless two things in particular upon which it depends (be the soil rich or poor): upon the cultivation and upon local circumstances. If the soil has a lazy, unintelligent

[p. 30]

labourer; if local circumstances raise the value of its produce, or not, through more frequent demand (as in the vicinity of a river or a town), then the yield rises or falls. Whether the soil is the free property of the man who works it, or the holding of a Polish serf, this has an essential influence upon its produce.

Without the cultivation added to it, the soil and ground has no value; it brings forth only such products as even the crudest barbarian scorns.

In every arrangement of taxation one ought to look to the purpose for which one pays the levy, or surrenders a part of the yield. This is evidently done for the protection which the owner enjoys, of being able to enjoy in peace a part of the yield of his labour.

But since the mode of taxation hitherto has governed itself solely by the productive capacity of the soil, without regard to the working capacity of the owner, and since one has drawn upon the dependent man more than the free, the peasant more than the nobility, this mode of taxation was surely the most unjust that could exist.

One ought to have observed precisely the reverse relation, and to have taxed the free great landholder more heavily than the small, constrained one, since the former enjoyed a thousand advantages that the latter has not. The former can await an advantageous demand, whereas the latter is compelled to thresh today and cart his grain to market

[p. 31]

tomorrow, in order to exchange it for other necessary requirements.

An error was committed in that the man who wished to bring a smaller part of his yield into safety was made to pay very much for the protection, while the man who wished to shelter a greater part through the state association was made to pay very little, since his personal services, which he formerly rendered gratis, had fallen away.

At the origin of the feudal system it was equitable that the noble knight, who contended for the state with his life and with great valour, was free of levies, whereas the war-services of the serf meant little. But now the peasant alone must go to war under compulsion, and must also for the most part pay the land-levies. It is wholly faulty that, even where in more recent times new cadastres were made, as in Silesia and West Prussia, the contribution was fixed in money instead of being made payable in kind, whereby the state revenues would have advanced with the age. It was not at all considered that money, the moment after I have spent it, already has a different value, whereas the value of goods in kind remains forever in itself the same, and changes only when it is compared with money.

Hence it has come about that, since the state has an endless quantity of requirements in kind for the army, these have been levied from the landowners according to the false measure

[p. 32]

that the cadastre gives, against a monetary compensation whose assessment is taken from the grain prices of earlier times.

In any case a juster scale of contribution could now be introduced without any new determination of yield.

A new determination of yield would, as always, bring to light great hardships, preparations, intrigues, and — given the want of all morality in the civil estate — no results founded upon equality.

One could therefore fix anew the determined, cadastred yield of each province, as well as the quantum established for it of all levies that may be comprehended under the concept of land taxes, but against this set a divisor equal for all classes, declare the ecclesiastical estates to be domains, and levy in kind the land-tax contribution apportioned in like manner.

If Silesia, for example, pays 1,704,932 thalers in land tax, and if in 1743 the rye-price had been assumed at 1 thaler per Breslau bushel, then the King could now demand 1,704,932 bushels of rye, and by this measure have delivered to him a quantum of rye, oats, hay, and straw. He would thereby be in a position to provision the army, to fill the land and war magazines, and to abolish the now so unequally oppressive

[p. 33]

burden of deliveries in kind, of the provision of relay-teams, and the like. He would have no shortfall against the present quantum of contribution-money, but rather a surplus, and the ridiculous payment for these requirements in kind would fall away, which produces nothing but superfluous scribbling and remittance of money. To be sure, the divisor would have to be equalized for all estates, domains, municipal treasuries, provostries, and peasant holdings. The country in general would lose nothing at all, for each would know precisely what he had to deliver annually, whereas now this delivery is arbitrary, and along with it a mass of embezzlements and chicaneries occur.

Were it to be said that the noble estates would be drawn upon too heavily, and that only the present owner would thereby lose, and the credit systems be thrown into confusion, there is something true in this; but let it be considered: that the noble estates are nonetheless drawn upon annually for new burdens, as recently for the bread-provisioning of the military, and that it is no injustice to make good in the hundred-and-first year what was unjust for a hundred years. Long enough have the small estates had to pay for the great; long enough has the nobility enjoyed the advantages of its rank without fulfilling its noble obligations, as its worthy forefathers did. The world is now enlightened, and the third estate cultivated enough to work by force toward an equal distribution of the levies.

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It cannot last thus any longer, or the whole of property will be violated.

Krug says in his book on National Wealth, Part Two, p. 538: “Between the land taxes and the circulation taxes stand the personal taxes in the middle; they have many an advantage over the consumption and trade taxes, but everywhere they seem to find even less approval than the latter. At the name ‘head-money’ many a man takes fright who daily pays consumption and trade taxes without knowing it, and it would certainly not be met with the satisfaction of the taxpayers were the State to convert the circulation taxes into a head tax, although it cannot be denied that this can be laid out on juster and fairer principles, and collected at considerably less cost, than the consumption and trade tax.

The aversion to this exchange rests upon a prejudice which is easier to expose than to eradicate, and the name ‘head-money’ or ‘head tax’ carries with it the so repellent secondary notion: that a man must pay a levy to the State because he has a head; yet although the consumption tax might with greater right (than the former can be called a head tax) be called a stomach tax, which one must pay because one has a stomach, still to my knowledge it has not yet

[p. 35]

occurred to any government to introduce a levy under this name; and that names and words make, in very many matters, and so too in the constitution of taxation, a great impression upon the unthinking multitude, daily experience teaches.”

I believe, however, that one pays taxes to the State for this: that one may enjoy the fruits of the labour of head and hand in peace and security. This enjoyment is determined, in quantity and quality, by taste and stomach through consumption, which is therefore the best measure of the portion of the contribution that the individual has to pay for the protection of the means of enjoyment.

A head tax which strikes every head in the same manner, whether it belong to a Krug or a Canard, is as unjust as a land tax whose measure is not the produce but the ground and soil itself, in which one Morgen of garden earth were set equal to one Morgen of drifting sand. But if this head tax is to be apportioned according to the quality of the estates, of the great landowners (nobility) and the small (peasants), as well as of the burgher class, then it ceases to be a head tax and becomes a property tax, wherein, however, one harbours a false presupposition; for there is also poor nobility and rich burghers.

[p. 36]

Were this levy to be founded in some degree upon equality, then the heads, like the ground and soil, must be classified, and taxed according to their capacity of production. They would then be paying the claim upon production.

That this is not possible, and that it is better to tax what is produced and the enjoyment thereof, is evident, since every consumer himself determines the contribution he has to pay to the State.

An equally erroneous proposition, which Schmalz and Krug set up, is this:

Only the raw products have a value; the products of skilled industry contain nothing. In the very act of delivering his manufacture, the manufacturer has already consumed his wages of labour, and thereby nothing is added to the national income, and so forth.

The oaken block, then, worked up into an armchair for Herr Schmalz, in which he so ingeniously invented those theories, is of greater value to him than the theories themselves?

One may just as well apply these propositions to agriculture, and if human understanding and the hands of the labourer are not added to the ground and soil, then it is, for the national income, a dead capital.

[p. 37]

In the very act by which the actual cultivator of this ground and soil (day-labourers, farmhands, etc.) coaxes its fruits from it, he has already consumed his share just as the clothmaker has when his fabric is finished. The one carts the surplus into the barns of the landowner, the other bears it to the packing-room of the entrepreneur.

v. **n.

[p. 38]

Prussia’s Impending Ruin after the Battle of Auerstädt.

Written on 24 October 1806.2

Without being a prophet, one may easily foretell what consequences the Battle of Auerstädt will have for Prussia — for all of Europe. Just as easily could it have been foretold beforehand: that a Prussian army (however brave it might be) would succumb not to French valour, but to the great spirit that surges through the French army in all its individual members like an electric spark.

I am no Prussian; I am driven neither by personal interest nor by animosity. I wish merely to lay my view of the present political events before the public for its examination. I wish to offend no one, least of all the truly and morally good, but unfortunate Frederick William III. and his excellent consort, the crown of all wives.

[p. 39]

It is not my intention in these pages to censure — to revile — the persons who have directed Prussia’s affairs since 1792; it does not occur to me to disparage the system France has hitherto pursued, but merely to show: how on the one hand Prussia brought about its present crisis; what the Emperor of the French intends in Europe; and how Prussia might perhaps still, with success, work against its impending dissolution.

Far be from me any poetic view of this great subject; far may there remain from me any declamation upon love of country and patriotism. All these tirades, which seldom flow from the understanding and more often from the emotions, and which tend to rest upon the fear that we may perhaps have to exchange our accustomed state for a more uncomfortable one (should the raging torrent of a revolution threatening all Europe seize hold of us), die away as soon as they have been read. That general idea which formerly existed, of combating others of like kind, exists no longer. To call into being a new idea seizing hold of all, in order by its aid to vanquish the enemy, is impossible. For only one urge is in all: love of enjoyment! this requires rest, hates war, fears death, and breeds poltroons.

In those days, when Persia spread a million slaves over Greece, their assaults were withstood by the mighty feeling — animating all the Greeks — of a freedom founded upon

[p. 40]

laws. Thereby, over many years, there had arisen both clear heads and vigorous spirits, of whom very few could easily withstand thousands of crude, uncultivated Persians. When the Romans subjugated the world, their plans came to grief in northern Germany, because here crude, vigorous human natures, wholly in the state of nature, had made their own a lofty feeling of natural freedom, which animated them all.

Charles V. could not subjugate Germany, because Protestantism exalted all the spirits that had given themselves over to Luther’s new doctrine.

In the Thirty Years’ War one idea fought against the other; the Catholic religion created the spirit of the League, the Evangelical that of the Protestants.

Now, when neither the feeling of freedom, nor religion, nor love of country animates the Europeans, when the enthusiasm for liberty in France was but transitory, and money alone is the idol that is worshipped — now the peoples are governed and curbed only by strong spirits, used up as instruments. Frederick! Napoleon! —

Frederick laid a principle of politics as his foundation. It was that of the balance of power among the European states. Thereby religious fanaticism was displaced, and it was Frederick II. who cherished and fostered this idea, and through a long series of

[p. 41]

years held the European states within their bounds.

Battles were no longer won by the exalted spirits of the soldiers, but in place of all the personal bravery that had otherwise alone been necessary, the conduct of war was now raised and refashioned into an art; for this reason, because Europe saw so many victories won by Frederick’s armies, he was held to be the greatest master in this art, and his army to be the best and most artfully assembled machine that could be employed for the purpose of waging war. Frederick died. For a short time yet his spirit and the idea he had created lived on in the minister Hertzberg, whom he had formed; but with his death it too perished, and from that moment on Prussia no longer had any correct political system, but everything worked to ruin the Prussian edifice of state, raised up by several successive rulers, not deliberately, but out of erroneous principles.

Among all the European states, Prussia stood about the year 1792 at the highest pinnacle of its power.

France suffered from the consequences of a bad constitution, which for several centuries had almost wholly ruined this state. It had no money, and therefore no army. At the head of the government stood a weak man, without genius, without talents.

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Holland, this state so important to Prussia, was in its hands in 1787; it needed only to declare its will to uphold the rights of the Stadtholder with an army of 30,000 men, and there was no power in Europe that might hinder it. Austria and Russia, at war with the Turks, torn within partly by lack of money and by factions, partly badly governed, were weakened, and one even had to await the King of Sweden before the gates of Petersburg.

England could dictate no commands upon the Continent by means of any army; this lot fell to Prussia alone. Instead, in the year 1792, of seizing Bohemia by a swift campaign, of setting a Prussian prince upon the throne of Poland, and thereby giving consistency to the Constitution of the 3rd of May of that same year; instead of building itself, through the Polish nation, a bulwark against the Russians, Prussia entered into the well-known Convention of Reichenbach (the first proof of a false system). By this treaty the foundation was laid for the one concluded at Pillnitz. A realm was dissolved which, vanished from the ranks of the states, brought nearer to one another three powers which, according to the principles of the balance-of-power system, ought to have been kept apart from one another.

By this acquisition Prussia not only drew upon itself the hatred of all Europe, but instead of with the

[p. 43]

Prussia, through this acquisition, not only brought upon itself the hatred of all Europe, but, instead of uniting and identifying itself with the Polish nation, it planted at its side a people bearing the title of subjects — a people who, in every war that Prussia wages unhappily, will stir up repeated insurrections in its rear and will in the end tear itself away again. By this step Prussia publicly declared: that it wished to abandon the path marked out for it by Frederick; that it would henceforth no longer fight for the maintenance of the balance, but would labour at the destruction of this principle; that it respected no law of nations, and would annul guarantees once given at its pleasure.

Relying on its influence, the Poles began their revolution, and Prussia was the power that approved the partition plan and took part in it.

Moreover, the partition of Poland was undertaken to Prussia’s greatest disadvantage, in political as well as in military-financial respects.

Whereas Prussia had previously needed to draw only a small line of defence against Russia, it now extended this from Bielsk to Częstochowa in a misshapen manner, and, by leaving the Cracow region to the House of Austria, it opened to that power the very heart of its fairest province (Silesia).

Poland had no outlets on the Baltic; it could not export its products as soon as Prussia closed the Vistula. Frederick used this geographical situation to supply his barren provinces

[p. 44]

with cheap provisions, thereby filling his military and land magazines, and procured for the manufacturers in Silesia and in the Marches an abundance of raw products, by the refining of which they gained considerably.

Scarcely was South Prussia united with the mother country when this measure ceased, and Poland (formerly the granary of Prussia) became the granary for England, with which the competition on the grain markets of the Baltic could not be sustained, and one therefore saw the prosperity of domestic manufactures decline with each passing year.

Through the possession of Poland one only increased the establishment expenditures, in no way the revenues. Quite other advantages would Poland have afforded as an independent state through alliance and fraternal bond. A faithful adherent of Prussia, it would in a war with Russia and Austria have served to threaten Austria’s provinces in the rear, and to render the seizure of East Prussia by the Russians impossible, so long as it was not itself vanquished.

In a war with France Poland would have constituted the basis of subsistence for the Prussian troops through grain and cattle, would have reinforced the armies with brave auxiliary troops, and would have recruited them with young volunteer manpower. United with Prussia, it is a false friend, who is always more dangerous than a declared enemy.

[p. 45]

Yet still more harmful than the partition of Poland was the Treaty of Pillnitz, according to which the French state was to be dissolved. What, in the most fortunate case, could one have gained by it? Austria would then have subjugated Italy to itself, and united Alsace and Lorraine with its own frontier lands. But where lay the provinces that Prussia could have suitably incorporated into itself?

This undertaking was as impolitic as it was dangerous.

The French nation was not, merely because its government had fallen through its own peculiar wickedness and become a victim of the nation, thereby yet robbed of its collective strength. In France one could not proceed as in Poland. Protected on two sides by the sea, and against Spain by the Pyrenees, it opposed to the allies three rows of fortresses, and gave birth to a national strength which, exalted by the delirium of liberty3 of that time, obtains in it a mighty point of support, which as a general idea had communicated itself to all.

Poland was hemmed in by the three great powers; it had neither fortresses nor a proportionate army; here only the nobility was taken with the new order of things (in no way the raw

[p. 46]

mass), or rather, to this mass it was quite indifferent who ruled.

As soon as an idea that has communicated itself to a whole people (like the delirium of liberty of the French) meets with resistance, it works, being thereby provoked, far more violently upon men’s minds; so it happened also in France: the retreat in 1792 and so many succeeding unhappy campaigns are the proofs of it.

Had one let the fire of the concomitantly named fantasy of the French for liberty and equality burn itself out, it would have raged within for a time, and would then soon have been extinguished by a hero whom the Revolution would have brought forth. Since the contrary ensued, it set the neighbouring states too ablaze, and brought Austria and Prussia to the edge of the abyss.

The greatest misfortune which was brought about for Prussia by the war with France was the avarice of England, and, by declaring itself for the allies and against France, this state ruined both, and particularly Prussia.

France, occupied and shaken by the war on the mainland, could not also resist at sea with any exertion, the less so as its naval power had already before been subordinate to the English.

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It thus lost its commerce and its colonies through the annihilation of its fleets; it lost every share in the dominion of the sea, withdrew from the commercial competition, and made it easier for England to attain its goal, world dominion, through the sole possession of the ocean. Holland was at that time still in a position to maintain the balance at sea to some degree; but by declaring war on France also without necessity, quite against its natural interest, its share of the Continent became the booty of the French, its naval power that of the English. With the latter fell its commerce, and its navy fell to England’s lot.

Once Prussia had taken sides against France, it also had to hold out in league with Austria and to bring the great game to its end with consistency. But it was impolitic when the Prussian armies, after the retreat across the Rhine in 1794, encamped quietly in the Osnabrück region and looked on with the greatest indifference as Pichegru conquered Holland.

Could there ever have been a moment to enlarge Prussia’s power to good purpose, it was this one, when she ought to have marched her army swiftly into Holland and united that state with herself under conditions. Those conditions would have been none other than that this republic should by all means retain its old constitution, with the hereditary Stadtholder at its head; but that in return Prussia should be granted the

[p. 48]

right of protection and garrison, and its army of 30,000 to 40,000 men be given maintenance and pay.

Never then would Pichegru have conquered that state; England lost the pretext for appropriating Dutch commerce and its colonies; but Prussia would then have obtained the immeasurable advantage that a fifth part of its army was paid; that, through the possession of this state, it threatened the flanks of France, chained her power to the Rhine, thereby protected its Westphalian provinces, and prevented the French from ever conceiving the idea of penetrating into the heart of the Prussian monarchy before they had conquered Holland.

Instead, however, Prussia calmly allowed France to seize Holland; its Westphalian provinces were given up as prey to the French, and those beyond, on the Rhine, soon fell through the unhappy Peace of Basel into foreign hands.

The mistakes which Prussia has made since the Peace of Basel are so enormously great that the tragedy at Auerstädt had to be a necessary consequence of them. Having begun an ill-considered war and ended it so disadvantageously, she adopted the system of neutrality, just as if she constituted an isolated state of Europe, and possessed such national strength that she could, under all circumstances, defy any neighbouring state,

[p. 49]

whether it enlarged itself or not.

France now soon extended her power over Belgium and Italy; her armies swept across broad stretches of neighbouring states, and carried their victories to the gates of Vienna; nothing could rouse Prussia from her sleep. Just as the owner of a wooden house in a town that stands in flames all around him calmly watches this illumination without setting his fire-fighting apparatus to work, and only ever seeks to take possession of the burnt-out building-lots. Precisely so was Prussia’s policy from 1795 onward. Had this state in 1796 suddenly stepped onto the stage with 200,000 men and fallen upon Jourdan’s army in the rear, had it made a diversion in Holland and Belgium, then the peace of Campo Formio, so disadvantageous to Austria, could never have come about.

But once it was concluded, and Austria wished anew to draw the sword more for England’s interest than for its own, then Prussia had to prevent this, and thereby seek to compel England to peace. Taking no side, however, Prussia once again let the favourable period pass for establishing itself in possession of Holland; for if either the French side had been taken — when France in 1799 stood at the edge of the abyss, in so far as Masséna at

[p. 50]

Zürich did not once more save her — then France would probably have ceded Holland to Prussia. Had one taken the side of the Allies, nothing was easier than, through a diversion in Holland, to establish oneself in possession of that country, and then to dictate the peace. But one used neither the misfortune nor the good fortune of the French to one’s own advantage.

One calmly allowed Austria to lose one province after another, until at last a hero, the greatest of all, first saved France from her enemies by the battle of Marengo, brought the Vendée to rest, then took Switzerland and Italy under his protection, ruled over Spain as well as Holland, and gave the government, through his election as Emperor, a unity such as it had never had before him.

At last the Peace of Lunéville and Amiens came about, and one might have believed that now Europe might remain freed for some time from the plague of war. England, the tyrant of the ocean, not yet content with the advantages which its commercial despotism afforded it, took up arms anew under empty pretexts, so that France should not conquer St. Domingo, and now Prussia calmly allowed Hanover to be occupied by the French and treated as enemy country. Into the very heart of the old Prussian provinces one let the enemy penetrate, without setting a mobile army

[p. 51]

against him, without putting Magdeburg into a state of fortification. Heedlessly one surrendered oneself to France. God knows on what one built without any guarantee! The armed forces which Hanover afforded, and which lay always ready for Prussia’s use, were at one stroke annihilated for it, and one calmly let them go across the Rhine.

The new war that had broken out between France and England seemed likely to become highly ruinous for both states. The Emperor of the French was on the point, or at least was striving toward the great goal, of destroying England by a landing, of destroying its commercial despotism, and of assigning to that empire the place among the states that befits it: when the powers of the continent once more drew him away from this by a war which was ended in two months, and once more deprived Austria of its finest provinces. The Russians, too far removed from their base and their fatherland, could not remain alone upon the theatre of war; they went home again.

Napoleon, however, kept his army standing in the German Empire, and bound the interest of Bavaria, Württemberg, and other princes to his own. Why did one not let England alone bring the struggle to an end — a struggle which it wages not for the just cause, but for a commercial system that must in the end collapse anyway? Suppose that, through a landing, the national bankruptcy

[p. 52]

in England, and with it the foundation of English greatness (resting upon the national debt) were to be destroyed, what further misfortune would that have been for us? People say: then France would have had free rein to subjugate everything! I answer: in that, up to the Vistula, hardly anyone will now be able to hinder her any longer; for Russia’s line of operations does not extend beyond the Vistula. By lending an ear to England’s insinuations, Austria always drew Napoleon’s armies down into her provinces; indeed, it was always as though someone had been holding by the coat-tails a man who is forever striving toward India — and out of Europe. But if one then wished by force to wrest the laurel from Napoleon, one could have made diversions against him while he was attempting the landing. England’s fall brings competition into commerce and restores the equilibrium of the naval powers. Let her fall! We shall then have neither more nor less to suffer from France than we do now.

In the last campaign of 1805 Prussia once again played the most unpolitical role in the world. If it did not wish (why, I do not know?) to tie its interest to that of France, it ought at least, with arms in hand, either to have kept Russia and Austria out of the war, or, after the march through Ansbach, to have taken their side with energy. But it would have been more purposeful, and of the happiest outcome for Prussia,

[p. 53]

had it accepted Duroc’s proposals and declared itself France’s ally on the condition of taking possession of Holland.

But what did this power do? The troops were let march to the northern provinces; the lands whose neutrality one wished respected were not occupied; and then, as soon as a corps of French merely touched them, the troops were made to come back a hundred miles to take up winter quarters in the Bayreuth district and in Saxony. The Russians, English, and Swedes were let go home; the Austrians were let be beaten quietly, their provinces ceded to them; and, without heeding that the whole French army still lingered in the heart of Germany, the Prussian army drawn up for the protection of northern Germany was demobilized.

If one wished to remove French influence from German soil, if one wished to avenge the violated neutrality, then in October one had at once to send the Westphalian inspection, united with the Hessians, by forced marches into Holland, which was stripped of troops; here, on the seaward side, Russians, English, and Swedes were to land, and thus the flanks and rear of the French army in Bavaria were to be threatened. As soon as the whole army arrived afterward, one could have marched straight upon Würzburg, and thus weakened Napoleon’s forces, he being occupied at Brünn.

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But one contented oneself with the possession of Hanover, after the French had plucked the blossoms of that country’s national wealth. By this one brought upon oneself the seizure of the ships by the English, and a theatrical war with Sweden, which documented nothing further to the world than that Prussia had no will. In return one ceded all the provinces, and even the last firm point on the Rhine (Wesel), leaning upon which the Prussians might have hoped to conquer with success in Holland. But how Europe was bound to be astonished when Prussia now (1806) all at once takes up arms, alone opposes France, and draws up its army ready for battle.

Was there so much as a single ground for this war that was not already present in 1805? But if it was politically correct that Prussia had to declare war on France in 1806, then it was far more advantageous still in 1805, when the armies of the other powers stood under arms. In the previous year the Russians were in Hanover and in Silesia; now they are only awaited. Last year Napoleon could not have set 50,000 men against the Prussians; now he can set the greatest part of his might: last year Prussia would have been trumpeted as the protector of the German imperial constitution; now everyone laughs up his sleeve that a power which always seemed to fish in troubled waters has been rapped over the knuckles.

[p. 55]

Yet I have before me the Prussian manifesto, which is supposed to justify the war. It seems to be nothing but a confession of all the errors committed over ten years. It says therein:

“Since the French had had no fixed system in politics for fifteen years, one might have expected of a Napoleon, in the way he had subordinated the state to himself, that he would act more consistently, that with him one would be able to negotiate with security: but French policy had always remained the same, an insatiable lust for glory had always distinguished it.”

Why then did the Prussian cabinet conclude the Peace of Basel? Why did it not take up arms earlier, in order to prevent the French rulers from subjugating the neighbouring states? Why then did one let the fire spread all about, and only then find oneself moved to war when it could no longer be extinguished?

Peace, maintained at the wrong time, is more dangerous than an unlucky war.

It is true that France applied every means to indemnify itself, by the war on the continent, for the naval power lost through England. The repercussion, to be sure, always struck the continent; if Prussia wished to free itself from this, it had to strangle the giant in his infancy, and not let him ripen into a man.

[p. 56]

Of justice there can be as little talk here as of schoolroom morality, especially since the equilibrium had once been disturbed. Napoleon will certainly feel, as we all do, that more glory is to be won by bringing the interior to development than by playing the world-conqueror without purpose. But he was pressed by necessity to go out after victories, in order to hinder the continental powers from holding him up any further in his designs upon the other parts of the world. Frederick II. left off fighting only when the possession of Silesia was secured to him, which he held to be necessary for the development of the Prussian state. Napoleon will wage war until he has destroyed England’s influence on the continent4. It says further:

“Not one of these oppressions could be foreign to Prussia; several among them were closely bound up with her most essential interest; and moreover the wisdom of the system which regards all the states of Europe as members of one and the same family, which calls upon them all to defend each one, and which perceives in the immoderate aggrandizement of one the danger to all the rest, has been sufficiently confirmed by experience.”

[p. 57]

How can Prussia here invoke the old system of the balance of power as the occasion for war with France in 1806?

Did Prussia let herself be guided by this principle when she partitioned Poland, conquered Holland, occupied Hanover, ruined Austria, deposed the King of Sardinia and of Naples? When she took part in the dissolution of Germany through acquisitions?

“It would be superfluous to enumerate everything that Napoleon owes to Prussia, and so forth. The memory of it no longer exists for Napoleon.”

It would have been better had this not been brought up in the first place.

Gratitude is a matter of the heart, not of the understanding. States and their chiefs, as such, must let themselves be led astray by no feeling, least of all in politics. How could the Prussian cabinet ever have imagined that Napoleon would do anything for Prussia out of personal gratitude? The Prussian rulers ought at least to have read Frederick’s works and to have gathered from them the reasons he gives for abandoning the French alliance in 1742, and how he shows that in politics morality is out of place. One is grateful as long as the interest of the state permits it; one keeps treaties precisely as long as they afford advantages.

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“Thus for several years the most remarkable contest had continued between moderation, which forgave everything, and integrity, which remains faithful to the given word to the very end, on the one side; and the abuse of power, the presumption founded on seductive fortune, and the habit of reckoning with these alone, on the other side.”

That is to say, in other words, that Prussia practised the lesser morality, Napoleon the greater. One does not dispute with such arguments in politics. Had this really been so, nothing more would have been proved by it than that Prussia understood her own advantage badly.

It is certain, however, that Prussia owes her new acquisitions in Germany to French policy, and that, if she had been willing to enter into Napoleon’s idea of removing England’s influence from the Continent (which would have been advantageous for her state revenues), the north of Germany would have been subjected to her dominion.

“Prussia stood alone upon the field of battle (after the battle of Austerlitz). She was obliged to confine her policy to the limits of her strength, and, instead of embracing the interest of all Europe as had been her will, to take her own security and that of her neighbours as her first guiding line.”

[p. 59]

Prussia nonetheless ceded territory. But does she not now, in 1806, likewise stand alone upon the field of battle? Was she obliged to break with France? Was the state of things, even after the battle of Austerlitz, not more to her advantage than now? Why then, in 1805, did she first let her troops march against Russia? The insignificant passage of French troops through the territory of Ansbach could not possibly, undertaken by a friendly power, be an occasion for beginning a war.

The complaint raised in the manifesto concerning the non-observance of the Peace of Pressburg, and France’s new demand that Hanover be occupied not provisionally but permanently, that the ports be closed to the English, and so forth, are surely answered by this alone: that Cattaro had been occupied by the Russians. Why, one may ask, did Prussia demobilize her army so long as the French troops were in Germany?

It is certain that Napoleon’s earnest will to remove England’s mercantile universal influence from Europe aims at the happiness of this part of the world. He employs everything to carry out this will—war and peace treaties, alliances, force and cunning, assurances of friendship and threats, all alike! The How must here be a matter of indifference, and morality comes into no consideration in it. That state which gives itself over to this

[p. 60]

idea can be secure against France’s attack; and this would have been the case with Prussia. For ten years, however, the Prussian cabinet has wavered between willing and not willing, never seizes a party with firmness, and has been consistent only in this: never to show a firm will.

As for what is further alleged and set forth in the manifesto—concerning a restitution of Hanover, concerning a guarantee with respect to Swedish Pomerania (whether true or not)—about this I will say nothing further than that France was willing, under those conditions, to conclude peace with England and Russia, which would have brought security and repose to Europe, even if Prussia had had to make sacrifices for it.

This much seems certain to me: that Napoleon, without regard to persons and to what morality might teach, fights solely for the cause, and purely against England’s universal despotism; Frederick William III., however, without having grasped the true interest of his state with respect to England, fights against that firm will less as a chief of state, wholly as a private man clinging to personality and to morality, and, were he to conquer, would deliver Prussia over to the slowly killing influence of England5.

[p. 61]

But if Prussia wished to fight successfully against the so often declared will of Napoleon and to give herself over to England’s influence, why then, without reference to political grounds, did this state not prepare itself better for this struggle during ten years of repose?6

This requires an explanation, and the loss of the battle of Auerstädt likewise proceeds from it.

Already at the outset I said that no general idea any longer drives nations against one another, that battles are won neither for the sake of religion, nor out of a feeling of liberty, nor through the spirit of chivalry. The idea, generally accepted for many years, of maintaining the balance of power among the states has been annihilated by the recent wars; the delirium of liberty, which once operated in France, cannot take hold in Prussia. By what means does one gain victory? By art, by the organization and

[p. 62]

leadership of the troops, by the national strength to sustain the war for a long time, by the geographical situation of the contending states, by their natural or artificial fortifications, by concentricity in command. The personal courage of the troops, their eagerness for battle, their endurance, is indeed an accidental, but those are the principal causes of the winning or losing of battles. Rational courage in the commanders counts for more than physical courage in the individuals. I believe that the Pomeranian, the Marcher, and the Prussian would overcome the Frenchman in a fistfight; but of what use is such bodily strength against a well-placed artillery fire?

In the organization of the army, considered as a machine, the French now have the advantage.

The waging of war is an art. Let us seek to determine whether the Prussians have advanced in it since the Battle of Torgau.

The Prussian army, 66 years ago at Mollwitz, won a battle against old, brave Austrian troops accustomed to war, because it made use of iron ramrods and had adopted the cadenced step; so history teaches. It would probably have lost the battle had the Austrian army hurled a concentrated artillery fire, served by cavalry, upon these closely serried thin Prussian lines and thus broken through them. But this could not be done at that time. Frederick II. now brought to its highest perfection the art

[p. 63]

of turning, wheeling, deploying, forming into squares, and moving forward and backward an army as a machine, composed of innumerable details, as a single whole; and so long as his opponents adopted this idea, and regarded this machine as the supreme work of art for war, victory remained faithful to the Prussian host. But when, in the storm of the French Revolution, the nation rose up in mass, when the mass in irregular hordes did battle with those armies ranged in the old manner — at first rolled up and annihilated, but finally, like a swarm of bees that ever renews itself, no longer to be checked — there arose from this new manner of waging war a different view, which brought into the world the spirit of the new system of warfare that Bülow and Bärenhorst have set forth theoretically. Through this spirit, which the French armies alone made their own, they beat all their enemies and became invincible.

Since the Peace of 1795 Prussia neglected this matter, in that it retained its old system of warfare entirely, in that the old commanders held the manner they had learned mechanically to be infallible, and sneered scornfully at everything new that theory and practice offered in this art.

Many a young officer (and this only rarely) studied the new system of warfare; but since seniority determined promotion,

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he did not come to the place where he belonged, and his words died away in the wind. He was not heard — indeed, he was even persecuted, decried, and removed as an innovator.

The new system of warfare absolutely requires instructed soldiers and men who pursue it scientifically; it requires strenuous activity in peace and in war. In the French armies, where no exemptions, no privileges hold, where only the soldier who possesses the science advances, intelligence has been at home these past 15 years.

In the Prussian armies hereditary privileges hold sway; the common soldier is to be regarded merely as part of a machine, upon whose moral formation and knowledge nothing depends. Physically he stands there, physically he is treated; he is to be an instrument and nothing more, to have no prospect of improving his condition through promotion; to receive his subsistence meagrely, and even to serve as a plaything and a puppet, dressed in clothes cut now this way, now that, and only to be driven by the stick to perform his tactical movements, prescribed by tempo, when he does not perform them regularly. Few of these heroes care whether they win or run away; but often greed for plunder drives them into the fight, along with the prospect of an early peace should the battle be won; still more often, however, a coercive force

[p. 65]

at their backs keeps them from quitting the field of battle. Phlegmatic, lazy, and sullen, a part of the Prussian host is made so, moreover, by the climate, the accustomed upbringing, nourishment, way of life, the bond of subjection, and the like.

What manifold things, by contrast, work upon the French soldier to make him victorious in the fight! Since all obstacles have been cleared away to climb to the highest rung, and since examples exist of many a man, even from the lowest class, rapidly raising himself to become a commander: every soldier thus has a wide field for his glory, for his advancement, for his temporal fortune; his general needs only metaphysical incentives to rouse him to his duty; the physical ones — the stick, the running of the gauntlet, and others — are unknown to him.

If he is invalided, the state provides for him; if he has fallen, his survivors are not left abandoned to fate.

The officer class in the Prussian army, according to the old system of warfare, was merely an intermediate point in the machine; and since it was therefore more an instrument than a spiritual part of it, it mattered little for the purpose whether it had intelligence and moral formation; if he knew how to handle the regulations exactly, if he had mastered the mechanical service, then he was what he was meant to be. In order to hold him firmly at his post, Frederick further attached to this class the general idea of the so-called military

[p. 66]

point of honour (point d’honneur), and a perfect officer was one who knew the service and stood upon his honour.

In more recent times the young officers doubtless felt the inadequacy of this military character; they did indeed cultivate themselves more for the world, they understood well how to dress with taste, to entertain a company of ladies, they loved the reading of novels, attended the theatre and criticized it, and even took part in it themselves (amateur theatricals); but as a rule the whole new art of war and its auxiliary sciences were foreign to them. They neglected the old, found it burdensome, cumbersome, uninteresting, ridiculous, performed their duty with vexation, argued about their superiors, carped at their orders, and made a point of insubordination; but on the other hand they concerned themselves just as little with whether the science of war had made any progress.

Spoiled for the old service and unfit for the new, they were far more useless than they could have been in the French army. And withal they were vain, arrogant, and boastful; their plumes seemed to wish to defy the heavens; their martial clattering of sabres and jingling of spurs announced from afar a son of Mars, who, however, had thus far beaten the enemy only in his own imagination. The staff officers, who had passed their years of youth just as the subalterns had,

[p. 67]

having spent their time in idleness and physical indulgence, showed still less inclination to learn anything; they were more citizens than soldiers; they took a little wife, built themselves a house, bought an estate, and apart from the report and the guard parade lived only for their families; the reviews, which often took place only after years, resembled a pleasure trip more than a military exercise.

Only in the weakly manned General Staff, in the Engineer and Artillery Corps and in the Cadet Corps, in a few generals and their adjutants, were science and art not unknown7.

There is no doubt that the officer corps, with much good will (still wholly imbued with the military sense of honour), hastened to Auerstädt in order to conquer or to die an honourable death; but that was also all it was: and this was not enough, for from time immemorial science has, in such cases, triumphed over raw natural aptitude, and where on the one side intellect and on the other only passion contend, there the victory is not in doubt.

Such was the condition of the individual elements of the army that fought at Auerstädt; how was this army itself constituted?

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The Prussian army, consisting of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, had hitherto relied, and did so at Auerstädt too, on its closed ranks, on a long thin line of infantry, covered by cavalry on the flanks, interspersed with artillery, marched up in order of battle. Napoleon advances into the centre with a foolard-shaped wedge of light artillery, masked by cavalry, breaks the line, and the Prussians are beaten in the style of Austerlitz. The infantry, accustomed to tactical exercises, is not so accustomed to forced marches and hardships; I say nothing of the service of foreigners, of the age of the soldiers, of unsuitable clothing, of poor provisioning by the commissariats, of superfluous baggage, and a thousand other things so often already censured here and there, and say only, of the leadership, that in this campaign it was no less ill-conceived. Napoleon is still in Paris and celebrates festivities in the camp at Meudon; here the Guards were still parading when the Prussian troops already stood in Saxony.

The forces are drawn together slowly, time is frittered away in negotiations, and yet conditions are made which one may not flatter oneself will be fulfilled, given Napoleon’s character and his conduct hitherto. This lasts until the French army, concentrated, advances. Instead of a single commander, an Areopagus commands the army; the King, Brunswick,

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Möllendorf, Rüchel, and others, whereas the French armies execute with the speed of lightning what the great unity at their head commands.

They encamp in the broken terrain near Jena, Buttstädt, and Auerstädt; they have poor intelligence, are on the other hand betrayed, and allow themselves to be outflanked; they are at last dispersed and beaten, and have no reserve. This reserve, instead of crossing the Elbe from Küstrin by way of Torgau, has to take the route by way of Berlin and Magdeburg to Naumburg, marches blindly against the victorious enemy far superior to it in strength, and has to abandon the Elbe.

Thus far go the reports. It is probable at this moment that the beaten army takes up a firm position between Magdeburg and Halberstadt and here cuts off the Elbe; that the King, on the other side of the Oder near Küstrin, gathers the East Prussian troops and awaits the Russians; that the French detach Saxony from the alliance and honour Berlin with a raiding excursion; that peace is either negotiated and Prussia surrendered to France’s influence, or that the King gives himself over to Alexander and seeks through perseverance to preserve the State. As for Berlin and the intervening space between the Elbe and the Oder, the French cannot properly hold Berlin unless they command Magdeburg and the Elbe, Küstrin, Glogau, and the Oder.

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The sand of the Mark cannot even sustain the Residence, let alone an army besides; the French do not bring with them what they need; they must find it wherever they come.

Berlin has its supplies from the Elbe and the Oder; if these are cut off, all subsistence for the inhabitants and for an army ceases.

It would therefore have been very wise if Berlin had been protected against a raiding party by the defence of the Havel from Potsdam to Spandau, and of the Nutte and the Spree, which form bogs and marshes. But of any such thing no one thought in Berlin, and by the time it was done it was too late. Before the battle they raved, sang war songs, and were full of exaggerated hopes. After the battle they hastened their flight, and let their courage sink just as swiftly as they had before been defiant.

That the French would conquer Silesia beyond where the direct line of operations from Dresden to Poland runs, I do not believe, on account of Austria, because that State would otherwise be entirely enclosed in Bohemia and Moravia. If one asks:

how should Prussia have acted since the Peace of Amiens?

I have already declared above that Prussia has an interest against England identical with that of France. But it is one thing to be able to advance one’s true state interest freely, without compulsion,

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and quite another to have to be forced into it by one’s neighbour, as may now come to pass. Truly, one makes harder for Napoleon the road to his goal of cutting England off from the Continent step by step; only by cannon, not by counsel, can he subdue the perverse will of the Continental powers that cling to that island — which already exercises a universal mercantile influence — while men bristle against the notion that Napoleon means to conquer Europe.

From the moment Prussia allowed the English to compete in the Baltic grain markets, in that it did not close the ports along the coast from Emden to Memel to English colonial and manufactured goods, it lost the whole tendency of the confederation of states that Frederick II. created.

This is not the place to contest the nonsensical doctrines of the Physiocrats, or to combat the agricultural system preached in our own days; but if one were once to draw up a proper account and strike the balance of what the Baltic ports have received from England for the grain they sold, one would soon find that every year, after deducting the value of the colonial goods received, they stand at a loss. Through this commercial intercourse with England, Prussia has grown poorer year by year; raw products have been driven up without measure or limit, Silesia’s active trade has been ruined along with its manufactures, the

[p. 72]

maintenance of the army has grown more costly with every year, and the country has been mercilessly burdened with deliveries in kind.

Prussia ought therefore, when England broke the Peace of Amiens and, unwilling to allow France any competition in the colonial trade, thwarted the conquest of Domingo, to have declared war on that power at once, to have taken Hanover and the whole coast together with the Hanse towns, to have possessed itself of Mecklenburg and Swedish Pomerania, to have closed all the ports, to have compelled Saxony and the imperial city of Frankfurt to confiscate all English manufactured goods, and, as the preponderant power, to have brought all the Estates of the Empire in northern Germany under its influence.

As soon as Austria made a move to declare war on France, Prussia ought to have sought to seize Bohemia, and to hold Russia in respect by an army on the Bug.

Prussia could not have entered better into Napoleon’s plans; and it would have done so without French influence, as an independent state that does not mistake its true interest and does not cling to persons.

Napoleon would then have had a free hand to carry through his earlier plan of a landing in England, so as to throw this rope-dancer off its balance — this rope-dancer that, with its balancing pole, hovering upon a single point of rest, sways now to India, now to Europe, back and forth

[p. 73]

to the burden of the Continent. If Prussia could then have carried through the seizure of Holland by a convention with France, it would have stood as firm as any state in Europe.

Should France then not agree to this, Prussia would have had to make of Wesel a second Mainz, to raise Münster and Lippstadt into fortresses, to garrison Hameln and Nürnberg strongly on the Weser, to fortify Minden anew, and to lay out defensive lines from Hanoverian Minden to Bremen. Magdeburg would have had to be put into a formidable state of defence. On the Havel, the Brauersberge near Potsdam were to be fortified; Spandau was to be made more tenable. The Havel could be linked with the Spree by means of the Nutte; the marshes lying here were to be made impassable. In Thuringia, Erfurt would have had to be made into a fortress. Saxony would have had to be compelled to fortify the camp near Pirna still further by art, as nature has already done. Behind the Elbe, strong positions were to be taken at Dessau, Torgau and Wittenberg. For the covering of Silesia, bridgeheads should have been erected on the Bober, and firm lines laid out on the hills behind Sagan. But Glogau would have had to be made still stronger than it now is.

Against Russia the line of defence is too long: in any case, however, Warsaw would have had to become a fortress.

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Since in every war (whether waged against France or against Russia) South Prussia and New East Prussia are to be feared on account of a fresh insurrection, one would have had to seek to win over the Poles in the following manner.

The King would have had to open a Diet in Warsaw, and there to lay the following before the Estates:

“It grieved my heart, while Prussia’s sceptre was not yet in my hands, that my father, seduced by his cabinet ministry, instead of raising Poland to an independent realm through the constitution the Estates framed in 1792, entered into the plans of Russia, helped to partition the realm, incorporated a considerable part of it into his own state, annihilated the ancient rights of the Estates, took the estates from the clergy, and confiscated the starostas, which in former times were bestowed upon the most deserving in the nation.

Faithful Estates! I cannot restore the conditions that obtained before the year 1792; it does not lie in my power to re-establish a mighty Poland, to compel Russia and Austria to give back their acquisitions.

But in order to bring you, so far as lies within my power, nearer to the condition which you yourselves wished to bring about through the constitution of 1792, I will, under your counsel and with your co-operation, grant you the following new

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constitution: One of the foremost among you is my kinsman by blood and faithful brother, Prince Radzynwill; he shall henceforth be your Viceroy, and reside at Warsaw. He shall keep a court here, as splendid as the revenues of the land set apart for that purpose will permit. Let him be surrounded by a Senate composed of the foremost and wisest among you. You may propose to me for it the noblest men among you; and should a member hereafter retire, I grant you the right to elect and present three candidates, of whom I shall approve one, upon the recommendation of the Viceroy.

Let it be the first duty of this Senate to collect your ancient civil laws founded upon manners and customs, and to compile from them a provincial code of law; the Prussian Common Law shall have force only in subsidium (in a subsidiary capacity).

This Senate, of which the Viceroy shall be perpetual President, shall represent the first authority of the province, so that neither My General Directory at Berlin nor the other supreme authorities here shall possess any rights whatsoever over it — from which, however, I except My Supreme Tribunal, which shall even then constitute the last instance in matters of justice.

The provincial territorial authorities — the courts of justice and finance, the Landrats and Tax Councillors, the magistracies

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and village courts — shall remain within the sphere of activity in which they now stand. The filling of their offices, however, belongs to the Senate alone; only the appointment to the presidencies do I reserve to Myself.

To you it shall be permitted to maintain an army of your own, the strength of which shall be measured by the cantonal rolls and the revenue establishments of the territorial income. They shall be clothed in the Polish fashion, and I leave to you their organization, and the filling of the officer posts according to merit. As Commander-in-Chief of the Crown Army, however, I choose the man in whom you once placed so much confidence, the noble-minded Kosciusko. Upon him alone and solely shall the filling of the subaltern posts in the army depend; those of the staff officers I reserve to Myself, upon his recommendation. Let him reside at Warsaw and form a War College of his own, of which he shall be President; with this post, however, a domain now yielding a revenue of 20,000 thalers shall remain permanently connected.

The Archbishop of Gnesen shall be Primate of the Realm, reside at Warsaw, and constitute here the supreme court of justice quo ad eclesiastica (as to ecclesiastical matters); but as regards the Protestant clergy, they shall retain their forum where it now stands; a member of the Senate, however, shall be their superior in the last instance.

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It goes without saying, moreover, that the Commander-in-Chief of the Crown Army and the Primate of the Realm are always members of the Senate.

As regards the clergy of both confessions, all ecclesiastical properties shall indeed continue to exist as domains, but in return their stipends shall be raised proportionately. For a mortgage-credit system to be established among you, I will, for the realization of the mortgage bonds, establish an iron fund of one million thalers and leave the organization of this institution to you alone.

Your taxes, such as they now are, shall never be raised by Me; to you I leave their more equal distribution. But let them themselves, including those from the domains, be destined for the upholding of the new constitution, and I demand not the least part of them for My own disposal.

In return, I expect of you, in place of all the hitherto irregular deliveries of grain in kind, a fixed commuted quantum of produce every year, which you are to deliver into the magazines at Graudenz, Glogau, Küstrin, and Breslau. I expect of you, in every war that I am compelled to wage, the furnishing of your army and its maintenance.”

Whether, under these conditions, the Poles would ever think of insurrection? I believe not! Whether the King and the mother country would, under these conditions,

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lose or gain? I believe the latter! At present the sovereignty over Poland is a burden to Prussia; then it would be bound up with great advantages; this will be granted me by everyone who has once looked at the establishments of this acquired Polish province.

The Poles are brave people, made for war. Since they constitute an independent nation, they love their nationality; every ruler into whose hands they fall must respect it. Prussia has not done so, and therefore they hate the present government. Were one to deal with them as I have set forth above, they would quickly change their opinion; they would become as devoted to the Prussian house as they are now hostile to it.

A principal measure that Prussia had to adopt for the upholding of its independence was the calling up of the people en masse, or the organization of a Reserve Army in the event of war. The government did indeed wish to bring about something similar through the intended introduction of the Land Militia, but for the past year files upon files have been heaped up over it, while the thing itself has not been carried out.

Had one merely levied for it that young manpower already entered in the cantonal rolls, without regard to inches and marks; given it the muskets heaped up in the country, especially in the Arsenal at Berlin (now for the French); had it drilled a little by

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old pensioned officers; abolished all exemptions from enrollment; drawn in the young nobility as well; and promoted to the officer ranks the most deserving, without distinction of rank; made use for this militia of the marksmen’s companies in the towns, and recruited the army from this mass of troops — then one could have raised Reserve Armies out of this militia, garrisoned the fortresses, and reinforced the armies by means of the third battalions.

What a terrain has the enemy not to contend with who now, like Napoleon, presses into the very centre of the Prussian states?

Let us for once imagine the state of things as it now is, and suppose: the Reserve Army had been organized — how would it operate?

Napoleon has beaten the main army at Auerstädt; it was cut off from the Elbe on this side of Dessau, made its retreat in disorderly throngs toward Magdeburg, the Blücher corps not beaten in Hanover joins itself to it and gathers the remnants of the army led to the shambles by the Prince of Württemberg at Halle. But the King is on the march to Küstrin with 40,000 men, and another 80,000 Russians are coming through Kalisch into Silesia.

Under these circumstances Napoleon, from the heart of Saxony and supported by that rich country, will form three lines of operation.

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One goes to the left toward Magdeburg, the second by way of Torgau in the centre toward Küstrin, the third through the Lusatia toward Glogau.

Everything depends on which of the combatants reaches the Oder first.

Now, had a Reserve Army been organized, one would have been able to garrison Glogau and Küstrin more strongly; toward Silesia one would have burned all the bridges over the Neisse, the Quais, the Tschirne, and the Bober; the forests in the lordship of Priebus would have been full of troops of the Reserve Army, which would have extended the whole length of the Riesengebirge as far as beneath the cannon of Schweidnitz, and encompassed the mountains of Upper Lusatia.

What army, then, could well have laid siege to Glogau?

Another part of the Reserve Army would have been posted behind the Elbe, the bridges at Torgau, Wittenberg, and Dessau burned, and likewise all the bridges over the Havel and Spree.

The third part could have been stationed in Lower Saxony and Westphalia, and thereby, in conjunction with landed Englishmen or Russians, have threatened Holland. The mass of the Reserve Army, which lay in the countries beyond the Oder, would have had to replenish the army incessantly and to form reserve corps.

The plan of operations which Prussia drew up for this campaign was (as the consequences show) far too bold,

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conceived with too much self-confidence; the intention was to act against Ansbach, Würzburg, and Mayntz with three corps, but they forgot to cover their rear, moved too far from the Elbe, and covered Silesia and South Prussia with — Nothing.

Reserve corps ought to have been left behind on the Elbe and on the Bober, a defensive position taken up at Erfurt, the Erzgebirge and the camp at Pirna occupied, and the main force made to operate in Westphalia against Wesel and Holland.

What is now to be done; how can Prussia yet save herself?

Only with the ruin of her prosperity will she barely escape complete destruction.

The interest of the state depends, beyond dispute, upon France; we must be wrested from the injurious influence of England if we are not to sink into poverty.

At present we are given over to the influence of England, of France, of Russia; each of these states will use Prussia by turns as a step, as a footstool, in order, treading upon it, to fight with its enemy.

Upon England depend all the great landed proprietors and trading cities in the countries beyond the Oder, since they sell their wheat there at a high price. Upon England depends the hereditary nobility with its privileges, and in so far as the

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military consists of this nobility, it too is attached to the English system, since the overthrow of feudalism is expected of Napoleon, and that the military might be metamorphosed after the French manner.

Upon France depends the greatest part of the educated commoners, even if they do not let it be seen, conditionally; especially if the officials keep their posts, if, apart from a revolution to their advantage, the internal constitution of the state is preserved.

They hope for advancement in the future according to merit in the civil and military service, and not according to birth. They hope to reach the goal which feudalism has hitherto withheld from them.

To Russia the royal couple are bound by a personal friendship for the Emperor Alexander. Frederick William III., thoroughly upright and of pure morals, unable to grasp the principles of a policy that does not rest upon morality, holding fast to the honour of the Prussian house, of the old and venerable name of the Hohenzollerns, throws himself into the arms of the magnanimous Alexander, from whom he expects the restoration of his dismembered realm. He will now conclude no peace without England and Russia.

As firmly as he clung to the system of neutrality, to this ruin of Prussia, just so will he now cling with perseverance to the war, until even the last hope is annihilated.

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Certainly! if Prussia could now free herself from English influence, if she would give herself over to France with all her power against this pernicious influence, and were willing to draw Russia along with her, then Napoleon would at once renounce every cession and destruction of the Prussian state. Who can, who dares to propose this now to the King? War, then, is the watchword, and even in the most fortunate case, were we victoriously to drive the French back to the Rhine, we should not thereby be helped; for then Napoleon presses anew toward his goal with redoubled force.

England cannot make peace; she is fighting for her existence; this rests upon the universal despotism of commerce, this upon the navy, and this upon the national credit. All of this holds together reciprocally, and cannot subsist if one or the other perishes; the Continent pays the interest on the English national debt; whoever extinguishes this makes us a present of the interest as well.

The countries which now stand under Napoleon’s influence, even if they are harshly handled, are yet far happier than we, who unhappily live at the very point where the fate of Europe is to be decided.

But Napoleon the Great (who could deny him this epithet) will certainly, of this I trust to his wisdom, not dissolve the internal organization of the countries and provinces which he conquers

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and metamorphoses; this could only occasion revolt and discontent.

Russia wages war against herself; secure from French influence beyond the Vistula, she ought now, Austria and Prussia included, to insist upon the freedom of the seas. Paul had rightly grasped this idea.

Let us then calmly await our fate. Should France carry through her federative system as far as the Vistula, then the execution of the idea may be conceived as possible:

that we shall henceforth, spared all the horrors of war, obtain a politics founded upon the principle of right, for the enforcement of which France holds the sword in its hand.

Hitherto a politics founded upon right (the so-called law of nations) was to be found only in books. No state observed it; why? Because there was no executive power present to bring it into application. Under the above supposition Napoleon would by no means be the tyrant, but rather the judge over all the states of Europe, from Lisbon to the Vistula.

This plan seems worthy of a Napoleon, and let one say what one will, he can do nothing else, least of all

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wish to make transient conquests and to win purposeless victories.

What astonishes me is:

that the French Emperor does not straightway make this plan known to the world; he would thereby win public opinion to his side.

I believe that Napoleon now has more to fear from the perseverance of the King of Prussia than from a lost battle in its consequences, and that he would sooner grant Prussia an equitable peace than let the Russians arrive.

His lines of operation, extending to the Vistula, become after all too long to defeat the Russians here; the base becomes too narrow, since Austria in the rear is not to be trusted. Just as little is he secure behind himself from landings out of the North Sea.

On the present theatre of war the French army does not follow the course of the rivers, as on the Danube; rather the Elbe, the Havel, the Spree, the Oder, the Warte, the Netze are to be crossed in order to fight at the Vistula. In Silesia strong fortresses are to be taken, Magdeburg, Küstrin, and Stettin are to be conquered, and what is most dangerous: the provinces through which the army here passes do not afford so many of the army’s necessities for subsistence and advance as Bavaria and Swabia do.

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The people are inclined to insurrection; they need only be roused and provoked by a hothead, and they will rise in the rear of the French and hamper every retreat.

Napoleon ought to grant Prussia peace, while demanding all the provinces up to the Weser and Bayreuth; in return he would incorporate Mecklenburg, Brunswick, the Anhalt principalities, the Hanseatic cities, and Swedish Pomerania into the Prussian state, and conclude an alliance against England, whereby the harbours from Emden to Memel would be closed to the English.

Russia would be pushed back across the Bug, and the theatre of war, should it not wish to make peace, would be transferred to Dalmatia, since France can choose no worse terrain for the purpose than the banks of the Oder and the Vistula.

Postscript.

Prussia might perhaps still be saved, if Napoleon, the Emperor of the French, were to convince himself in Poland that the restoration of the former Polish realm will not serve the purpose he might intend by it. Napoleon said to the Poles: I shall see whether you are worthy of being called a nation.

That they are worthy of it, I will not deny; but that the relations of the subject to the lord of the manor,

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the low degree of cultivation, of the soil, the want of industry, of prosperous towns—in short, of any vigorous middle class in this country—will here never form an opposition against Russia capable of preventing it from counteracting France’s plans, as it has hitherto done: this, I believe, will be evident to anyone who knows Poland and has informed himself precisely of its internal constitution.

Only through Prussia can this vigorous opposition be formed for the future, if this state retains its present civil constitution, if a better rounding-out of territory is procured for it, and if new organic laws found the constitution of government upon the principle of unity, if no further antagonism exists between the adjutants, the cabinet authority, and the ministry, if all the diffuse collegial conferences are avoided in all such matters where only one head ought to decide. If the levies of land tax and consumption tax are founded more upon equality, if the nobility is granted no privileges, if no further distinction is made among soldiers as to whether a bourgeois or a noble womb bore them—in short, if all those abuses are removed which disfigure our constitution, created by Frederick II., dissolved by Frederick William II., and by Frederick William III. not entirely brought back to its organic fundamental principles.

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Should not France have a kindred interest with Russia in this: that it open the Dardanelles, free them from the matter of plague, and bring about a barter trade between Marseilles and Odessa? Should not England thereby be induced to peace sooner than by a restoration of the Polish realm?

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History of the Attack, the Blockade, and the Surrender of Glogau, by Carl Friedrich Benkowitz.

The war was beginning. Already dark rumours were rolling in from its theatres, like snowballs that slowly tumble down from a mountain and either scatter into dust or leave behind a towering monument. Among these rumours there was one that was extraordinary. Long before the 10th of October, indeed already on the 3rd of that month, the general report resounded that Prince Louis had fallen, and this report propagated itself without interruption until at last, on the 14th of that ill-fated month, the sorrowful confirmation arrived.

Did Fama possess a prophetic power, or did the present already permit an inference about the future? Had the enemy already fixed upon the most advantageous point of attack, and was it foreseen that the heroic prince would sacrifice himself, or did chance foretell this blow? Who can decide this? Enough — we knew the death of the lamented prince before it came to pass, and perhaps this occurred in several places.

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The scene of his death was recounted so movingly that every feeling heart was stirred. Ah, it was the first great victim that the incipient war devoured, a victim from the heroic stock of Frederick II. Would that I might raise a worthy monument to his ashes!

Never did my eye behold the exalted man,
But it weeps for him still. For from him who gazed upon his countenance,
There sounds to the departed only the melodious voice of glory.
Kingly was the form of his body, still fairer his soul,
Loving and gracious his deeds, and gentle the speech of his mouth.
Doing good was his sacred office, and mildness the delight
Of his heart. Could so much exalted virtue
Not shield the fighting youth from the arrows of death?
No! The hero wished to fall, and he fell in the field of battle.
When he saw his own men fleeing, and the enemy victorious,
He plunged unstoppably into the blood, and sank, and the dust drank
Kingly blood, drank blood from the heroic stock of the throne
On which Frederick sat. Dying, he wove himself the laurel.

Behold, now the bloodied hero lies lifeless before the altar,
About him is gathered the mourning company of his own,
Whom the enemy’s mighty arm had encircled. They lament
Over his coffin; the tear of the warriors flows; they kiss
The pale hand, and cut the bloody lock
From the head of the departed lord as an enduring memorial.

Up, awake, you artists, and shape the sacred scene
Through the play of the painting, through art’s imitative creation.
Behold, so long as the name of the great Frederick is spoken,
So long shall the tale of Louis’s death resound.

Long would our tears have flowed for him, but the whirlwinds of misfortune, which struck us so hastily, tore the fatherland on from sorrow to sorrow, and scarcely was one tear dried before the next was wrung forth.

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Rumour recounted: the whole company that had been with the prince had been cut to pieces, the enemy had broken through the chain of our army, and was approaching Leipzig. To console us over the sorrowful news, there spread at the same time the rumour: the enemy corps that had broken through were cut off, and would be made prisoners.

From now on the reports pressed in that the enemy was penetrating into Saxony. Merchants returned from the Leipzig fair and told of the arrival of the French, of exactions, of the flight of the fairgoers. In the midst of this disquieting news there resounded the report of a great victory that the Prussians had won, and which twelve trumpeters had proclaimed in Berlin.

Since at first the victory in the battle of Auerstädt seemed to be inclining to the Prussian side, this report was probably occasioned thereby, for Fama is incredibly swift. Virgil gives her only a hundred eyes, and a hundred ears, and a hundred tongues, but she has also a hundred wings.

To confuse us utterly, there soon followed the presentiment of an armistice, or a peace between France and Saxony. The Green Vault, which was to be conveyed to Breslau on many wagons, suddenly received order near Bunzlau to halt, and turned back to Dresden.

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What did this signify? It admitted of two explanations: a victory of the Prussians and Saxons, which made the flight of the treasures unnecessary, or an accommodation of the French and Saxons, whereby they were secure even in Dresden.

We strove to believe the first, but the shattered chain of the Prussian army, the enemy’s breakthrough at Hof, Schleiz, Gera, Zeitz, as far as Naumburg, preached the contrary to us.

With anxious, shifting expectations we looked toward the future, and contradictory rumours crossed one another incessantly. Thus came the 20th of October, and with it a decisive light began to dawn upon us. In the Berlin newspaper we found, right at the beginning, the words:

Berlin, 21 October.

“According to preliminary reports received, the King’s army lost a battle at Auerstädt on the 14th of this month; the closer circumstances are not yet known, but it is known that His Majesty the King and his brothers, their Royal Highnesses, are alive and not wounded.”

It is incredible what an impression these few words made. Everyone was dismayed; in every face one read consternation. People wished to doubt, they would have doubted, but they laboured in vain to invent grounds for doubt. From no other newspaper

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would this report have been believed; but it was the Berlin newspaper that spoke.

That the battle was declared, quite unconditionally, to be lost, that we knew nothing of our King save that he was alive and unwounded — this had something dreadful about it, and struck our courage down deep.

Before long, private reports about the battle came in from Berlin, and they were terrible. Twenty thousand Prussians, it was said, had been left on the field of battle, just as many taken prisoner, and the remainder of the army had been gathered by the General Field Marshal von Möllendorf, in order to lead it to Erfurt. The greater part was scattered.

These reports were shattering and stupefying.

Whoever had friends or relatives in the army had his imagination present to him, in mournful images, how they lay among the immense number wounded, stiffened, and helpless, and had perhaps slowly perished, perhaps lay maimed and without care on the cold stones in the churches.

How tormenting this was! how these thoughts tore the heart of the feeling man! How many countless tears were wept in this time by the fathers, the mothers, the brides, the brothers, the sisters of those who had fought in the battle!

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Ever more sorrowful and more sorrowful sounded the reports by word of mouth, and the days now became so important in our fortress that each one deserves a section of its own.

Tuesday, 21 October.

On this day an order reached the local commandant, General von der Marwitz, to place the fortress on a war footing, to have it palisaded, and generally to put it into a state of defence. To supply it with the most necessary provisions, he received a draft for 10000 thalers.

Glogau is a town which, though of only modest extent, has a population of 10- to 11000 inhabitants. It is therefore lively at all times, and the streets are covered with people to about the same degree as the most populous streets of the Friedrichstadt in Berlin.

From this point on the activity in the streets increased with every day, and already today peasants from the surrounding villages were called up to work on the fortifications, while the artillerymen pursued their tasks with redoubled zeal.

Wednesday, 22 October.

Today we had the strange spectacle that not only the levied men were at work on the fortifications, but volunteers as well. Among them one saw townsmen, Jews, the pupils of the Jesuit College, and even officials. How easy was this sacrifice! How gladly would

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one work one’s hands bloody, if by that means the welfare of the Fatherland could be advanced!

The work of the volunteers and the levied men now consisted of nothing other than digging trenches for setting the palisades into the works. This was done especially on the footbank behind the glacis. Here palisades were to be planted around the entire fortress.

Besides these labours, a quantity of flour was brought in barrels into the Jesuit College, and the soldiers received live cartridges. Only eight days had passed since the battle of Auerstädt, only twelve days since the outbreak of the war, and already we, in far-off Glogau, had to feel its harbingers?

Thursday 23 October.

Before I proceed with my account, I must preface it with a brief description of Glogau, in order to make myself more intelligible.

This town is one of those of middling size, and has, as already mentioned, 10,000 to 11,000 inhabitants. It is pleasantly built, and consists mostly of solid stone houses. The Ring or market square is the finest and most spacious part of Glogau.

It actually consists of two towns: the town proper, and the Cathedral quarter. Between the town and the Cathedral quarter, not far from the town wall, flows the Oder,

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over which a long bridge leads, connecting the two towns with one another. There are three gates here: to the east the Breslau Gate, to the west the Prussian Gate, and to the north the Oder Gate. From the Breslau Gate the roads lead by way of Lüben, Parchwitz, and Neumarkt to Breslau. Further, to Liegnitz, Jauer, Schweidnitz, as well as to Bunzlau, Haynau, Löwenberg, and Goldberg. From the Prussian Gate one travels by way of Beuthen, Grünberg, Crossen, and Frankfurt to Berlin. Besides this, to Neustädtel, Sprottau, and Sagan on the Saxon frontier. The Oder Gate leads to South Prussia, namely by way of Fraustadt and Lissa to Posen, as well as by way of Rawitz and Zduny to Kalisch.

The two largest buildings in the town are the Royal Palace and the Jesuit College. In the Palace, which lies on the north side of the town toward the Cathedral quarter, are the rooms for the Chamber and the Oberamtsregierung (the Silesian high court); in the Jesuit College live about 7 Jesuit professors with their pupils. It is built very solidly, and has vaulted corridors and rooms. After these buildings comes the Comedy House, in which below are the meat stalls, in the middle the assembly hall, and above the stage. It lies on the market square, and before it is the parade ground.

As for the churches, there is an Evangelical town church and a garrison church in Glogau, but several Catholic ones: the parish church, the Jesuit-Franciscan-

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Dominican church, as well as the Cathedral and the church of the maidens’ convent. Finally, there is also a Reformed church.

Besides this, several large magazine buildings have been erected, especially on the east and south sides of the town, as well as in the Cathedral quarter.

With respect to fortification, Glogau, if one were to assume six ranks of fortresses and were to place, say, Königstein, Silberberg, Magdeburg, and Glatz in the first rank, would occupy the third rank. To the east and south it is perfectly regularly fortified, but to the north, and in part to the west, it is covered by the Oder and several of its branches, so that from this side one must pass a great many bridges before entering the town itself.

Besides the works forming the line of circumvallation of the fortification, it has to the east a star-shaped redoubt, to the north on the far side of the Oder another redoubt, called the Water Redoubt, and at the end of the Cathedral suburb, by the last bridge, yet another small bridgehead redoubt. Cannon, bombs, and shot, as well as powder, are present in sufficient quantity.

After this little description, one will be better able to understand whatever may come up regarding the situation of the town in the course of the history of the siege.

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The 23rd of October was a very busy one in Glogau. The Prussian Gate, from which side the enemy was expected, was barred and completely palisaded, so that neither wagons nor pedestrians could enter any more.

Already on the 22nd of October the Landrat (district administrative officer) of the Glogau district had received the order to provide 600 workers with shovels from the district under his inspection, to work on the fortification works. These arrived, and a large part of them passed through the town in order to be distributed among the works under their overseers.

In the town the workers were just as busy; all day long cannon were brought up onto the ramparts and laid upon their carriages. In order to be able to detect the approach of any hostile raiding party, pickets were posted at some distance from the town, and a few dragoons whom we had in the town had to ride patrol to the nearby villages. So that no disorderly rabble might gather in the town either, a strict search was conducted in the houses while the gates were closed, and those apprehended were either carried off or set to work.

The haste with which the effort was made to put the fortress into a state of defence was so great that the work in the redoubts was continued even during the night of the 23rd to the 24th of October.

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Friday, 24 October.

Today the first signs began to appear that the country folk no longer felt safe in their villages. A great quantity of beds, chests of clothing, and other household goods were brought into the town on wagons. Those who had no wagons carried their belongings in and sought to find room for them. When the Prussian Gate was closed, the crush at the Breslau Gate became extremely heavy, and the way was often blocked. Excessive haste produced delay.

For the rest, the couriers now crisscrossed from every direction, and without cease, by day and by night, more of them kept arriving. Their blowing took on a mournful tone, since they usually brought only mournful news.

Saturday, 25 October.

We had a very sad sight today. The moats of our fortress are dry, and in the main moat, under the bridges before the Breslau and Prussian Gates, several considerably large gardens have been laid out, so that, when one crosses the bridges, one looks down 20 to 25 feet into a garden on both sides. Their trees and hedges rose with their branches up to the bridge, and the whole afforded a pleasant sight. The fine fruit trees and hedges were cut down today, and sank before the eyes of a great crowd of

[p. 100]

spectators. It was a very sad spectacle. What had taken at least a quarter of a century to come into being was now destroyed in a few hours. At the same time, the presentiment of the ever-approaching danger pressed itself upon us, because such sacrifices were being made, and one saw not a single cheerful face.

The fine fruit trees were lamented, and the general voice was that the felling of them, since it had been done in a few hours, might yet have been postponed. And what benefit accrued to the fortress from it? In the main moat the enemy could set up no battery, and once he was here, neither much harm nor advantage was to be expected from the trees.

On 23 October the order for the palisading of the fortress was issued, and today the first palisades were brought in. A quantity of 38,000 ordinary palisades, 10 Rhenish feet long and 10 inches thick, as well as 7,400 tambour palisades, 15 Rhenish feet long and 12 inches thick, was required for this; but for hauling them in, 5,000 four-horse wagon-loads were needed, which were furnished by the nearest districts. The forest of the Prince of Carolath and the town forest were designated to supply the trunks for this.

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In the evening at half past 7 o’clock a courier arrived from the King out of Küstrin, bringing the news to the Chamber that Lieutenant-General von Reinhart had been appointed Vice-Governor of the fortress, that the third battalion of the Regiment von Zastrow would move into Glogau, and that all measures should be taken to secure the fortress against an enemy attack.

The moving of troops into Glogau was particularly necessary, for there was nothing in this fortress but the third battalion of the vacant Regiment von Grevenitz, and the third battalion of the Regiment von Tschepe from Fraustadt, together with a company of invalids from Neustädtel.

Sunday, 26 October.

Notwithstanding the holiday, the work on the fortifications was continued, and a great many palisades were set up. One also saw a great quantity of them being hauled in from the forests, which were unloaded between the works. The artillerymen likewise continued their business, and the Sunday could no longer be distinguished from a weekday.

Since the number of carpenters in Glogau was not sufficient to carry out the necessary work on the fortress, carpenters from the nearest towns and districts had been requisitioned by the Chamber at the instigation of the Commandant. These

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now appeared, and the engineer de Place, Captain Moritz, assigned them to their tasks. They had in particular to work the palisades not yet pointed in the woods, to fashion the leaves for the newly installed gates between the ramparts, and finally also to tear down the bridges.

For the palisading and arming of the fortress a sum of 6000 thalers had been allotted, over which the Government had disposal.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the 27th, 28th, 29th and 30th of October.

As necessary as it was to put the fortress with all haste into a state of defence, just as much did it require its speedy provisioning; and already under the date of the 21st of October the Minister of State directing affairs in Silesia, Count v. Hoym, had issued the necessary orders to this end to the Government and to the Chamber, and had also assigned a sum of 10,000 thalers for the purpose.

The Landräte had thus received the necessary commands for procuring the requisite supplies, and the deliveries now began to arrive from all sides. Since a considerable quantity of victuals and forage is needed to provision a fortress such as Glogau, the crush at the gates of people, wagons and horses was indescribable. I had occasion, in my dwelling, which lies close by the

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Breslau Gate, to observe everything closely, and the sight had nothing gratifying about it; on the contrary it was often outrageous. The peasants and farmhands who brought the deliveries were maltreated in the most dreadful manner by the guard and other overseers, and this fell upon the guilty and the innocent alike. Whenever a stoppage arose, men and horses were beaten so mercilessly that I often had to step back from the window so as not to be a witness to the cruelties.

A more careful and judicious direction of the wagons would have made all these maltreatments unnecessary; for no tangle of wagons and horses is cleared by blows of the stick, by shoves and curses. On the contrary, the peasants and farmhands fell into such terror that they were even less able to help themselves.

The mood of the people in Glogau, moreover, was one of dejection. The earlier reports from the army, the threatening preparations, and the uncertainty over our future fate made even the cheerful man sad. In a few days a great change had come over opinions, and this began gradually to express itself ever more loudly.

It is so easy to wish for war, when one ventures nothing oneself thereby, when one wishes to enjoy the distant spectacle of battles and of momentous affairs of state, or to gratify a private hatred against a foreign power.

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But how the wishes alter, how the language alters, when danger draws nearer, when we ourselves are to take part in that which we so loudly craved! Those who could not wait at all for the opening of hostilities, those who trembled lest peace might yet come about before the beginning of the battles, those who fairly thirsted for the shedding of blood — these were unwilling to yield up even a single drop of their own blood, and fell by far into the greatest terror when they were to experience only a part of what they had wished upon millions of others; and now they suddenly learned to pronounce a word that had before been an abomination to them, the word: peace.

That is very petty! But there is much that is petty in the world, and it manifested itself in yet many a way besides. The abusive speeches against the enemy powers fell silent, one began to speak of great talents, to recount noble traits, one began to remark that surely, after all — Enough!

This blush of shame cannot cover my cheek, and over the inconsistency of others I am not set as judge. Only the truth can never be repeated often enough: that by reviling, defaming, and degrading the enemy, by defiantly boasting of future victories and suchlike outbursts of passion, no love of the fatherland is displayed, but rather that

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blind fury is in its consequences akin to hatred of the fatherland, of which we sadly have the terrible proofs before our eyes.

Must Napoleon first be at the gates before his greatness is acknowledged? Was it not already known, when He was making preparations in Paris for the festivals of victory, that never yet had there lived a more discerning and greater commander than He? Did He first have to furnish the new proof of it, so terrible for us?

There seem to have been generals in the Prussian army who laboured under the delusion that the tactics of the Seven Years’ War would still, even now, and indeed against Napoleon, suffice. There seem to have been colonels who believed that one could wage war well enough if one knew how to chase a regiment about the parade ground for half a day amid all manner of pedantic exercises, and to have an old lesson recited. There were captains who held it to be something essential in the service to shut their soldiers up within the walls of the town, to restrict their freedom as much as possible, to keep them in order by running the gauntlet and beatings with the stick — in short, to treat them in peacetime in such a way that they were bound to become wholly useless in war.

If these are no empty assertions, if there were such commanders in the army, should this

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not thereby solve something of the terrible riddle that has been set before us?

In these days there came in the reports that the Bavarians were advancing through Saxony against Silesia. They were described as more impetuous and more oppressive in their demands than the French, and this was no consolation to us. The French, it was said, were at Frankfurt. Of our own army, on the other hand, we received no news at all; this was, for one who had relatives and friends among it, exceedingly tormenting. Uncertainty is the most dreadful thing, because its sufferings have no end, because he who fears must always still expect the most terrible thing, because hope always returns, and thus no composure over the misfortune takes hold.

I wrote to Berlin to obtain news, but the letters came back; communication between Silesia and the capital had been suspended. Likewise the newspapers failed to arrive, and we were now already almost cut off from the rest of the world. One wished to be so entirely, one wished one could hide oneself away in some corner of the earth where one would see nothing more, hear nothing more, be tormented no longer by the mournful rumours.

Friday, 31 October.

Reports began to spread that the French were already being announced in the villages two (German) miles from Glogau;

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the Bavarians, however, it was said, had received orders in Dresden to halt. In general there was much talk of an armistice, and this accorded with the wishes of all, with very few exceptions; for by that alone, it seemed, could the rapid advances of the enemy be checked.

Today artillerymen arrived here by wagon from Breslau, since Glogau had long been insufficiently supplied with them.

In place of the 600 peasants who had until now been working on the fortifications, 1,000 labourers were demanded by the newly arrived Governor von Reinhart, and these were occupied chiefly with the planting of the palisades.

We learned that the bridge over the Oder at Frankfurt had been broken up, and in our own district the Oder barges were being brought to the right bank of the river, the pontoons sunk, and the bridges over the smaller rivers broken up, in order to check the advance of the enemy.

Saturday, 1 November 1806.

There now arrived an enormous store of hay, straw, and grain, with which the churches and monasteries were filled. The tumult in the town, the crush in the streets, especially at the gates and

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in the vicinity of the magazines, was indescribable. The voice and the din of war resounded before war itself had yet appeared upon our fields.

The traces of the terrible battle of Jena and Auerstädt now also began to show themselves in yet another way. A multitude of fugitives, singly and in troops, arrived from the grand army. Some were wounded, some sound, with and without weapons. Some had musket and knapsack, others had neither.

As when a fearful hurricane falls upon a flock, robs it of the shepherd and the guardian dogs, and scatters it apart amid thunderclaps and lightning, so that the unhappy beasts then wander helplessly about the fields seeking the shepherd — so were our forsaken warriors after that ghastly battle.

I spoke with all whom I caught sight of, for the returning men were recognized at once. I thirsted for news of the battle, of the fallen, of the state of the army. But this thirst was not slaked. What I learned was little, and shrouded in darkness. What enlightenment could men give who had no overview of the whole? They could recount only their own fate: when they came under fire, how long they remained in it, what they had endured before the battle and what afterward.

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Many of them had been taken prisoner, and had ransomed themselves. These told terrible things of the hunger they had been forced to endure, shut up in churches, in monasteries, in stables.

Is this the humanity of the French? Or could they exercise no humanity even had they wished to? They had the magazines of the Prussians in their hands — was it not possible to satisfy the troops with their own bread? Their great Emperor surely wished it. They have to justify before the eyes of the world the hunger and every ill-treatment they let their prisoners endure, and only the impossibility of treating them otherwise can wash the stain of cruelty from them.

Oh, the brave Prussians did not deserve the misery that befell them. They lost the battle, they were made prisoners, they fled. But who dares to lay a hand on me if I nonetheless call them brave and valiant? Did not the blood of the Prussians flow in streams? Did not the battle last a whole terrible day? Did not the King’s army fight after it had already been outflanked, and after the loss of the magazines was attacked from the flank? Had not want already raged in their bowels when they stepped onto the field of battle? And did they not nonetheless fight with the courage of lions? Did not 20,000 Prussians lie upon the field of battle bleeding,

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dying, mangled? Not just as many of the enemy, not more still? Was it not superiority of numbers that decided it, not the boundless eye for victory, not the superhuman martial talent of Napoleon?

If all these questions could be answered with a yes, should it not then be possible to assert boldly that the Prussians deserved to win the victory without having won it? Should one not be permitted to add that they would have won it against all the peoples of the earth — only not against Napoleon?

The love of justice will awaken; it will awaken even in the enemy, and must awaken, for his own glory demands it. It is more honourable to overcome a brave, hard-to-conquer enemy than a cowardly, unwarlike one that flees at the first assault. The public papers will cease to set forth only that which might redound to the shame of the Prussians; they will also proclaim that which preaches their glory, and the great Emperor will suffer it; for what could He gain if Prussian courage were stained, if the people of Frederick II. lost its glory?

To holy truth alone be consecrated every offering that the writers of the nation now set forth: for they lay it down at the altar of the fatherland; and

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woe to the wretch who could disfigure it to the detriment of his nation!

We will not conceal the misfortune that befell our fatherland, nor cloak it; we will not diminish the immortal glory of him who was the victor on the Saale, on the Elbe, and on the Baltic; but let Him be just toward the Prussian people, toward their army; let Him grant us leave to gather what redounds to its glory; let Him not debase too deeply a noble nation, a brave army, and command only holy truth to speak. If the great Emperor knows himself, then He must feel that it is no great disgrace to be conquered by Him.

Whoever has a drop of Prussian blood in his veins, whoever — even among the enemy — is accustomed to name the name of Prussia with respect, let him set forth publicly what redounds to the glory of the Prussians, what can soften the misfortune of being conquered, and what, without their degradation, brought on their terrible fate. Let him set it forth where he can; and to whoever will do so in these pages, they shall be open. With grateful joy shall every unadorned truth that brings honour to the unhappy fatherland, every examination of the sources from which so swift a ruin came upon it, be received.

The warship of the first rate can, like the smaller frigate, be driven about upon the sea by the raging storm,

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can suffer shipwreck, with but little saved to the safe shore; and yet the helmsman may have done his duty; the crew may yet be experienced and courageous seafarers.

Whether this simile fits the Prussian army entirely? I do not venture to decide. The heavens still hang too darkly down over the fields of battle to see clearly through them; but this at least can be set forth as holy truth: that our Monarch fought with the highest courage and amid the greatest danger, that several of our commanders led their troops with courage and wisdom, and that the brave Prussian army, had it been well led by a greater number of its commanders, would have performed wonders.

I turn my gaze away from those who, at this critical moment, abandoned by their wits or their courage, failed to do their duty and let the fatherland sink into these depths. Perhaps they too were swept along in the irresistible torrent, and the future will illuminate their deeds brightly enough. Whoever is just will feel that the misfortune of the Prussian army is more a consequence of Napoleon’s superhuman talent for war than of any want of courage on its part.

I return to my narrative.

[p. 113]

Others among the returning Prussians had not been taken prisoner, but had fled along with the rest in the general confusion, had wandered about trying to reach the army, and finally came back to the towns of their garrison. All agreed that the battle and the bloodshed at Jena had been horrific, that the grapeshot and bullets had flown about as thick as snowflakes, and that still more Frenchmen than Prussians had lain upon the field of battle8.

The returning men, although they belonged to various regiments, were taken into the garrison of Glogau, and this was most necessary; for this fortress had not yet, by a long way, sufficient manpower for a firm and vigorous defence.

Sunday, 2 November.

Several hundred recruits arrived here today, who were to be conducted to the King at Graudenz; but unfortunately we received at the same time the sad news that this was no longer possible, because the

[p. 114]

passage had already been cut off by the enemy. The conscripts were distributed among the nearby villages, and I learned nothing further of them. They probably returned to their hearths when the enemy advanced.

Monday, 3 November.

Today the sad news arrived of the capitulation of the Prince of Hohenlohe at Prenzlow. Men’s spirits had already been torn by the earlier tidings, and this fresh wound cut very deep. The Prince of Hohenlohe and General von Rüchel, it was said, had been taken prisoner. How was one to grasp it, how to believe it?

The accounts of the event were still obscure, but this much was said: that the Prince’s corps had endured incredibly much, that it had been without bread, without forage, and had at last been forced to surrender through the exhaustion of all its strength. Can the friend of mankind be angry that it happened? The fate of that unhappy, relentlessly pursued army can only be wept over. A higher destiny seems to have decreed its ruin.

We consoled ourselves with the hope that the surrender of the corps was one of the many rumours rolling about; but soon even the last comforting doubt vanished, for eyewitnesses of the

[p. 115]

engagement arrived, who related far more than one wished to hear.

At the same time came the news that the enemy was ranging as far as Wartenberg and Neusalz, and that he had threatened to burn to ashes the villages where signal-poles should be lit; for this was to be done to give us speedy warning of the enemy’s approach.

The townspeople of Glogau received orders today to carry water up to the lofts, and altogether it could be concluded from several signs that the danger was drawing nearer. The bridge at the Breslau Gate was torn down, and the soldiers had strongly manned the main rampart. This manning looked frightful from outside the fortress, for one saw only the heads of the soldiers, as they, together with the points of their muskets, projected above the breastwork. The painter who wished to design something gruesomely picturesque out of martial subjects would have to paint these heads with musket-points.

To reinforce the extremely weak garrison, the Battalion of Zastrow marched in here today from Posen.

Tuesday, 4 November.

Some of the peasants who had been assigned to the works were employed today

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on the main rampart, where they were cutting away the slope of the breastwork, so that the soldiers might step closer and fire over it more conveniently.

Reports came in ceaselessly that small raiding parties were levying contributions throughout the towns round about: at Neusalz, Neustädtel, Grünberg, Wartenberg, and so on. They were thus already approaching to within a few miles of the fortress. Nor could any further intelligence now be gathered as to whether an army was advancing, and how strong it might be.

Wednesday, 5 November.

In order to learn something, and to reconnoitre and attack the raiding parties, patrols were sent out today from the few men we had among the cavalrymen and hussars; they encountered no enemy, but rather a disreputable rabble that exploited the wartime circumstances to rob and plunder in the countryside. Prisoners were brought in from this gypsy-like mob.

Thursday, 6 November.

We received from the returning captured General Pelet the news that peace was being negotiated, and that an envoy had gone with acceptable peace terms from the Emperor to the King at Graudenz. There were now only

[p. 117]

very few left who did not want peace, and the almost universal mood that this news produced was joy. The desire for war had never been so generally expressed as was now the desire for peace. In a few weeks a change in opinions had taken place that Demosthenes and Cicero, and Fox with all his arguments against the sorrows, the uncertainties, and the dangers of war, could not have brought about. The belief in it had to be placed in their hands.

But let no one imagine that the appetite for war in general was now extinguished in them. Nothing of the sort! In their opinion, only the right moment for war had not been seized. At the end of the year 1805 the King of Prussia ought to have begun it — then, then they would have seen all their enemies made a footstool for their feet!

There are men who lay down their lives, not for the fatherland, not for the honour of the King, not for the honour of the nation, no, but to be proved right. Had the war been postponed once more, had it broken out toward the end of the year 1807, and had there then followed what now took place, they would have cried out loudly: October 1806 would have been the favourable moment for war. And indeed even now, only a few weeks ago, they declared it to be such by their loud sighing for the commencement of hostilities. That

[p. 118]

they can therefore be mistaken about the most favourable moment for war, their changed opinion before and after October 1806 must preach to them loudly.

Had the war blazed up at the end of the year 1805, and had a misfortune then come upon the Prussian state, one would probably, with little acumen, have discovered an earlier, more favourable moment; for it is a very wide field, the field of the past, when one makes conjectures about what would have happened under certain circumstances.

But those who romp about on this field might at least weigh a few points with some coolness: that the King stood higher than all of them for surveying the political horizon; that he was surrounded by wise councillors who could weigh deeply the causes for war and peace; that before the French march through Ansbach the neutrality of Prussia was almost universally approved; that after it, when the French army was in the full course of victory, the favourable time for attack was most difficult to find; that during the events at Ulm the Prussian army was too distant to be able to act; that after the battle of Austerlitz the peace with Austria and the withdrawal of the Russians came about in a single instant, and Prussia

[p. 119]

would have remained alone on the field of battle; that Napoleon did not learn his art of war in a single year, but was already in 1805 the greatest commander; that the Prussians, on the other hand, could not unlearn everything in a single year, and that, if their army was in the year 1806 almost wholly annihilated in so short a span of time, one cannot possibly assume that in 1805 it would have worked miracles; that France was even then equipped with all the forces of Europe, and finally had an army of sixteen years’ war experience.

If they weigh these points without passion, one would think it would be hard even for the most raging bawler to believe in a fortunate war in the year 1805. In general, mediocre and poor heads ought to keep silent in important affairs of state, or at least not cry out loudly; for it is through the general clamour of the enragés that a great misfortune has this time come upon the Prussian state, and this will happen in every state where their voice prevails.

The question has been raised: what would Frederick II. have done under the critical circumstances in Europe? This monarch could have had only great political views, he could have worked only toward an invincibility of the Prussian state, and

[p. 120]

his highest aim, setting aside all secondary considerations, must have been directed to that.

What would he have done to attain his end? I venture to utter the bold thought:

Frederick II. would have allied himself with Napoleon, to rule the world with him, to establish an eternal peace with him, since both knew and felt the abomination of war.

I ask everyone who is not governed by private passion, who has only the greatness of his state before his eyes, whether a Prussian patriot can conceive a loftier thought?

Does not the wealthy merchant ally himself with another wealthy one, in order to be able to operate in all four quarters of the world?

Frederick II. once said very finely to Daun: Sit down beside me. I much prefer to see you at my side than opposite me. Would he not have said it to Napoleon? What would we then be, and what are we now?

I return from these great views to the little plot that was allotted to me during the remarkable events of this war.

[p. 121]

Friday, 7 November.

In the morning the order was issued that all the citizens’ firearms were to be delivered up to the town hall. Presumably it was feared to leave two armed powers within the town. The delivery was carried out, and very fine firearms belonging to the marksmen’s guild were gathered together in a depot. For the rest, all was safe, and we had already grown accustomed to the frequent reports of roving parties. But far more suddenly than we had expected, that began to come to pass which, since 30 October, we had seen approaching from afar.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon when I noticed a commotion in the street from my window. Soon afterwards several peasants came galloping through the gate, hastened to the commandant, and reported that the French were on the march. The people in the streets began to run, the wagons to race about, and from the general disquiet that arose one could perceive that something extraordinary was afoot.

Soon afterwards a detachment of hussars, fifty to sixty men, mounted up and moved out at speed through the Breslau Gate to reconnoitre the country. To them was joined a small detachment of border-rangers, who a short while before had marched into the town for its better defence.

[p. 122]

Meanwhile the commotion grew ever greater, and especially those people who did not belong in the town hurried to reach the gate, so as not to be shut in. It was not long before the Governor von Reinhart and the commandant von der Marwitz appeared at the Breslau Gate, and orders were given. The alarm-drum was beaten, and now soldiers and artillerymen began to hasten onto the ramparts and take up their positions. All this was done at a run.

Scarcely had it been done when a cannonade began from the direction of the Prussian Gate. The balls struck into the houses and whistled over the town; the people ran into the houses, and hussars galloped about to drive them from the streets. At the same time the news spread that the enemy was also advancing from the side of the Oder.

From the beginning of the commotion and the galloping-in of the peasants, until the beginning of the cannonade, scarcely half an hour had elapsed. The attack therefore looked quite like a surprise assault, and one could not comprehend how the enemy could suddenly have advanced so near without being betrayed.

The enemy had come from the western side, and made his attack at the Prussian Gate. Here he had planted cannon behind the Protestant churchyard, where he was screened by several garden-houses, tombs, and great

[p. 123]

trees, not far from the glacis, and bombarded the town fiercely. Likewise, in the vicinity of the gallows, more towards the northern side, a number of cannon had been brought up, which began to play upon the town.

No one had believed that the bombardment of the town would begin so quickly; and although many had already thought beforehand about the security of their belongings, most of it had nonetheless not yet been stowed away. During the cannonade, then, everyone busied himself in the greatest haste with getting his furniture and valuables into the vaults and cellars.

Of the workers in the fortifications, more than seventy were shut in by the sudden closing of the gates; these resembled a scattered flock into which the wolf has burst, and which can now no longer reach its accustomed fold.

Towards 5 o’clock the order came that the artillerymen were to cease firing until further command. The cannon fell silent, and a trumpeter appeared upon the glacis. Not long afterwards three envoys with bandaged eyes were led through the town to the Governor, summoning the fortress to surrender.

While these were with the Governor, the news spread that terms would be capitulated, and that the enemy would march in the next morning. This

[p. 124]

news was in no way anything agreeable; on the contrary, many people were alarmed at it, and to me myself the thought was a stab, that we should pass into the hand of the enemy without a defence.

In the meantime this rumour was not confirmed. On the contrary, the bridge before the Breslau Gate was torn down completely, and the workers driven to it by force.

Meanwhile the darkness of evening came on, and lights had to be set in the windows. Lanterns were brought onto the rampart, and the soldiers received orders to remain upon it through the night. Amid these arrangements, amid this expectation of a siege and a bombardment, there was no more terrible thought than that of the danger of fire; for the town was filled with stores of hay, straw, grain, and wood, as well as with combustible provisions and household goods brought in for safety. In a great fire we should have had to suffocate from the blaze and smoke.

The continuation follows.

[p. unnumbered]

New Firebrands.

Published by the author of the Confidential Letters on the Internal Affairs of the Prussian Court since the Death of Frederick II.

A Journal in Occasional Issues.

Second Part.

Amsterdam and Cölln, 1807.
bey Peter Hammer.

[p. V]

Contents.

Correspondence Notices. Letter from Weimar. Page 1

Remarks on the Campaign in Poland, and the Unratified Armistice of the King of Prussia. 7

What Determines the Invincibility of an Army? 16

Views of a Prussian Patriot into the Past, the Present, and the Future. 36

Proof of How Greatly Circumstances Influence Opinions and Utterances, and — Nothing More. 62

The Black Register, or General Tableau of the Former Polish Crown and Ecclesiastical Estates Distributed as Gratuity Estates in South Prussia during the Years 1794 to 1798, while the Minister von Hoym Administered That Province. 65

Experiences Gathered on a Walk in and around Berlin, in April 1807. 91

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Remarks on Prussian Military Glory. Page 112

How Ought the Magistrates of Small Towns Now to Conduct Themselves in Wartime toward Friend and Foe? and How Have They Conducted Themselves? Especially in Silesia. 118

Baron Hammer. 124

Are There Not Also War Damages in Peacetime? 125

[p. 1]

Correspondence Notices.

Weimar.

We were here, at the beginning of the ill-fated October of 1806, truly in a certain kind of security that gave us no inkling whatever of our subsequent sad fate; for we believed the outermost borders of the Thuringian Forest to be well garrisoned, and, on top of that, several corps posted toward Kronach and Bamberg. How could we have believed that a shrewd general would place his magazine (in Hof) at the front, and await the enemy behind the forest, behind the mountains, the ravines, all of which could have defended it for him? — And what a handful of men were kept there, and at what posts? No man dreamed of such a thing!

When the Guard at last moved in here, and the King of Prussia, without advancing, took quarters here and remained lying still, we grew more anxious. — Meanwhile the Prussian officers still went dashing about: “If only we can once get them onto the plains!” — Ha! we thought, so it is to be decided at Lützen. They

[p. 2]

want the enemy on fields of battle. — To be sure, we thought it would surely be better to march out against him as far as Würzburg than to wait for his rendezvous in Saxony; but what good could that do?

The soldiers now piled up so greatly that for 8 days we had no bread; brandy too was no longer to be had. — The King at last had some brought in, which the French afterward drank.

Now the Saxons, scattered at Schleiz, came in. At that the courage failed us all.

“So near already?” — we asked one another anxiously.

The Prussians were dismayed, their officers brutal. — They railed against the Saxons, and prated mightily.

“Just go on, then,” muttered an old Saxon grenadier, cross; “you’ll get to know them soon enough!”

In the wine-houses — the brandy-booths were all closed, and empty — the crowd sat packed. Here one had only to observe those drinking to be able to predict: things will go ill with you. No real courage, no eagerness to come to grips with the enemy, was there at all; at best one counted on manoeuvring, and told wonders of it.

“If the Russians do not come,” said one who afterward called himself a Cisalpine, “we shall get a drubbing!”

[p. 3]

A fat regimental surgeon took this ill:

“No brave Prussian should speak so! God be lamented, if we had to count on the Russians; we ourselves shall know how to conquer. Shame on him, to speak so! He is surely no Prussian?”

“I am a Cisalpine; but whose bread I eat, his song I sing. — But believe me; I know the French; I was there at Marengo, and have also served the Austrians; but as sure as God lives, sir! if the Russians do not come —”

“Hold his tongue! — He is drunk.”

An officer bade him go. — He staggered out of the room, laughing:

“We’ll catch our death of it!”

The others were vexed. The officer opined that the Russians were indeed dispensable, but it was now once so, that Cossacks already stood at Zeitz. — This the others did not, after all, seem to take amiss, and opined: such outpost troops were not bad.

“There will be a couple of warm days,” said the officer; “but the weather is fine, and the French shall get to know the Prussians; that is nothing to speak of.”

A townsman wanted to raise an objection, but he was at once set right, and indeed with a:

“My good man! we understand that better. In the open field a Prussian army is not to be beaten at all, for our manoeuvres, they have the very devil in them;

[p. 4]

and Brunswick and Hohenlohe are great generals, Möllendorf is with them too, who still has the old Prussian tricks. — Ah! and our cavalry, against the French, who cannot ride — etc., etc.”

Who would not there keep silent?

Now the marching-through of the town began. — Yes, when one saw the fine regiments, one’s heart truly grew somewhat lighter. Only the frightful baggage-train, and that we saw so very many horsemen who had not even flints on their carbines, that — did not please us.

The King halted at the palace square, and had four of the finest cavalry regiments ride past.

Whoever saw them, his heart lifted. — These men! So sturdy! — Wherever they charge in — surely it may yet go well.

On the King’s face sat something — how shall I name it? It was something solemn — pensive — foreboding.

I shall never in all eternity forget that face.

Thus a painter should have caught it. — It would have given the head of a Darius, before the battle of Arbela.

Before Weimar a camp was pitched. — This, it was said, was the third line of engagement.

We thought, the mountains near Jena will now be occupied; who will attack them? With stones the attackers can be

[p. 5]

thrown to death, and the French will be obliged, with terrible loss, either to fall back or to force the pass at Dornburg, in order to come into the plain of Naumburg, and there they will find the Prussians on the field of battle.

Righteous God! the Prussians had posted themselves behind the mountains, and soon saw the enemy above them. The fearful pass at Dornburg was defended by no case-shot, and the French went through the Rauhthal,9 where not even a picket stood, down the Steiger, and the heroes were outflanked at Isserstädt.

If such a thing is not enough to drive one mad, then there is nothing else!

For 14 days the Prussians had lain in and around Jena, Hohenlohe had his headquarters there, and no adjutant took the trouble to reconnoitre. The general did not know the mountains and ravines which, garrisoned with 10,000 men and proper artillery, could have defended him against 400,000 men.

Let one go there, look at the country, and — be horrified.

Those were the Prussian tricks!

[p. 6]

Poor King! — How thrown away was your money, for such an army. Your peasants would have defended you better, and the Thuringian peasants besides, had you but armed them and made them mobile. Every village mayor knew his mountain, and knew how to defend it. — None who tried to pass through this valley would have escaped death, had the heights, the fearful mountains, been occupied.

In a word, one was prepared for nothing; and the Prussian commander came into the battle wholly without a head. Let one read the letters of Prussian officers about it in the Minerva and in the Politisches Journal.

We in Weimar, however, now hovered in mortal dread. — Amid the thunder of cannon the ill-fated 14th of October broke, and, alas! how dreadful it became for us wretched souls! etc.

[p. 7]

Observations on the Campaign in Poland, and on the King of Prussia’s Unratified Armistice.

For France, peace — despite the Continental power she has secured — is a need just as great as for the rest of Europe. This is why the Emperor Napoleon, in the peace negotiations begun last year, showed toward England a moderation that would probably have led to a durable peace, had the war with Prussia not broken out.

This war cannot be called a Fourth Coalition War against France, for the prevailing misunderstandings between England and Prussia were by no means yet resolved. And, as is known from the foregoing, it was only delusion and despair that drove Prussia to declare war on France. But when England saw that another opportunity for a Continental war might yet present itself, Lord Lauderdale broke off the negotiations as though picking a quarrel out of thin air. If the Emperor was in earnest, in sending the letter to the King of Prussia before the Battle of Jena, that he did not wish to have war

[p. 8]

with Prussia — then at least after the Battle of Jena there could be no thought either of an armistice or of a peace. The Emperor Napoleon did indeed desire peace, and was willing to make so many sacrifices for it. But the Emperor Alexander refused — to Prussia’s true misfortune — the ratification of a peace already concluded, and England, too, lost the will for it once the great statesman Fox had closed his eyes.

The consequences of the Battle of Jena could not but be too advantageous to the Emperor Napoleon for him to let them pass unused. The Emperor Napoleon esteems the King of Prussia, because he not only knew of his aversion to this war, but surely also remembered that Prussia, since the Peace of Basel, had always been the first power to recognize the changes in France. What motives, then, could the Emperor of the French have had to lay waste the states of an already so utterly unfortunate King and reduce them to misery? Why should he not have made peace with Prussia? His heroic renown needed no enlargement. The Emperor had, only the year before, granted peace even to Austria upon far smaller sacrifices. If, therefore, he did not halt in his victorious course, and prescribed to the King conditions too harsh in the armistice concluded at Berlin, the ratification of which the latter believed he had to refuse, then he had no other tendency than to weaken Russia,

[p. 9]

to destroy her despotic influence over the Nordic states, and thereupon to establish a firm peace. If, ever since the Peace of Pressburg, passions, jealousy, and apprehensions over the expansion of France’s power had prevented every real approach to peace among the European powers, then, after the fall of Prussia, all of this must be the case still more. The Emperor Napoleon therefore had to make use of the favorable influence of circumstances; between universal monarchy and peace there was now no longer any middle way.

How ingeniously the Emperor Napoleon has pursued his great tendency since the Battle of Jena is proved by his rapid advance as far as the Bug; the restoration of the Kingdom of Poland; the conquest of Silesia and Swedish Pomerania; the vigorous mustering of the greatest possible forces to oppose Russia; the successfully contrived war of the Turks and Persians against Russia, so as to disperse the Russian forces in all directions. All these things are great; whether they redound to the world’s ruin or benefit, the future must decide.

Russia is a great empire; she wages the war in her own country; she has great armies; she can count on England’s money. But all this will not save her. France wages the war with the marrow of Italy, of Holland, and of all Germany

[p. 10]

against Russia. Masses decide in war only when skilled generals stand at their head.

What a great difference exists between the Russian and the French generals need not be set forth here. I grant that the Russians, by their brave standing firm, make the French victories harder. But when the Russians come to see that their sole destiny is only to suffer defeats, or to win but imaginary and fruitless victories — since the Frenchman does not yield, because his Emperor has the unconditional will, if he cannot overthrow the colossi, at least to concede them not a thumb’s breadth of terrain — then their courage, too, will sink, as it sank among the Austrians and Prussians. And should the Russians once let matters come to that point, then scarcely any strong obstacle would be likely to hinder the Emperor Napoleon from prescribing peace in Petersburg over the summer.

The forces of the French are dispersed, because for the present they must in part occupy themselves with the conquest of subsidiary provinces and fortresses. But if the Russians do not extricate themselves from the check placed upon them, then it is to be foreseen that in a few months not only Silesia, but also Swedish Pomerania, Colberg, and Danzig will be conquered. Let one consider what new resources will fall to the French, partly through the uniting of these forces, partly through the 60,000 conscripts from the interior of France.

[p. 11]

A swift advance by the Russians into Serbia and Bosnia, the capture of Widin and Belgrade, but above all, should Austria be willing to declare against France, would smother the outbreak of war on the part of the Porte and create a formidable diversion for the French. Yet this is not to be expected from Austria, partly out of fear of losing its very existence should the matter turn out badly, partly so as not to let the Russians grow more powerful — Russian policy, if they destroy European Turkey, might prove more dangerous to Austria than if, in due course, they were to give France cause for yet another war. The Russians are reinforcing themselves in Dalmatia, but there are also 150,000 men hurrying from the interior of France, in union with the Neapolitans and Spaniards, toward Venice, in order to thwart any diversion into Italy and southern Germany. From this one sees what resources France possesses. For forty years the Turks have never been able to hold their ground in the field against the Russians. But would 200,000 Turks, under the command of skilful French generals, still meet with this fate today? I doubt it! Must not such a strong force fall exceedingly burdensome upon the Russians in so precarious a situation? Will the Turks not soon find means to quell the insurrection in Serbia? and likewise reconquer the fortified places on the Dniester, and thus also open a way for themselves to Ochakov and the Crimea?

[p. 12]

But granting even that the Russians push their gained advantages in Moldavia and Wallachia ever further. Suppose they succeed in conquering the whole of European Turkey — will they, upon an approach to peace, out of magnanimity toward Prussia, give back to the Turks all the conquered land? as some believe, so that France may restore Prussia and the dethroned princes of the Empire to their old rights and possessions? It would be a magnanimity without equal, one that at least since the Battle of Poltava the Russians have not shown. Should this case arise, there will only be so much more want and misery in the world. The war drags on at length. Of the two rivals, one must then fall, but in the course of which, at the same time, still greater empires and provinces of Germany will collapse.

It is claimed, on reliable authority, that France offered Prussia an advantageous peace if it would ally itself with Austria and make common cause with France against Russia. The Emperor Napoleon, it is said, demands nothing but the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Poland and the integrity of the Porte. If this is true, then I believe it would have been good, not only for Prussia but also for the whole welfare of mankind, had the King accepted these conditions, for it led by the shortest way to a general peace.

[p. 13]

I grant that the Russians are more fortunate in summer than they were this winter, and also that the French have purchased their victories with much blood. Perhaps too the whole theatre of war may shift, which has the advantage for the Russians that no Frenchman lays eyes on Petersburg. Since matters have meanwhile come so far that, apart from England, all European states are mere vehicles of France or Russia, the misfortune for Germany is very great, because within its bowels the war will live on until the one power or the other has struck sail.

The question now is whether men will be happier under the sceptre of a single ruler than under the constitutions of the former governments. If interest, discord, envy, jealousy, cunning, and the exploiting of circumstances by the one to gain land and power at the expense of the other were the occasions of wars under the system of the balance of power, then all these motives would fall away under the sceptre of a single ruler. There could then only occur rebellions within particular governorships, which would soon be quelled again by the pressure of the preponderant power.

But when one considers how greatly the happiness and welfare of men depend upon the government of the head of state; that this supreme power is easily abused, easily degenerates into despotism, if the sovereigns of a universal monarchy are Tiberiuses, Neros, Caligulas

[p. 14]

— then again the human heart might lament that the stream of time cast the states into another relation from that in which they were so happy the last century. When one considers that the results of all conquests of the world were most sorrowful; that Alexander had scarcely closed his eyes when, among the divided governors of the divided empire, everything went topsy-turvy; that the descendants of the vigorous Romans sank into so effeminate and contemptible a nothing; and that among the Greeks, for two thousand years, neither a Plato, a Socrates, nor a Phidias and Apelles could work their way forth, because a frightful barbarism let no product of wisdom and art spring up — then our descendants might tremble for the future —

But here too the Emperor Napoleon, that connoisseur of history and of men, shows a way to be taken that will protect humanity from the entrance of similar horrors. Let one recall the family compact, and his moderation in the many peace settlements. What indeed would have prevented him, since the Peace of Lunéville, from uniting with France not only Holland and Italy, but also Switzerland and the Confederation of the Rhine, had he not taken heed that, after his passing, under a weak successor, the great and boundless work might easily collapse again? What he will do is this: he will bring Switzerland and the Kingdom of Italy under the sceptre of the vigorous ruler of the

[p. 15]

French, so as to confer upon him, by virtue of this preponderance, that power which can settle on the spot the dissensions and discords of the other princes of Europe. He will also find an expedient whereby some ambitious successor may never overstep these bounds, but still less will he expose France to having to fear a coalition of the princes.

The boundaries are fine, and yet, were they to be overstepped by the one party or the other, the whole would be lost. Common human understanding is incapable of grasping the development. But since the eternal blessing or the eternal curse of our descendants depends upon the constitution which the great man of the age is still to establish, one may at least hope for the best. If, then, there shows itself to contemporaries and to posterity, under the sovereign arm of the Emperor Napoleon, a possible prospect of lasting peace and of better times — even once England has been wrested of its sole trade upon the seas — then all this might well take on a wholly different shape, were the sole dominion of the world to fall into the hand of the Northern Colossus.

[p. 16]

What Determines the Invincibility of an Army?

If one examines, without partisanship and free of prejudice, the wars of nations whose every undertaking was marked by success in arms, the motives were: 1) the genius of the supreme commander; 2) skilful generals; 3) the public spirit and martial temper of the common mass.

The Theban Pelopidas worked wonders against the so overweening Spartans; yet he did what prudent commanders must do to instil courage and spirit into unwarlike men. He carefully avoided general engagements, so as to carry off victory all the more surely in skirmishes at outposts and in surprise attacks. First the Thebans were to be taught by experience that the imagined fear of the invincible Spartans was nothing more than an empty chimera, a mere delusion that makes slaves of timid minds without cause.

It soon became evident how wisely and keenly Pelopidas had foreseen the events of the future. In the battle of Leuctra, Epaminondas, Pelopidas’s worthy comrade in arms, with 6,000 Thebans defeated 11,000

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Spartans. Not mere fortune of arms, not superior bravery, but a new tactical stroke — the phalanx led in an oblique direction against the Spartan position, for which Kleombrutus was not prepared — crowned the work, which thereupon struck the whole Peloponnese with terror.

Domineering Rome had, until the landing of Pyrhus, fought only against wild hordes. Now it was to face a commander who was a second Alexander, who possessed Greek tactics and a disciplined army; and yet this strong people proudly rejected Pyrhus’s mediation of peace, in order to avenge the national honour of the Romans, which had been assailed by the Tarentines; in order to show to strangers defiantly that Roman blood would bear no stain of cowardice; that no peace was to be thought of, despite the defeats the Romans had suffered at Siris and Asculum, until the Greeks had left Roman territory and the Tarentines had been drawn to their deserved punishment for their insolence. Pyrhus employed bribery and fear to unsettle the hero Fabricius; but in both he was deceived. The noble Roman remained as cold at the roar of the fearsome elephant as he was honest at the gleam of the gold offered to him.

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Thus acts a nation in which the disposition to invincibility lies, which will raise itself to be mistress of the world.

The resolution that Alexander showed before the crossing of the Granicus, and the disregard of the number of the enemy at Issus, showed the spirit of enterprise, the intelligent head; the utterly relentless conquest of Tyre, where the art of resources almost exhausted itself, showed the heroic character, the destroyer of the Persian Empire, and the future conqueror of the whole known ancient world.

When Alexander’s martial genius no longer animated the agile phalanx, he was in turn conquered by the short, sharp sword of the intrepid Roman, by the cohort, and the all-crushing legion; by greater hardening to war, by more swiftness and speed in marches, by a more refined strategy. Caesar knew, says Bornhorst, how to enmesh whole enemy armies, if they left him time for it.

In the Thirty Years’ War it was merely the new tactical dispositions, which the creative genius of Gustavus Adolphus invented, that were the cause that the hitherto invincible Imperial generals, Tilly and Wallenstein, were overcome. And the power and territorial expansions of Louis XIV rested merely upon the many excellent generals who, formed in the school of Turenne and Kande,

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maintained themselves for centuries on the stage of war as the foremost heroes of their age. But French military glory sank back into mediocrity under the successors of Louis XIV, when they no longer attended to imparting impulse, when it was neglected to rouse merit and talent to enthusiasm.

The iron ramrod invented by Leopold von Dessau, which gave the Prussian fire tactics the advantage of firing the musket five times a minute, and the better discipline he transplanted into the army, rendered Prince Eugene of Savoy, in the War of the Spanish Succession, greater services than any other component of his composite army.

Had Frederick the Great not studied the campaigns of the Greeks and Romans, and had he not, during his practice of war, recalled Epaminondas at Leuthen, and Sertorius at the Katzbach before the battle of Liegnitz; had he not been an Alexander at Prague and a Caesar at Pharsalus in the battle of Torgau, how, despite his genius and his fortune of arms, could he have endured so long and heavy a struggle?

At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the military spirit in the French army was enfeebled and undisciplined. The rulers of France could not even expect protection from it, far less successes. The results of this showed themselves at once at the

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first hostilities. The New Franks came off worse against the Austrians. The enragés, who imputed the blame for the failure more to treachery than to the incompetence of their commanders, hacked their generals and officers to pieces with savage fury.

The principles of equality and liberty increased the emigration of the French officers. That was a piece of good fortune, for by it the army lost a great part of its weaklings, whose places were filled by hardened non-commissioned officers and privates.

The fruitless cannonade at Valmy — although, on the part of the Prussians and Hessians, a mere advance would have been needed to scatter and grind down the enemy, who had already fallen into confusion — raised the courage of the French. The fortunate clearing of their enemies from French soil in so short a time, the battle won at Jemappe, exalted it!

The prudent, careful avoidance of a major battle after the engagement at Neerwinden, unfortunate for the French, and the mounting of a host of outpost skirmishes in which the French almost always retained the upper hand; the new tirailleur tactics which the great military genius Carnot invented to steel the courage of the raw National Guardsman; the purposeful combination of arms which this same artist embodied in the new brigade and division organization; the more mobile organization which he gave it by having all superfluous baggage-train

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abolished, so that officers and common soldiers alike, from the captain downward, performed their duties on foot.

All this gave the French army a constitution that was not only masterfully suited to the circumstances of the time, but could also lead to great ends.

Now, in the autumn of 1793, when the French army has suffered defeats at Pirmasens and Kaiserslautern; when the Weissenburg lines have been forced; when Landau is on the point of falling; when Fort Louis has been taken, and the patrols of General Wurmbser range as far as Strasbourg; when everything wears an air of desperation: now the tirailleurs appear and, by daily alarms, so exhaust the Austrians on the Saar and the Motter that they can scarcely withstand the hardships any longer.

And indeed the army of General von Wurmbser, after being driven back as far as Weissenburg, breaks apart à la Rossbach; Landau is relieved; Wurmbser recrosses the Rhine, and the Prussians fall back to Alzey and Mainz.

All of them effects that no one could suddenly make sense of. The French soldier regarded them as an effect of his new modes of fighting, whereby his courage, self-confidence, and boldness rose to the point of invincibility. A like delusion and conceit surely also animated the French soldier when, bold and full of confidence, he attacked in loose order the enemy’s cavalry and artillery,

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and nothing confirmed him in this more than seeing that he could inflict truly heavy losses on both without himself suffering much in return from their resistance. Hence it is also explicable why the French soldier in the year 1794, under the generals Pichegru and Jourdan on the Sambre, would not rest until besieged Maubeuge was relieved, and the wedge of Landrecies, le Quesnoy, and Valenciennes — which threatened nothing but fear — was overthrown.

From that time fortune and chance raised up generals from obscurity in the French army who, in genius and activity, were superior to the leaders of the German armies. What, indeed, could the effeminate weakling now achieve against the artless son of nature, who amid revolutionary storms had swung himself up out of the mass by force and talent; who had grown up amid bold ideas and had none but great models before him? The common soldier, steeled by war and likewise led on by ambition, marched and hoped to become a general; the general thirsted for deeds, and weighed his heart against immortality.

Stripped of all comforts: the infantry officer marching on foot with the knapsack on his back, the cavalry officer with a portmanteau on his single horse — which by regulation may weigh only 30 pounds — from now on one saw behind their columns neither baggage-wagons nor pack-horses, neither bread- nor

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flour-wagons driving along. If this arrangement gave them the speed to march ten or twelve miles in a single day, then in a German army the strength was already spent at six miles, since baggage-trains miles long checked all further mobility. If a New-Frankish army, trusting in its better war constitution and invincibility, bound itself to no magazines and always carried the war into the enemy’s country, where its needs were provided for, then in German armies — at such great cost and burden to the poor peasant — magazines first had to be amassed, which betrayed the intentions to the enemy, and, before they could be put to use, were either already destroyed by the swifter foe or taken for his own subsistence. If in a German army the preparations for war, indeed a single campaign, devour the prince’s millions saved up over many years of peace, then the Emperor of the French spends little or nothing for it. The French army needs no baggage- and pack-horses; the cannon are hauled by requisitioned teams as far as the enemy’s country, and then as many horses are taken from the peasant as are needed to draw this ordnance.

The unmounted cavalry seeks either to remount itself with carriage- and country-nags wherever it finds them, or it follows the army on foot until a favourable opportunity yields captured horses.

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These freer movements of the French, who bind themselves little or not at all to magazines, now also make the French no friends of building golden bridges; make it no difficulty at all for them to throw themselves into the flanks and rear of the enemy army; make them far better nourished than the Germans. While the Frenchman takes his hearty meat-soup at the enemy’s expense, and has wine and brandy in abundance, the German soldier is often forced to keep to his ration-bread and a draught of water. It does indeed happen that the French soldier receives no pay for years on end, which, however, is his greatest advantage, since it is saved for him or his kin by the government, and he needs no money either, because the townsman or peasant is obliged to provide for even the least of his needs. The German soldier has his pay disbursed to him more reliably, but with today’s dearness of all produce it is so small that, even with all frugality, he must go hungry at least three days out of every five (from one pay-day to the next). Thus the French bring to the fight, besides their spiritual force, a physical force that bears no proportion to the product of ration-bread and potatoes. To all this must be added the enthusiasm for a great man that is inborn in this nation — that the Emperor, since his effective existence, has always led them to fortunate

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undertakings

led them to fortunate undertakings; the susceptibility of the French to the great, the brilliant, the extraordinary; the knowledge and masterly exploitation of this character by their Emperor; the emulation, in distinguished deeds, of the generals, who on every occasion surpass the boldest imagination. And then let no one wonder at the defeats of the otherwise so valiant Germans.

Just as under Louis XIV the genius of the great military architect Vauban had a large share in the results of those remarkable and fortunate wars, and from that period onward all the other nations of Europe fell behind the French in the attack and defence of fortresses: so in more recent times the genius of the Emperor Napoleon, through his bold strategy, overturned all known systems of warfare, which threw his adversaries into all the greater confusion since the finest statecraft was interwoven into it.

When rapid victories had made General Bonaparte in the year 1797 master of Piedmont and Savoy, of Lombardy and Mantua, then the audacious thought arose in his imagination to hasten to Vienna, and there to dictate the terms of peace.

But when the Venetians and Tyroleans took measures to occupy the neglected Tyrolean passes in his rear; when Archduke Charles advanced with the Austrian army against his front; when he could scarcely any longer escape the fate of being surrounded: then the politically shrewd

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commander beat about the bush as to whether a preliminary peace might not be concluded, in which Austria would be satisfied with the fall of the perfidious Venetians, and in which France likewise would not come off short. It happens as he wishes. The Peace of Leoben is signed. France retains the Netherlands and the left bank of the Rhine. An acquisition for which Louis XIV had striven in vain. The Republic of Venice, Dalmatia, and the Republic of the Seven Islands are incorporated into Austria. In a critical situation, to disentangle the thread of so manifoldly tangled an interest, without a jolt (save that the Republic of Venice went to its grave), and so swiftly, is more than to cut the Gordian knot with the sword.

Critics who did not comprehend the great general censured his audacity, and were already beginning to deny him the talents of a commander. The days of Lodi, of Arcole, of Mantua, and so forth were, in their opinion, more the results of chance than of art. But now, like Hannibal, he crosses the Great St. Bernard, the Simplon, the St. Gotthard, with an army of 70,000 men. A recklessness, in the judgement of the critic, still far greater. If, says the over-hasty critic, the French army does even happily cross the monstrous Alpine chain, how will it fare in Lombardy? All the fortified places in enemy hands, no magazines — how must it deteriorate during its march?

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how will it save itself after a lost battle? But now there unfold before his eye the beautiful marches, the artful demonstrations to lead the enemy astray; the razor-sharp calculations of the folding-back-together of the separate parts into one great whole, in order to let the desired, foreseen battle decide the fate of Italy. It comes at Marengo. The outcome is doubtful. Chance decides it to the advantage of the newer Hannibal. The critic does not take back his word, because in truth only fortune crowned the outcome, and because it is ever the lot of a great man that his outstanding merits are misjudged by his contemporaries. For all that, that critic had nonetheless to confess to himself that in the design of the plan there lay much that was great, much that was extraordinary. That General Bonaparte was the only man in all of France who could turn the utterly tangled affairs of France so favourably. Bonaparte was bold; like Caesar and Frederick the Great, he left the fortunate chances also their share; but even had the result turned out wholly unfortunate, the greatness of the plan would nonetheless have found eternal appreciation with posterity.

A great man is strongest, most terrible, precisely in misfortune. Even had he lost the battle at Marengo, he would certainly not, with his army, have succumbed to the blows of a mighty fate. Such a

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man finds resources in his genius; a boundless ambition prevents despondency. Even if he could return neither over the Great St. Bernard nor the St. Gotthard — for the allurement had of itself passed away — then a way would have to be found through the Tyrol.

Would that the powers of the Continent, after the Peace of Lunéville, had let this lion rest, who in the meantime had raised himself, with still far greater boldness, to First Consul and Emperor of the French. He was, after all, contending with England for a lasting peace; he wished, after all, to crush the despotism that England had arrogated to herself on the seas, upon which hung the interest of the whole world. But now Austria — the matter being, properly speaking, in the wool — must, to the misfortune of all Europe, draw the fire of war away from the islanders and cause its flames to spread over the whole Continent. May Austria therefore take to heart that truth, from the Emperor Napoleon’s own mouth — for Prussia has no part in it: “In the conduct of our enemies we must recognize the will of Providence, for our enemies have no eyes to see; no ears to hear; no power of judgement and no reason to draw conclusions.”

The Imperial generals ought to have known the operations of the Emperor Napoleon from the campaigns in Italy, and ought at last to have oriented themselves in his mind.

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Then they would have remained, until their junction with the Russians, behind the Inn. The position on the Iller was founded on old, outmoded principles of war. That is why they saw themselves so swiftly deceived in their expectations and hopes. The all-powerful genius of their adversary was in their rear before they were aware of it.

Could the bold hurling of the French generals into the rear of General Mack at Ulm become dangerous, if the Russians drew near in forced marches while the Austrians meanwhile threw up entrenchments about themselves to the very teeth; could it also be thwarted if General Mack withdrew from Ulm to the Tyrol in good time: then the Emperor Napoleon knew, firstly, his own swiftness, secondly, the crab-crawl of the Russians, and thirdly, the self-conceit of the Austrians much too well not to have been assured that neither the one nor the other would come to pass so as to destroy his designs.

But the Emperor Napoleon goes still further. While with the one hand, right at the raising of the curtain on this tragedy, he annihilates half the Austrian army, with the other he throws open the barred Tyrolean passes, the sole bulwark upon which the power of the French might yet have been broken. He now hastens swiftly across the Inn and the Danube, unconcerned about the 150,000 men of Prussians, Saxons, and Hessians who threaten his rear.

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To deal the power of the Russians a decisive blow was here the main thing. All the rest was secondary. The battle of Austerlitz bore out the conclusions of the Emperor of the French, and destroyed the designs of a coalition such as had never yet armed itself against France so terrible in numbers and so ruinous in its schemes. The Peace of Pressburg ended in three months a war which by its very disposition might have lasted many years. The Emperor of Austria is compelled to regard it as an act of magnanimity that he loses only the Tyrol (the key to the heart of his states), the former Venetian territory, and Dalmatia. The King of Naples is toppled from the throne, and the Republic of Holland is transformed into a kingdom.

There also arises a Confederation of the Rhine, which unites almost the whole of southern Germany with France.

These upheavals, and the consequences that may yet all spring from them, England and Austria have upon their conscience. — The Emperor Napoleon was forced into this war. That he stepped forth like a terrible avenger, and made use of the circumstances, is not to be held against him.

In this intellectual power, in this natural force, familiar with all that the art of military science in ancient and more recent times has to show, the Emperor Napoleon presents himself to the Germans in his military and diplomatic career. One ought not to have mistaken the greatness,

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the extraordinariness of this character. To withstand this fearful man, distrust and fear had to guide the steps of his opponents, out of which might then be found measures on which his omnipotence would perhaps have foundered.

A Fabius Maximus was the commander who had to take the baton of command in hand against him. Perhaps then the firm belief in his fortune would have been lost; the superstition of being the instrument of a higher being; of building an eternal peace upon the ruins of the present world —

But the German powers were possessed by envy and ill-will toward him and his army. Charles the 12th’s lot was, in their fancy, to be his final fate, and Rossbach was the measuring-rod with which unreason still gauged the steadfast valour of the French. For this reason rashness took the place of reason, for this reason self-conceit hindered the measures of security, for this reason broken forces, manifold wills, irresolution and lack of insight, half-measures, prevented a dam from being drawn against the invincible man — a dam which the waves of the Rhine would perhaps have sought in vain to break through.

While the Prussian army, during a twelve years’ peace, brought elementary tactics to the highest perfection, while in the evolutions

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not a step could be taken that was not calculated, the French were learning practical war, in which acting by angles and paces, the finding of alignments by points of support and points of sight, falls away altogether. While the theoretical manoeuvrers at the autumn manoeuvres, after the old humdrum routine, with attacks in echelon and retreats in checkerboard, drove the supposed enemy from heights and out of woods; took the flanks, and let those same be taken; made bridge-crossings and bridge-withdrawals with all formalities (in which, when it comes to the real thing, everything is quite otherwise) — the war-practitioners had meanwhile learned to tear the enemy armies apart, to sever limbs from the whole body, to encircle corps and to disarm them. If with a soldier, where the parade is loved, it is the greatest of all crimes when the soldier on the parade march holds his head a hair’s-breadth too far to the right or left of the proper position, and does not carry his musket so that it makes a dead-straight line with the whole rank, then among the French no attention whatever is paid to this; their whole endeavour at drill is directed toward shooting well and accurately, and toward making themselves familiar with the advantages of the terrain. If on the marches of a parade-soldier everything is calculated by beat and art, and the chief or commander of such a regiment, in his elation, surpasses all the heroes of ancient

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and modern history, when the same, after a completed march of five or six miles, can march into a place as trim as at the church parade, in even step, to the sound of Janissary music, and thereby believes he charms the curiosity of the spectators: then one sees the invincible war-soldiers, motley and jumbled together, with muskets slung awry, without sound or song, drawing through villages and towns. All the more full of wonder, then, is the beholding public to see these youths always carry off the victory over bearded grenadiers and German manly strength.

The engineer corps and the artillery of the French had, ever since Vauban, been granted precedence over those of all other armies, because since the War of the Spanish Succession no other European army had understood the art of attacking and defending fortresses better than the French. In another tactical respect, on the other hand, people imagined that they in turn held an advantage over the French; in particular they laboured under the delusion that if a French army should attempt to meet a German army on the plain, it must inevitably suffer a defeat. But the events at Ulm and Austerlitz brought these opinions down a peg, and yet what wounded the sense of honour above all else was that the Emperor Napoleon presumed to declare publicly that he pronounced the French infantry the first in the world.

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The intrepidity which the French infantry displayed at Ulm before the sabre of the Hungarian hussar; their bold advance, heedless of the grapeshot and musket-fire with which the Russians pelted them at Austerlitz when they attacked the centre; and the courage they had already shown before in defence, in holding their posts to the last man — these had wrung this admission from the Emperor Napoleon, who is said not to be lavish with praise.

The Prussian cavalry, trained in the school of Frederick II. and made brisk and supple by General Seidlitz, had a reputation so well proven that even the Emperor of the French seemed to fear it, in that before the battle he warned his troops to be on their guard against the Prussian cavalry. But this too vanished at Jena. A proof that all things in the world are transitory, and that with the cavalryman it depends neither on the bridling nor the handling of the horse, nor on the dexterity and swiftness of the rider, to spread terror, ruin, and death: rather, all this depends more on the common spirit and on the leadership. Had the battle of Jena been directed by a Frederick the Great, and the cavalry led to the charge by a Seidlitz, a Ziethen, and a Dalwig: it would not have lost its reputation; for cavalry and infantry fought like the old Prussians for eight hours with a lion’s courage, notwithstanding that it had not escaped even the commonest

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man that the greatest confusions prevailed at the beginning of the battle, and that with the many contradictory orders the battle was bound to take an ill turn. Only when the battle was lost was there a want of that confidence and courage which usually raises the soldier in misfortune only when he holds the opinion that his generals can set everything right again. The French cavalry, which, from the battle of Jena onward, decided the days at Prenzlau, Pasewalk, Anklam, and Lübeck, and consequently contributed the chief part to the annihilation of the Prussian army, has since that time now also won the right, in the judgement of its Emperor, to be held, like the infantry, the first cavalry in the world.

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Reflections of a Prussian Patriot on the Past, the Present, and the Future.

Confess the right freely, when people are to be helped!
Jesus Sirach, Ch. 4, vv. 27 and 28.

Although I do not belong to the now-numerous fools who, puffing themselves up mightily, know best after the fact what ought to have been done beforehand, it is nonetheless a need of mine to look both into the days now past and into the time to come, and to seek healing for bleeding wounds in the assembling of events and expectations. The full heart longs to soften its grief through communication, for communication is relief.

God be praised! — so I cry — God be praised, that we have advanced so far in time that those fearfully black clouds which rained upon us have passed over our heads, and now hang only in grey distance upon the horizon, a point of remembrance of what was accomplished and endured! God be praised, that in appearance we have weathered the worst! Hemmed in by the ill-fated darkness

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of events we stand, all the misery that falls crushingly upon mankind presses us down; the thunder of fate left behind its ruinous traces. Who does not wish to know how the shattering tempest arose? Will not the Swiss whose hut was lately buried by the mountain that crashed down upon it wish to investigate how the falling mass could have torn itself loose from the rest of the height? So I, so every honest Prussian. Each sighs deep in sorrow over the calamity of the recent time and asks, how was it possible? How could what stood so high sink so swiftly to this dark, desolate depth? The backward glance is profitable and instructive, and it would be still more profitable if our great men dared it as I do; surely it would lead to happy results for the time to come; but this looking-back is also full of consolation, like a man’s memories of the joyous days of boyhood, of the bright and vigorous days of youth. How did our fatherland rise to significance, and how did it sink down again from it? An interesting, a most interesting question. Who does not gladly hear it answered? Well then, to the matter:

Step back with me, you Prussians who love your homeland, and behold the hut become a house and the house become a palace! Step back with me into the seventeenth century and pause gratefully with me before the person of the Great Elector Frederick William, before the creative genius of the Prussian state. It is he, he who called forth light out of the darkness, and in gratitude for this the patriot today and forever passes by his

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statue on the Long Bridge in Berlin, sunk in memories of:

The Dawn of Prussia,

which he caused to break forth. Honour and praise to his shade. He laid the foundation for the dignified strength of a realm hitherto scarcely regarded; he refilled, a new Deucalion, the provinces laid waste by the fury of the Thirty Years’ War with active human beings; he instilled in his people that power which was able to resist actively Louis the Fourteenth and the heirs of Gustavus Adolphus; through his stature as commander and statesman he first shaped the scattered territories into a durable whole. The settlement of colonists, the favouring of manufactures and commerce, the organization of the posts, of the excise and tax system, of the municipal police and of the paid standing garrisons, completed the rebirth of the merely small dominion which he — not only ruled, but truly governed. A blessing upon the memory of the glorious man. Nature had granted him everything to prove to the world that he was a born sovereign.

Less for the welfare of the land in the nobler sense of the word did his son and successor Frederick, the first King of Prussia, whom one ought to name the Vain, accomplish. Berlin, as a single city, has to thank him for the laying out

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of the Friedrichstadt, for the building of the palace, of the arsenal, of several churches, of the Long Bridge, and for the erection of the monument to Frederick William the Great Elector; besides this he founded the University of Halle and the Academy of Sciences at Berlin, called several famous and far-seeing men into his realm, established the mirror manufactory at Neustadt an der Dosse, and set up the salt-works at Halle; but what part the craving for splendour played in his actions, and that he did not do the thousandth part of the good he might have accomplished, has long since been decided. He divined little or nothing of the positive vocation of a King, whose dignity he appropriated to himself; unworthy favourites reveled beneath him upon the sweat of the poor, while subjects sighed under the burden of oppressive levies. Petty ambition led him to commit several imprudences which endangered the true royal dignity and the interest of the realm; for — in order to be able to crown himself King — he bound himself to lend the German Emperor Leopold I., throughout the entire War of Succession, 10,000 auxiliary troops maintained at his own expense. To maintain a garrison in Philippsburg, in imperial affairs always to make common cause with the Emperor, always to give his vote in the imperial election to the House of Austria, and finally to renounce all arrears of very considerable subsidies. What great sacrifices for the

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permission to let the hobby-horse gallop, for the game of playing at crowns!

But chance enlarged the Prussian territory still further under him, through the purchased County of Tecklenburg and through the inherited Counties of Mörs, Neufchatel, Lingen, and half of Mannsfeld. But the presiding destiny made use of the prince’s weakness to apply the outer lever to the realm, so that it might be borne upward, to smooth the first paths for the energy of his heirs. The accession to the royal throne was — as a great writer says — a bait which Frederick I. cast out to all his successors, and by which he seemed to say to them: I have won you a name, make yourselves worthy of it. I have laid the foundation of your greatness, you yourselves must complete the work! And so let his memory too be dear to us Prussians. He was an instrument in the hand of the Director of things. In his successor Frederick William I. there was not the least cultivation, but assuredly that high power which gives a throne dignity and permanence, and full thrift to lend inner firmness and durability once more to an edifice which, through the prodigality of the earlier splendour-loving possessor, had become more brilliant but also more unsound. Scarcely upon the throne, he began with enthusiasm the lofty work of bringing order into the ostentatious chaos. How the paltry luxury at court vanished before the love of order and the thrift

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of the vehement one! how the 88 superfluous chamberlains, who like the birds of the air neither sowed nor reaped nor gathered into barns and yet were fed by the heavenly Father through the King, ran home, some with small pensions, some with none at all! All the dispensable gold and silver plate in the palace was at once sold off, and with the sums thus realized the considerable debts were paid. The King increased the nourishment of the body politic, ailing through the hyper-liberality of his father; he strengthened its better organs and fortified the realm for a possible struggle with powerful neighbours. He perceived that for those ends there were no other means than: a formidable military force and a well-filled treasury. How many improvements, how many excellent establishments Prussia owes to his fatherly care. With what great sacrifices he purchased the population and the prosperity of the realm. He called active workers, industrious husbandmen into the land and supported them in truly royal fashion: The most appropriate means for a king to grow rich is that he first place his subjects in prosperity! — That was his motto. Therefore he made those sacrifices of millions and punished with harsh vehemence when scoundrels cast obstacles into the fair path.

When he presented the Nassau, Salzburg, and Bohemian colonists with considerable sums to defray the costs of travel and of first establishment,

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certain Prussian councillors, vulture-like gluttons, believed they could profit from this occasion and feast upon a part of the support-monies; but the Majesty was neither blind nor dumb, sent the light-fingered fellows to the fortress, and even spoke of hanging; a certain Herr von Schlubhuth, who, trusting in the proverb about great thieves, believed his inherited nobility insulted by this threat, possessed the audacity to contradict, yet the vehement monarch took no notice of the ass’s hide of the Herr von, and had him strung up as a warning to others upon the public street, opposite the General Directory. (A good thing that in our days such a thing is against decorum; for how should one make one’s way along the streets between the gallows set up for venal commandants, for runaways, and for well-fed embezzlers of the treasury?!)

By this vehemence of his he trained a people naturally sluggish to the swift execution of his commands; to active striving after prosperity, to order and thrift he guided them by his own example. Rough he was, like his age, and violent, but he knew those about him and what had effect upon them; his severity, his iron self-activity, his firm will heightened the self-reliance and infallibility of the ruler. He had to see everything himself; read, do, do not raisonner! he cried hotly whenever another wished to know something better than he did, but as a rule this cry was also in its right place,

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for he knew and willed only the good. Often he even found it necessary to use the stick and the fist, yet the manoeuvre worked too, it preserved to the pure man his purity, light-shy idlers crept away before the thunder of his wrath. Not even age and sickness softened the fervour of the prince. On his very deathday, when he noticed through the window that the stable-hands had put the wrong saddles on some of the horses, he cried out to those around him: Ah, if only I were well, that I might thrash the rascals. Do go down, for my sake, one of you, and give them a sound drubbing!

Would that he might rise again today out of his tomb, and lay about him! To be sure, the good departed lord would have to work himself into a mighty passion, but for that we too would not sigh; his strength would cast to the ground the rotted, worm-eaten branches to make room for the fresh shoots, and he would choose out the little trees for grafting, that the future might behold the living green forest!

His memory is praised by a thousand monuments; the Berlin Cadet Corps, the Potsdam Orphanage, the Charité, and many another benevolent institution stand there as his works, to awaken the gratitude of posterity. He put the fortresses of Wesel, Magdeburg, Stettin, and the fort of Memel into respectable condition, bought landed estates for 7 millions, brought the army from

[p. 44]

40,000 up to 76,000 well-equipped and well-drilled warriors, established by strict edicts the deserved respect for the brave military, but likewise also the strictest discipline of the same, and heaped up for his successors, besides other things of value, a ready treasure of 8,700,000 thalers.

Peace to his ashes! What his father began, he vigorously carried on, in order to leave the fair inheritance to the one who would complete it, to the unattainably great Frederick II.

When he, the peerless Frederick, had grasped the reins of government with a worthy hand, there stood:

Prussia at Its Zenith.

Ah! what a kindly, creative spirit then presided over our fatherland! The man upon the throne appeared as the principle of all vigorous energy and moving wisdom: he was hero and statesman, lawgiver and first citizen all at once. Insight wedded to activity, swiftness to circumspection, thoroughness to persistence, and punctuality to genius. His individuality was that of an autocrat such as a cultivated people beseeches of Providence. Behold, the portrait of Frederick the peerless.

A sound policy, such as none of his forefathers had ever developed, he demonstrated in the acquisition of Silesia, in the fortunate conclusion of the Seven Years’ struggle, and in the first partition of Poland.

[p. 45]

A sound policy, I say, and I beg the reader not to forget that policy and morality lie at two opposite extremes, and that the most exemplary moralist is always and forever the most wretched politician. For rulers there exists, in certain cases, only one alternative: to lose or to win! There the choice is easy, and the most effective means is the best. Who willingly succumbs through lofty morality, when the opposite principle affords an honourable footing? The monarch’s personality is twofold: he is prince and man, but always prince first. In the one capacity let nothing constrain his conscience, in the other let him be the model of his subjects!

Frederick won a flourishing province, Silesia, and doubled his army. But he did more, infinitely more. He poured a lofty spirit over the dead military machine, he formed soldiers into warriors and heroes; he made Prussia formidable; he was the creator of his people’s prosperity, its judicious lawgiver. He — but why repeat what thousands before me, fired by his great deeds, have told well, and other thousands, from greed of gain, have written badly: what new thing could I add? In any case, necessity will yet lead me back to him in what follows. What the peerless one was to our fatherland, the Prussian feels, and the foreigner feels. He inspired his contemporaries and later generations to

[p. 46]

his praise, to eternal admiration; even the members of the humblest ranks shuddered when they learned of the passing of the Great One. On the day of his death one saw, everywhere throughout the residence, eyes filled with tears; the tension was universal, they mourned him as good children mourn a beloved father; in the liveliest agitation thousands wandered the streets, and long they doubted the truth of the mournful tidings received — Brother — a common soldier asked in the street that day of a comrade he met: What has happened, then? The people are running as though there were a fire. Ah — replied the other, weeping — a great fire has indeed just gone out! Thus did the feeling of so great a loss make a poet of the uneducated soldier.

We have lost him, and with him lost all! Of this and no other conviction was the better man capable, as was the crowd, and how right they were the character of his nephew and successor Frederick William II. bore witness. The portrait of his character is sketched in few words: he was not wicked, but very weak!

Hinc illae lacrymae! (hence these tears!) It is precisely this that leads to ruin. God forgive the men who must let themselves be governed, when they wish rather to possess a malignant ruler, if only he acts vigorously and consistently, than a wavering crown-bearer, in the grip of every petty passion — rather a complete devil

[p. 47]

than a half-angel. God forgive them the wish, I say: the understanding has always forgiven it. What a contrast between Frederick William II. and Frederick II.

Indeed, both names have become the most significant in the history of Prussia, and above all that of Frederick William II. Frightful! In him lies the sum of all the misery under whose nocturnally horrible, iron pressure our fatherland groans; the tone in which one utters it is the funeral knell of the Prussian monarchy, of the dying body that only a short while ago flourished in the fullness of health. Upon us, and perhaps yet upon our children unto the third and fourth generation, shall his sins be visited.

He inherited provinces and conquered Great Poland, but the former did not round out the realm, and the acquisition of Poland laid a devouring cancer upon the very marrow of the state. Under him the army grew larger, but only, to all appearance, stretched thinner; it grew longer and — thinner. Yes, truly, by his acts and by his example he drove out, as a hostile thing, the spirit that reigned within it, and nothing remained to it but the pretension, that pride which under Frederick had stood in its place. In those days the soldier deserved the respect of the citizen, for he protected him and his property, he suffered and died, in case of need, for him; but henceforth he only tormented him, whether actively or passively, and what before was noble pride now became petty

[p. 48]

haughtiness that wronged the civilian. Frederick William II. opened door and gate to effeminacy and thus corrupted the military; he lived immorally, and it is the curse of the great that their vice-ridden example works powerfully upon the multitude to be imitated; he made himself contemptible when he permitted unworthy men to lay fetters upon free spirits, when he meddled needlessly and senselessly in the affairs of France and then concluded a shameful and ruinous peace, when he surrounded himself with mystics and ghost-seers; he weakened the powers of the state by conferring significant offices upon the ignorant and dissolute creatures of his unworthy favourites, and bestowing lucrative estates upon this and that idler, by letting his mistresses, avaricious women, rummage in the finances and derange them, by having the affairs of government managed by ever-increasing ministerial hands, by allowing the foremost officers of state to become usurers and grain-jobbers.

All this is not newly said, I know it well, but now it is more necessary than ever to return to it; the time has come when repetition is instruction, for now his poisonous sowings germinate and blossom and ripen and run rampant. Enough of this for now, and onward.

He died, and his son Frederick William III. came to the throne: had he been the direct successor of Frederick II., it is very probable that matters would now stand somewhat better: I say somewhat, for he could not make impossibilities

[p. 49]

possible; he could not conjure away the great defects in the military situation of the Prussian realm; he could not lay aside his own individuality, grounded as it was in his upbringing and disposition.

Strict integrity, modesty, good nature, and thrift are the principal traits of his character: thus he would be the most amiable of private men, for all the civic virtues adorn him; to be an excellent ruler he lacks only the clear vision of his great-uncle — with that, he would be great! He bears but a small part of the guilt for the present general misfortune; let one beware of loading it wholly upon him. He found the finances in disorder, an army decayed in spirit, a population of ten million souls, and among them 250,000 warriors to be paid. Where, in that, is the ratio of income to expenditure, of army to populace? He took over a kingdom composed of many provinces, some of them small, scattered here and there, unprotected. He found ministers who said to him: If the state is to subsist, if the treasury is to grow, a great quantity of grain must be exported! He believed this, for he knows how poor in money Prussia is; he supposed the people to be prosperous enough to pay somewhat dearly for their bread; he believed it, for being himself upright in the highest degree, he trusted in the love of honour and the honesty of the state officials.

[p. 50]

Had he known that one and another of these dealers in estates and grain spoke thus in order to fill their own deep pockets, while the poorer citizen was compelled to draw a moral hunger-belt tight about his body — that is to say, now and then to go a little hungry for want of money: by God! he would have taken other measures. Like Frederick II., he would first have filled his storehouses and only then permitted the export of the surplus. Like Frederick William I., he would have overawed the swindlers with his wrath.

He wished to economize, and therefore he permitted the export of grain; he wished to curb the encroaching luxury, and therefore he supported many manufactories in the land too little or not at all: had he known the misery of the workers, he would have acted otherwise. He still believed in the heroic mettle of the army, which he heard everyone extol; but this had for the most part perished in the frivolous spirit of the age. He still held the officer corps to be the prop of the edifice of state, the guard of the throne and the realm; but only the quantity remained, the quality was gone, the form had endured, the spirit had evaporated; the nobility, as a rule no longer noble, knew only rights and not duties, and the warrior had lagged behind in warlike accomplishment. Under such gloomy prospects he ascended the throne of his forefather. Well knowing that peace is a bringer of good fortune in every state; well acquainted with the circumstance that Prussia had, with

[p. 51]

France, but one interest, he declined all alliances against her and did not bite at Britain’s subsidy-hook. He held still amid the frictions of the nations, for he wished to preserve for the north of Germany that tranquillity which the south had long yearned for in vain, and he consented to every means that led to the end. France occupied Hanover; the Prussian cabinet still counselled him to peace, and he remained calm: that was not well, for the sacrifice offered up to peace was too great: he set at stake his dignity, his standing among the princes, he lost the confidence of the powers of Europe, he seemed to be what he was not — France’s ally.

The war between France on the one side and Austria together with Russia on the other flared up anew; despite the pressing of both parties, the King chose neutrality: that was well! But a Franco-Bavarian army passed, despite the proclaimed neutrality, through Ansbach; our warriors marched down into Franconia, and the public believed that the monarch, in those then favourable circumstances, would demand satisfaction for the affront he had suffered; but all remained still, and our army returned to its garrisons: that could not be called well. When one sacrifices one’s dignity to the love of peace, then by such a peace more is lost than won! Count Haugwitz went to Vienna; we gave up various provinces on the Rhine and in Franconia, and received in return — the Electorate of

[p. 52]

Hanover: this was thought inconsistent on the part of the Prussian cabinet.

The King of Sweden, whose troops we had driven out of Lauenburg, took this circumstance ill; we posted a corps on the frontier of Swedish Pomerania, to let it stand a while and then withdraw again: what was one to make of that? Those merchants who saw their ships seized by the English on account of the occupation of Hanover did not give the aforesaid proceeding the gentlest of names.

England and France, and France and Russia, begin peace negotiations; our cabinet learns that France has offered to give the Electorate of Hanover back to England, if that be the condition of peace — (whether true or not: who among the public knows?) — this incenses our upright King, neighbouring Russia urges the fight, and we now rise up by force against France. Why not a year ago, when France was menaced by several enemies, when an alliance with an as-yet-unweakened Russia promised favourable results — if the system of neutrality was to be abandoned after all and war waged against natural allies? That was very much at fault on the part of the cabinet.

When our army marched, almost everyone became a prophet of doom; nor was it, under the circumstances, at all difficult to guess the outcome. One could

[p. 53]

augur our defeat just as well as the prophets of the Old Testament foretold the downfall of the Jewish realm.

The army was indeed still in part brave, but only in part; the French army was so entirely; on the enemy’s side the greater number, for still we saw our allies, the Russians, not coming; our forces and resources stood to the French as one to seven; there, practice on the grand scale and science; here, clumsy parade-ground proficiency; here, the mood of the moment; there, high courage; there, several famous commanders; here, that commander who manifested his talent in the Champagne; here, the feeble old age of the senior officers; there, brisk and vigorous youth; here, the modest King — a good soldier, to be sure, as he documented on the Rhine, but without confidence in himself, believing in the infallibility of the Duke of Brunswick, and without cultivated talent as a commander; there, at the head, the tried and victory-accustomed genius of Napoleon, whose intelligence had raised war to a national industry.

To what results did the parallels lead?

Some of our blockheads, in ignorance and faint-heartedness, made great blunders in positions and movements, while over there everything was done according to the strictest laws of unity and insight.

[p. 54]

At Saalfeld precipitancy fought against cold deliberation; at Halle faint-heartedness and simplicity fled before the personified art of war; here and there something stirred and moved whose name one dare not utter, since one does not know whether it was corruption, weariness, or ignorance. In the centre there was at first a bad commander, and when he was wounded, none at all — and so an army without a commander!

Saalfeld and Halle, Jena and Auerstädt! At these names the triumphant prophets grin, but the good sons of the Fatherland gnash their teeth, and long to descend into the grave.

The Prussians were beaten, and the enemy pressed across the undefended, still-bridged Elbe, through the open country, unhindered, into the capital.

The fortresses of the land fell without resistance, for the venal or faint-hearted commanders — here the pen falters, and is capable only of setting down a thousand curses upon those wretches: misery and contempt be the traitors’ lot, so long as they drag their disgraceful existence about with them; may their funeral dirge be the croaking of ravens, shame their grave; never may the sacred soil of the Fatherland, in which brave Prussians slumber, cover their weathered skulls, and may late grandchildren spit when they name the infamous appellations of the modern Cartouche!

[p. 55]

There we now stand, almost poorer than beggars, for they still hope, we scarcely any longer. To be sure, our lot is up to now not exactly unbearable, for of all enemies the men from France are surely the least harmful to the peaceable citizen: but why must they be our enemies? Why did the folly of our fathers and the timidity of our cabinet call the victors into the North? Why must the whole people atone for the sins of a few, why be punished where it committed no crime, give where it has incurred no debt? And who guarantees us, should the struggle continue, that we shall not perish altogether?

A happy little folk lives in our midst: the orthodox (so-called) patriots! These good people suck from every rumour of the defeats of the French — perhaps invented in idleness — nourishment for their expectation, as bees draw honey from every flower. But even if those tales contained strict truth: can Russia’s victories give us back the lost remnant of prosperity in which we vegetated? Can that power trample the high might of the Franks into the dust? And could it really do so: should we gain thereby? If we are to be ruled by foreigners, then — surely every impartial man agrees with me on this — then let the cultivated, harmless inhabitants of France be our rulers.

[p. 56]

So it now stands with us; wherever we look, the present bares its teeth fearfully at us; end it never so well: what we were, we shall be no more in the present century — respected by our neighbours and prosperous within.

Prussia’s Evening

has fallen; that it may not turn wholly and swiftly to midnight, may destiny preserve us; may Napoleon the Great’s intelligence and the upright sense of Frederick William III. protect us from that — if, as we confidently hope, we shall have the pleasure of seeing him once again among us as our sovereign. —

Only two cases are possible: total cessation, or gradual renewed flourishing. A third cannot come to pass. We lay it down, namely, that the King remains our King. Very well, let us hold to that: either the peace is concluded and the sovereign has drawn from the events of the last months the measures for the time to come, or he has not.

In the latter case, matters proceed in ponderousness, inconsistency, disorder, and darkness, and the good old clockwork, without repair, soon runs down in irregular convulsions. The Cabinet acts once more so inconsistently that it becomes possible to be at war at once with both England and

[p. 57]

France, as in the past summer.

The military returns to its garrisons. A few young gentlemen in shining uniforms, enervated by dissipations of every kind, invalid in spirit, who perhaps ran away at Jena, attempt once again, as of old, to abuse the burgher through petty arrogance; complaints are made, the matter is presented to the King from a false side useful only to the officer, and the aggrieved burgher is now punished into the bargain for having dared to offend the Herr Von. Now, when one has come to know several of these gentlemen, now the thing rouses indignation, the tension between the two estates grows ever greater, the oppressed gnash their teeth, the favoured sneer, until at length the private quarrel gains publicity; the prejudice that so few did their duty at Auerstädt and Jena keeps blowing upon the smouldering sparks: one gust of wind, and the flame of revolt will blaze up in consuming fires. The common soldier is treated merely as a machine for the direst emergency, and beaten like a donkey at the slightest occasion: thus the already meagre remnant of the sense of honour of the Marker and the Pomeranian is lost, together with the attachment to the King and the fatherland, and the affection for his estate, which on the whole is not durable; he learns only, under constant torment, to march and perform parade

[p. 58]

drill and nothing else in the world, and when it then comes to the emergency, he runs away in the terror of his heart; the very same Frenchmen who at Rossbach became the object of mockery now rule Europe under Bonaparte.

Everything incompetent, provided only it be of the nobility, remains at its derivative post, and merit makes its bows in the antechamber on an empty stomach.

The wealthy landed proprietors, with the helm of state in their hands, retain for themselves and their colleagues, the country nobility and the Jews, their monopoly of carrying off the marrow of the land, our grain, in enormous quantities, so that the other estates are impoverished. Oh, those gentlemen understand the art of letting the poorer class of the people starve quite methodically, until despair leads to revolt and internal war, and one and all of us perish, in Heaven’s name, as prey to the bloodsuckers who crawl about the steps of the throne. (We have now learned to distinguish, we have seen at what moderate prices bread-corn could now, in wartime, be sold, and at what enormous prices it was given to us before.) Alas, in these cases it must so happen, so, and not otherwise. Here is no poetic exaltation, no exaggeration, only naked, bare

[p. 59]

truth; experience from days past and the pure view of things vouches for this unpleasant supposition.

But there remains to us the better comfort that all the old has passed away and that the worthy King, in the school of experience, has cast an instructive glance over the whole. Well for us then, and well for Him!

To his other amiable virtues there then joins itself self-activity and confidence in himself; he chooses from his entourage only a few proven wise and honest men as counselling friends. The old dust is gradually swept out; those servants of the state who only let themselves be fed without serving with goodwill may seek other sustenance. The beginning of this has already — so far as we know — been made; let the soldier be made a hero less by the cudgel than by spiritual incentives; let the officer set more store by real honour than by that insipid oath: Upon my honour! which, like a discredited coin, no longer passes anywhere. Let merit be placed in posts of honour and in spheres of activity, no matter whether it be protected by ancestors or not; let him cease to be a nobleman who is not noble. Let the nobleman who disgraces his name through the maltreatment of a burgher or through other outrages lose that name

[p. 60]

and bear a punishment along with the nameless sinner. Let the King check the corn-usury through established magazines, which in case of need open themselves to the people, so that the Jews, with and without beards, may recognize that the time of haggling is over: thus he grants the poor subject the joy of buying his bread cheaply, of eating his fill, and — according to Henry IV.’s motto — of having his pound of meat in the pot even on Sundays.

Then, along with the gold pieces, the blessing of the people also flows into the state coffers; for the stream that pours into the treasuries of princes wells up most abundantly in the bread-larders of the burghers.

What nature gave our fatherland in stepmotherly fashion, let the sovereign’s care ennoble; only then does the industry of the inhabitants prosper.

Eternal pity that our earthly gods no longer go about in disguise as of old, in order to see, hear, and judge for themselves on the spot. What experiences might be gained in this way; but they shun the chambers of misery and the huts of the poor in the land, and yet there alone is instruction to be found as to how one might help down below; those who stand up above help themselves — God have mercy! — well enough on their own.

[p. 61]

The King must — but enough and more than enough; if the father of the people does not himself think and feel: what use are then a million reminders? In a word, Frederick William III. must sow as Frederick II. sowed, that he may reap.

Naturally the half-shattered State, thus tended, will pass little by little back to prosperity; our present generation, to be sure, will no longer live to see it, but our children will gather once more beneath the mild shade of the eagle’s wings; they will enjoy the fruits of paternal care — security, tranquillity, and prosperity — and, with tears of gratitude and joy, will cry out:

Blessing upon the house of Hohenzollern on Prussia’s throne!

[p. 62]

Proof of How Greatly Circumstances Influence Opinions and Utterances — and Nothing More.

(A compilation of several articles from the journal: Der Telegraph.)

The Telegraph. No. 1. Friday, 17 October 1806.

“The Awakening of the North.”

Long has the North lain at rest. Long has a wise, humane monarch given ear to the representations, the invitations, and the promises of France — but still more to the wishes and the promptings of his own heart — to preserve the tranquillity and peace of the peoples. But the measure of transgressions, of cunning, is full. The North has awakened! The first blow struck by Prussia’s brave men will make the enemy feel the benefaction

The Telegraph. No. 9. Tuesday 28 October 1806.

(Second article.) Brief report on the events since the opening of the campaign (which runs to 17 October, and at the close of which it reads):

“How well things would stand with the King of Prussia, had he not lent his ear to the seductive words of an imprudent princess” — (the Queen, that is, of whom mention was made earlier) — “and how fortunate is the nation whose women, faithful to the voice of nature and devoted solely to the duties of their sex, are enemies

[p. 63]

to the forbearance that Frederick William granted him. — Peoples of the North!” — — (Here follows something that cannot well be set down in writing) — — “Peoples of the North! Upon what do you count? Shall your submission soften him — or his magnanimity save you? — — To arms! The victory is yours!”

“The North is awakened!”

“Victory to the Prussians
Death to the Enemy!” —

The Telegraph. No. 2. 18 Oct. 1806.

“Civic duty.”

(The inhabitants of Berlin are here admonished not to give themselves over too greatly to anxiety upon the news received that the Prussians have been beaten at Auerstädt. It then continues:)

“As the subject of a state, it is a duty toward the state and toward oneself (with regard to one’s own inner peace of mind) to credit the government with all the good will, strength, and wisdom that

of the war, and are removed from the deliberations of the cabinet.”

The Telegraph. No. 13. Saturday, 1 November 1806.

(Third essay.) “Reflections of a True Prussian.” (p. 51, after various reflections.)

“The King had ceased to be himself; young men and women meddled in the direction of affairs; the press brought forth pamphlets; the theatre itself was employed to arouse certain passions in the nation” (and so forth).

The Telegraph. No. 34. Saturday, 22 November 1806.

“A Dialogue in the Realm of the Dead between Frederick the Great, Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, and General Schmettau.”

The Prince. — — After their present successor had long remained the quiet spectator of the fruitless efforts of his neighbours around this river

[p. 64]

is necessary, serviceable, and salutary for honour, for welfare, for security, and for the preservation of the whole. To doubt this would be a sin against the State, a sin against oneself.

As for me, my love for the sovereign whose subject I am, and my attachment and devotion to the State to which I belong, are unshakable. And should circumstances or accidents of any kind seek to test my fidelity, I shall gladly see the last drop of blood coursing in my veins flow forth for my King and my Fatherland. This is — — civic duty!”

(France’s army) — he at last believed that it would be glorious for him to enter the lists of combat as well: he accordingly declared war upon Bonaparte, and in one of the first engagements I met my death.

Frederick.

Prince, is what you say here possible? Can it be conceived that my nephew (the King) knew the interest of Prussia so little as to commit such a piece of rashness?” —

(Further down:) “Withdraw yourself, Prince, unworthy of my name.” — “may all those who shared your folly with you, after they have been punished above for their silliness, soon be reunited with you.” — — “And you, Bonaparte! — — Forgive the weakness of a King, surrounded by seducers, etc.”

[p. 65]

The Black Register, or General Table of all the former Polish Crown and ecclesiastical estates in South Prussia which, during the time Minister von Hoym administered this province, in the years 1794 to 1798, were bestowed as grace-and-favour estates.

Number of donatories = 52
Number of estates bestowed = 241

Their pretended value at the time of donation, 3½ million thalers.
Their true value, 20 million thalers.

I. In the Department of the Chamber of Posen.

1. Privy Cabinet Councillor von Beyer. Now pensioned and living in Berlin.

  1. Lubin
  2. Wymislaw
  3. Brzyna
  4. Osowo
  5. Stenczyce
  6. Wielkowo
  7. Zelasno
  8. Woyniec
  9. Gniewowo
  10. Monschin
  11. Schwezkau

1–7: Kreis Kosten; 8–11: Fraustadt; 1–11: 70225 Thlr.

Notes and Corrections. The annual revenues of these eleven estates now amount, at the very least, to 8000 thalers. Their true value may therefore indisputably be reckoned at 100000 thalers. The deed of donation is dated Berlin, 14 January 1797, and signed by Hoym and Rech. It reads: As a token of Our most gracious satisfaction with the long years of faithful and upright service rendered to Us and Our Royal House, etc. And nearly all of them read thus.

[p. 66]

2. Lieutenant-General von Bischofswerder. Now pensioned and living on his fine estate of Marquard, one German mile from Potsdam, which the former King likewise gave him.

  1. Bieganowo
  2. Przewierzyn
  3. Byton
  4. Struzewo

1–2: Radziejewo; 3–4: Brzesc; 1–4: 18000 Thlr.

Note. This so very low valuation is notorious; for Bischofswerder sold these four estates to Count von Lüttichau for 25000 Friedrichs d’or.

3. Major-General von Blücher.

  1. Duninow
  2. Tobenczna
  3. Szadow
  4. Nowa Wies
  5. Krzement

1–5: Kowal; 28000 Thlr.

Note. Since the annual revenues certainly amount to 6000 thalers, one may without hesitation reckon the true value of these five estates at 120000 thalers.

[p. 67]

4. Colonel von Böhmcken, now at Ruppin with the Ferdinand Regiment; formerly Aide-de-camp to the King at Potsdam.

Sokolowo

Brzesc, 21925 Thlr.

Note. True value between 40 and 50000 thalers. Deed of donation dated Berlin, 25 January 1797.

5. Privy Finance Councillor Boumann.

  1. Lubrzc
  2. Chrustowo
  3. Ostrowite

1–2: Szroda; 3: Powidz; 1–3: 15000 Thlr.

Note. The annual leasehold yield now amounts to 4000 Thlr. For Lubrzc alone, which has splendid meadows and woodlands, Count Kwilecky of Dobrojewo recently offered Boumann’s son — employed as an assessor at the Posen Chamber — 12000 Thlr.

6. Major von Brodowsky, in the Suite at Potsdam.

Lagiewnick

Posen, 2650 Thlr.

Note. Sold in June 1801 for 25000 Thlr.

7. City President Eisenberg in Berlin.

  1. Pietrzykowo
  2. Jadamirz
  3. Wronbryn
  4. Wronbryn Hauländerei

1–4: Peisern; 23350 Thlr.

Note. Now leased to a certain von Jaworowitz for 2000 Thlr. annually. True value 40000 Thlr. After the riot at Breslau, in which 72 persons perished, Eisenberg had to travel to Breslau and investigate the affair. On that occasion Hoym fell on his knees before Eisenberg and begged him, for God’s sake, not to ruin him. Hence, later, this donation. Deed of donation dated Berlin, 25 January 1797.

[p. 68]

8. Major von Grawert, in the Suite at Potsdam. General-Adjutant of the Cavalry to the King.

  1. Grabowo
  2. Krzywagora

1–2: Peisern; 15450 Thlr.

Note. Leased to a domain lessee (Amtmann) Nehring for 1500 Thlr. annually. True value, even by a fair reckoning, 30000 Thlr. Deed of donation dated Berlin, 25 January 1797.

9. Major von Hünerbein, in the Suite at Potsdam.

  1. Obra
  2. Jasieniec
  3. Zodyn
  4. Kielpini
  5. Nieborza
  6. Krulla
  7. Winiza
  8. Chorzemin
  9. Jasienieci
  10. All the German Hauländereien belonging to these estates

1–10: Bomst; 100000 Thlr.

Note. The annual yield of all these estates already now approaches 10000 Thlr.

[p. 69]

10. Lieutenant-General Prince Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, at Breslau. See No. 8 in the Department of Kalisch.

  1. Town of Betsche
  2. Schwiegoszyn
  3. Stocki
  4. Lowin
  5. Gloszewo
  6. Dormowo
  7. Wieniec

1–6: Meseritz; 7: Brzesc; 3–7: 77250 Thlr.

Note. These estates, together with those designated under No. 8 in the Department of Kalisch, are worth about 800000 Thlr. altogether and yield 50000 Thlr. in revenues annually; hence these estates are worth more than the debt-encumbered Principality of Ingelfingen. Some years ago the Prince was eager to exchange these scattered estates for the royal domain of Krotoschin, already coveted by so many speculators; but Cabinet Councillor Beyme prevented the execution of this project, and rightly so. On this occasion the Prince himself, in the cabinet of the present King, gave the above-mentioned annual yield as high as 50000 thalers. The late King had actually consented only to a donation that should bring the Prince 6000 thalers a year.

11. Court Marshal Count von Kayserling.

  1. Town of Priment
  2. Alt Kloster
  3. Lupice
  4. Mauche
  5. Friedendorff

1–5: Fraustadt; 59000 Thlr.

[p. 70]

Note. It is true that Kayserling paid 40000 Thlr. in purchase money, but in return he now draws 6000 Thlr. annually in revenues from these estates.

12. The von Krackwitz. He was Master of the Travelling Stables to the former King, and was then called Leberenz. He now lives in Berlin.

  1. Koslowo
  2. Siemowo

1–2: Kröben; 30150 Thlr.

Note. The true value is about 100000 thalers and the annual yield between 4 and 5000 thalers. Both would be higher if proper management were provided. The favour of Cabinet Councillor Beyer’s wife was probably the chief channel from which this gift flowed. Her husband, who is already designated under No. 1 with eleven estates, was once with Krackwitz at Posen and very good-naturedly related, at the table of the Chamber President, that this donation was a reward for Krackwitz having twice saved the late King’s life during the campaign. Other people, however, will have nothing to do with this account. Krackwitz sold these estates to the Landrat von Pottworowsky in the Kosten district for 60000 thalers.

13. Major-General von Larisch.

  1. Liekarzewice
  2. Woytostwozakowice

1–2: Brzesc; 9000 Thlr.

[p. 71]

14. The Danish Count von Lüttichau, who emigrated there. See No. 10 in the Department of Kalisch.

  1. Town of Kowal
  2. Town of Szadek
  3. Kruschyn
  4. Schwiodnik
  5. Popowice
  6. Polschewo
  7. Tarnowo
  8. Konojad
  9. Town and Starosty of Kopanitz
  10. Groitzig
  11. Lajiewnik
  12. Kalinowice
  13. Diabolek

1: Kowal; 2–5: Brzesc; 6, 12–13: Radziejewo; 7: Posen; 8: Kosten; 9–10: Bomst; 11: Brzesc; 1–13: 84000 Thlr.

Note. These estates, together with those under No. 10 in the Department of Kalisch, are worth 800,000 thalers. The circumstances surrounding this Lüttichau are very confused and puzzling. One therefore contents oneself here with merely noting that he at times lent his name to donations that were in fact received by others who were not to be named. This was the case, for example, with the estate of Tarnowo, No. 7, situated two miles from Posen, which Government Councillor von Grävenitz in Posen received as a reward for deciding, in the divorce suit of the foolish Count Gurowsky against his wife, a daughter of the Bischofswerder family who had been foisted upon him, so much in favour of this person that 72,000 thalers had to be paid out to her by her husband. Grävenitz gave Lüttichau 3,000 thalers for Tarnowo and afterwards sold it for 65,000 thalers. Likewise Lüttichau had to cede the estate of Konojad, No. 8, to Justice Councillor

[p. 72]

Reinhard in Posen, pursuant to a convention secretly concluded with Hoym, as a reward for the fact that this Reinhard, who helped organize the South Prussian mortgage system and was therefore very well informed about the estates falling vacant and their value, selected the estates to be given away. The deed of donation is dated 25 January 1797 and reads: In order to give him a token of Our Royal favour, grace, and benevolence, We have resolved etc. The cabinet order to Minister von Hoym begins: In accordance with your proposal etc.

15. Minister Marquis von Lucchesini in Potsdam, now Envoy in Paris.

  1. The starosta domain of Meseritz
  2. A large demesne farm attached to it
  3. A large mill
  4. A copper-hammer works
  5. A sawmill
  6. Käusch
  7. Niepter
  8. Solben
  9. Dürlertel
  10. Rogsen
  11. The rents of the villages of Sären, Tempel, Burschau, Langenpfuhl, and Morke, situated in the Neumark, which from ancient times have owed rent to the starosta domain of Meseritz

1–5: Meseritz; 6–10: Meseritz; 11: Bomst; 1–11: 151500 Thlr.

Note. This donation, on account of its excellent, well-rounded situation and the flowing-through of the Obra, is one of the most considerable, important, and beautiful. It is now judicially assessed at 500,000 thalers, and is fully worth this. The subtle Italian, with priestly keenness of eye, correctly spied out the best spot and knew how to appropriate it to himself. His former diplomatic exertions in Warsaw are hereby richly rewarded. It was fair that from the partition of Poland, which he brought about, he should get a piece. This starosta domain of Meseritz formerly belonged to Prince Jablonowsky. The deed of donation, dated Berlin, 14 January 1797, reads: In proof of Our most gracious satisfaction with the faithful, distinguished, and beneficial services rendered to Us and Our Royal House etc.

[p. 73]

16. Baron von Schilden. Formerly Chamberlain to Princess Ferdinand, now appointed in the same dignity with the Queen. No further merits are known of him.

  1. Goroslowo
  2. Kierza Gura
  3. Boniszewo

1–3: Kosten; 21800 Thlr.

Note. Recently sold for 30,000 thalers.

17. Major von Schwichow, of the Life Guards in Potsdam.

  1. Laskow
  2. Miedzichow
  3. Osnow

1–3: Gnesen; 11425 Thlr.

Note. Frederick the Great is said to have formerly done him a wrong regarding various claims to a fief in Pomerania, whence this compensation. The reason may, at any rate, be listened to. Among the present examples it is at least one of the best. Schwichow has now sold these three estates to Government Councillor Fromm in Posen for 40,000 thalers. Deed of donation dated Berlin, 25 January 1797.

[p. 74]

18. The dealer in fancy goods von Treskow in Berlin. He was ennobled under the previous reign and is a son-in-law of the rich brandy-distiller George in Berlin. Since no particular merits toward the state are known of this Treskow, one must with good reason be appalled at this enormous donation. See further No. 10 in the Warsaw Department.

  1. The fine and rich monastery of Owinsk, one mile from Posen
  2. Mieskowo
  3. Debogura
  4. Radziavi
  5. Wieszonka
  6. Borzinek
  7. Szorzenzin
  8. Radojewo
  9. Truskolowo
  10. Czerwona
  11. Chlodowa
  12. Biedrusko
  13. Bolechewo

1–13: Posen; 73325 Thlr.

Note. Owinsk has excellent forests, while the neighbouring former starosta domain of Szrim, which has become a royal domain, has not a single tree, so that the official in Szrim must buy not only his building timber but even his firewood from Treskow, and this purchase has to be credited to him on the domain establishment of Szrim. Near Owinsk and Szrim lies the lordship of Murawanna Goslina. This the daughter of the Bischofswerder family (see the note to No. 14) obtained from her husband in place of the 72,000 thalers in cash that Grävenitz awarded her. Hoym thereupon bought her Murawanna Goslina from this lady for 72,000 thalers, and sold it again to Treskow for 120,000 thalers. What a traffic! Treskow, however, is the most useful of all the donees on account of the tireless, sensible, indeed lavish zeal with which he sets his estates in order and makes his peasants industrious. These estates, together with those recorded under No. 10 in the Warsaw Department, have a value of approximately 350,000 thalers.

[p. 75]

In the deed of donation dated Berlin, 24 January 1797, nothing further is given as the reason for the donation than: Out of Royal favour borne toward him and most gracious benevolence etc.

19. Count von Unruh, owner of the town of Karge in South Prussia not far from Züllichow. The same man who during the Revolutionary period had already been placed beneath the gallows in Warsaw.

  1. Woynowo
  2. Chwalin
  3. Alt Kramzig
  4. Neu Kramzig

1–4: Bomst; 21150 Thlr.

Note. He formerly belonged to the Prussian party in Warsaw and is an insufferable man, without any understanding, yet withal an exceedingly arrogant babbler. These estates were given to him only to stop his mouth. Their leasehold yield is 4,000 thalers annually.

[p. 76]

20. Councillor of the Nobility von Unruh, owner of Heinersdorf near Züllichow in the Neumark. A brother-in-law of Colonel von Köckeritz.

  1. Groß Posemuchel
  2. Klein Posemuchel, or more properly the starosta domain of Bomst without the town. For the former are only town demesne farms.

1–2: Bomst; the donation valuation has remained unknown. Yet this donation was not long ago sold for 80,000 thalers.

Note. These estates were in fact given to Colonel von Köckeritz, Adjutant-General to the King, and were donated and recorded in the name of this brother-in-law only because he and his brother-in-law, on the basis of a covenant of hereditary succession existing between the two of them, regard and treat their joint property as one. To the honour of Köckeritz it is here noted that Hoym had to offer him this donation four times, and in the end to press it upon him, before he could bring himself to accept it. And even then he accepted it only after he had given notice of the matter to the Crown Prince (the present King). One may observe, moreover, from this manoeuvre of Hoym’s how urgently he strove to ingratiate himself in good time with the closest friends of the heir to the throne and to win them over to himself as far as possible. Deed of donation dated Berlin, 25 January 1797. It reads: In order to give Unruh a token of Our Royal favour and grace, We have resolved etc.

[p. 77]

21. Lieutenant-General von Wendessen in Warsaw. See No. 11 in the Warsaw Department.

Czermno

Brzesc, 19375 Thlr.

Note. Wendessen presumably entered into very friendly relations with Hoym during the period before the acquisition of South Prussia, when he was in garrison at Breslau. Deed of donation dated Berlin, 25 January 1798.

20 [sic]. Major-General von Zastrow in Posen, formerly Adjutant-General to the King.

  1. Gurka
  2. Tworsikowo
  3. Gura
  4. Schimanowo
  5. Willichowo
  6. Deutsch Presse
  7. Widziszewo
  8. Slupia

1–4: Szrim; 5, 7: Kosten; 6: Fraustadt; 8: Kröben; 1–8: 87650 Thlr.

Note. These estates, situated in the most fertile region of the Voivodeship of Posen, are in part confiscations and previously belonged hereditarily to Count Wybicky, well known in the revolutionary history of Poland, who now lives with Kosciusko in Paris. Zastrow has wisely refrained from having these estates appraised up to now. Nevertheless they are at the very least worth 200000 thalers now. They lie only 3 to 4 miles from Posen.

[p. 78]

II. In the Department of the Chamber of Kalisch.

1/23. Prince Czettwertinsky.

Starosty of Tusczyn

Peterkau, unknown.

Note. Probably insignificant and given to a native-born Pole only to affect impartiality.

2/24. General von Favrat in Glatz.

Willamowo

Szadeck, 5500 Thlr.

Note. The Cabinet Order of 20 April 1797 begins, like most similar ones to Hoym: In accordance with your proposal, etc. The true value is 36,000 thalers, after Favrat had already had 20,000 thalers’ worth of timber felled.

3/25. Privy Councillor von Goldbeck, son of the Grand Chancellor, who prudently had the donation written in the son’s name.

  1. Russow
  2. Dyfallow
  3. Klokinie

1–3: Kalisch; 28,600 Thlr.

In the deed of donation the late King established, in perpetuity, a considerable and peculiar remission of the dues on these estates, below even the fixed taxes of the nobility. Improved with this privilege, Goldbeck jun. sold them to a Baron von Seld for 62,000 thalers. Very much to his own loss, however. For according to the judicial assessment, which Seld had drawn up, is

[p. 79]

Russow 64374 Thlr. 8 Gr. — Pf.
Dykalow 56551 = 10 = 10 =
= 120925 Thlr. 18 Gr. 10 Pf.

valued; and moreover Klokinie has not yet been assessed at all. Incidentally the question arises: how could a just Grand Chancellor accept, or even desire, the aforementioned remission of dues, as a very offensive exemption from the general burdens?

4/26. Lieutenant-Colonel von Hagen, of the Grävenitz Regiment in Glogau, now Commander of the Treuenfels Regiment in Breslau.

Bogumilow

Siradz, 15,000 Thlr.

Note. He is the only one who was cheated in this donation business; for he sold Bogumilow for 12,000 thalers. But for that reason he is also a very upright man. The buyer was Hoym himself, who had after all made the assessment of the donation. A Baron von Stößel had to lend his name for the purchase and furnish it to Hoym.

5/27. Minister Count von Haugwitz, possessor of the great lordship of Krappitz in Upper Silesia.

  1. Starosty of Klobucko
  2. Kroszyce

1: Czenstochau; 2: a portion of Cracow; 1–2: 135,000 Thlr.

Note. It is said that this man, out of patriotism, takes no salary as Minister but serves for nothing. Nevertheless it is quite certain that he did after all take these estates and has already sold them for 200,000 thalers.

[p. 80]

6/28. Princess of Hesse-Philippsthal.

Scholtisey of Siradz

Siradz, 3400 Thlr.

7/29. General von Hirschfeld, Commander of the Life Guards in Potsdam.

Marianowo Kusznica

Czenstochau, 9700 Thlr.

8/30. Lieutenant-General Prince Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen in Breslau.

  1. Trobozyn
  2. Nowa-Wies
  3. Oszyni
  4. Lazy
  5. Szellewen

1–5: Konin; 12,000 Thlr.

Note. See No. 10 in the Posen Department.

9/31. Count Luba. A native-born Pole.

Starosty of Stawisczyn, without the town

Konin, unknown.

Note. Not granted hereditarily; but only a confirmation of the grant made in Polish times, for 44 years. Luba sold this right of use for 11,000 ducats to the present Madame von Biernazka. This lady is the same Bischofswerder daughter who married Count Gurowsky in 1793 and who is mentioned under No. 14.

10/32. The Danish Minister and Count von Lüttichau. See No. 14 in the Posen Department.

  1. Bliszanowo
  2. Zborrow
  3. Grodziskow
  4. Cekow
  5. Prasuki
  6. Stare
  7. Kucharp
  8. Podlesi

1–6: Kalisch; 7–8: Adelnau; 1–8: 26,000 Thlr.

[p. 81]

Note. The shameless fraud in the value stated alongside is proven; for the estate Kucharp, No. 7, is judicially assessed at 90,000 thalers by itself alone.

11/33. Legation Councillor Neumann.

  1. Marschwaz
  2. Cinek
  3. Michalowo
  4. The Iwanowice priestly ground

1–4: Kalisch, unknown.

12/34. Chamberlain, Chevalier Saint Patern.

Dobron

In the Intendancy of Fabianice, unknown.

Note. Was recently sold for 17,000 thalers.

13/35. Major von Plötz of the Grävenitz Regiment.

Wonglzow

Warta, 10,000 Thlr.

Note. Sold for 20,000 thalers. The Cabinet Order is dated 20 April 1797.

14/36. Major von Pontanus of the artillery. Directed the siege of Warsaw.

  1. Dzigerzew
  2. Jacubice
  3. Laszkow
  4. Starosty of Siradz

1–4: Siradz, unknown.

Note. The judicial assessment of the Government in Kalisch amounts to 200,000 thalers. Pontanus could have obtained this price, but nonetheless would not sell.

[p. 82]

15/37. Lieutenant-General von Rüchel in Potsdam.

  1. The lordship or starosty of Osterczeczow
  2. Boreck
  3. Sidlikow
  4. Zaconky
  5. Parana
  6. Niedzwiec
  7. Bukownice
  8. The ecclesiastical estate Kalischkowice

1–8: Osterczeczow; 30,000 Thlr.

Note. Rüchel received the lordship of Osterczeczow, or the first 7 numbers, according to the deed of donation, under the title of a grace-and-favour estate and by an assessment of 20,000 thalers as a gift. Immediately after the donation a whirlwind swept through the great forests of this grace-and-favour estate and actually threw down a few firs. At this Rüchel raised a mighty outcry and pretended that he did not even want to keep this supposedly ruined grace-and-favour estate at all. Hoym thereupon had the windfall assessed at 40,000 thalers and arranged for Rüchel to be given, by way of compensation, Kalischkowice as well, at an assessment of 10,000 thalers. Now it was not long before Rüchel sold all 8 estates, without ever having visited or seen them, to Government Councillor von Reibnitz in Kalisch for 130,000 thalers. After the purchase Reibnitz had them judicially assessed, and it was then found that the lordship of Osterczeczow, or the first 7 estates, is worth 341,000 thalers and the ecclesiastical estate Kalischkowice 39,000 thalers, all together therefore 380,000 thalers. Now Rüchel wanted to sue Reibnitz, claiming that he had been injured by more than half, and to rescind the sale,

[p. 83]

but he did not succeed. Reibnitz already has 12,000 thalers of income from these estates, yet still owes Rüchel 90,000 thalers at 5 per cent.

Euclid teaches that the part is smaller than the whole, and God Himself cannot alter that. Nevertheless, Hoym managed it. For how else could he, on a little estate that he assessed at 20,000 thalers, and where Rüchel had not repaired a single fence-post and still less carried out any other improvements, declare a forest-damage of 40,000 thalers a few months after the donation, seeing that the forest is after all only a part of an estate? And in general, what sort of little estate is it where so great a forest-damage can occur and yet the forest still remains standing! One sees plainly that either the assessment of Osterczeczow at 20,000 thalers or the assessment of the forest-damage at 40,000 thalers must have been false.

16/38. War and Forest Councillor von Triebenfeld in Breslau, favourite of Minister von Hoym.

  1. Piotrow
  2. Koscielnawies
  3. Glogowa
  4. Krzywschondowa
  5. Lasky
  6. Pawlowska
  7. Nowa Wies
  8. Schmardke

1: Kalisch; 2–4: Adelnau; 5–8: Osterczeczow; 1–4 assessed at 31,000 thalers at the donation; for 5–8 (the lordship of Lasky) a hereditary-tenure sum of 20,000 thalers given.

Note. In the spring of 1797 these exceedingly excellent estates were assessed by the Government in Kalisch, after deduction of all taxes and dues charged upon them, at a net value of over 700,000 thalers. Among others the following estates, in the following manner:

[p. 84]

Piotrow and Pawlowka 19044 Thlr. 1 Gr. 8 Pf.
Koscielna Wies 195415 = 22 = 6 =
Glogowa 151087 = 10 = — =
Krzywschondowa 47888 = 3 = 4 =
Lasky 271061 = 4 = 2 =
= 684496 Thlr. 17 Gr. 8 Pf.

But here the assessment of Nowa Wies and Schmardke is still lacking. On these estates considerable capital sums are entered for Bischofswerder. Triebenfeld recently sold them all together to Prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt for 400,000 thalers, and the latter in turn sold them, by contract dated Berlin at the Golden Sun, 9 March 1801, to the Saxon Chief Forest Master and Junior Chamberlain von Schirnding for 750,000 Thlr.

17/39. General Count von Wartensleben in Liegnitz.

Tyczyn

Siradz, 3500 Thlr.

18/40. Captain von Stromberg.

Kamsko

Konin; the donation-assessment has remained unknown.

Note. True value 50,000 thalers. Stromberg now sells alder-wood year in, year out for several thousand thalers. His brother, formerly a Russian major, then a South Prussian Landrat and now an official in Dolzig, was the one who was to marry Madame Schreiber in Breslau, former mistress of Minister Hoym, once the latter had tired of her. This too would have happened, had Schreiber not suddenly died.

[p. 85]

19/41. Prince Louis of Württemberg, Prussian General of Cavalry. Now in Russia.

  1. Zarembice
  2. Przyrow
  3. Klobuckowice
  4. Kuchary
  5. Groß Malusche
  6. Brusisce
  7. Zawade
  8. Konin
  9. Wanskow
  10. Jaszkow
  11. Luslawice
  12. Rudnicky
  13. Baby
  14. Okolowice
  15. Wielgomlin
  16. Przegoszice
  17. Laborszyce
  18. Lubnick
  19. Dzierskowice
  20. Jessiersko

1–12: Czenstochau; 13–17: Radomsk; 18–20: Osterczeczow; these 20 estates were granted to the Prince against a purchase-money of 20,000 Thlr. and against payment of a canon of 13,398 Thlr. determined at the donation.

Note. In the Berlin Intelligence Gazettes of June 1801 the first two estates alone, Zarembice and Przyrow, were offered for sale according to a judicial assessment of 82,300 thalers 14 Gr. 6 Pf.

[p. 86]

III. In the Department of the Chamber of Warsaw.

1/42. Lieutenant-General Count von Brühl.

  1. Kaski
  2. Buszyce
  3. Baranow
  4. Gocin
  5. Grzybeck
  6. Jaktorow
  7. Ogidel Mill
  8. Ogidel Colony
  9. Michalow
  10. Grody
  11. Gegolinow
  12. Wizutki
  13. Strumiary
  14. Stare
  15. Ostarow

1–15: Suchaczew; 32500 Thlr.

The deed of donation, dated Berlin, 14 January 1797, reads: In proof of Our most gracious satisfaction with the loyal, distinguished (?) and beneficial (?) services rendered to Us and to Our Royal House, etc.

2/43. General von Chlebowsky in Warsaw, formerly in the suite at Potsdam. He drew up the dislocation plan for the garrisons of South Prussia in the years 1794 and 1795.

  1. Nowidwor
  2. Alt-Rawa
  3. Alt-Regno
  4. Podskarbice
  5. Komorow

1–5: Rawa; 33000 Thlr.

Note. The deed of donation is dated Berlin, 17 June 1796. The annual lease amounts to 6000 thalers.

[p. 87]

Komorow alone yields 1500 thalers a year. He gave this village to his present wife — previously divorced from two husbands, and last from War Councillor Buchholz in Posen — while she was still his mistress, because he feared she might use against him the secrets of his that she was privy to. At the homage ceremony in Warsaw, which Hoym received, Chlebowsky is said to have addressed this Hoym as nothing less than: Your Royal Majesty.

3/44. Michael von Dzierbicky, a native nobleman.

Starosty of Blonie

Blonie, insignificant.

Note. It has been made over to him for emphyteutic possession for 12 years, and so is not, properly speaking, a gift.

4/45. Lieutenant-General von Dolffs of the cavalry in Breslau.

  1. Strzelice
  2. Luvin
  3. Myslownia
  4. Lychota
  5. Wyrobky

1–5: Gostinin; 20000 Thlr.

Note. The deed of donation is dated Berlin, 9 August 1796.

5/46. Chief Postmaster Goldbeck in Warsaw.

Xiondczewice

Blonie, 11000 Thlr.

Note. He received this estate merely through an oversight. The Grand Chancellor von Goldbeck actually intended it for his son. But an error committed in

[p. 88]

the Cabinet Chancery — perhaps deliberately — was the cause of its becoming the property of this Postmaster. Once he had it, it could not well be taken from him again. For the Grand Chancellor’s son other and indeed better estates were then sought out, which he consequently received later than his namesake. Vid. No. 3 in the Department of Kalisch. The deed of donation is dated Berlin, 9 August 1796.

6/47. Artillery Lieutenant von Holzendorff.

  1. Gluskow
  2. Grocholle
  3. Malawies

1–3: Blonie; 8400 Thlr.

Note. The true value is at least 24000 Thlr. The deed of donation is dated Berlin, 9 Aug. 1796.

7/48. Minister Count von Hoym in Breslau, Chief of the entire Financial, Domains, and Chamber Administration of the Duchy of Silesia.

  1. Gurca
  2. Czerwonkanowa
  3. Stara Wiskitti
  4. Town of Wiskitti
  5. Koslowice
  6. Skule
  7. Wola Wiedniewska
  8. Zyska Mill
  9. Czidy Cziegonowska
  10. Bednarsky
  11. Grody
  12. Ruda
  13. Sredzgory

1–13: Suchaczew; 69500 Thlr.

He actually presented himself with these estates and afterwards exchanged them to the Lubinsky family. In return, besides a sum of money that never became known, they gave him the lordship of Szyduik, situated two miles from Kalisch, which yielded 10000 thalers a year. This he finally sold to Justice Councillor Rönneberg from Mecklenburg for 198000 thalers.

[p. 89]

Note. At the fee office he declared the value of the adjoining gift at only 60000 thalers. He thus defrauded the Monarch not only with regard to the value itself, but also with regard to the fee office — an ill spectacle in a Minister who is supposed to watch over truth and order and over the revenues of the state treasuries themselves. In the deed of donation, in this case countersigned merely by Grand Chancellor Goldbeck, dated Berlin, 14 Sept. 1796, the ground of the gift is stated as: To give Our etc. Hoym a particular mark of Our most gracious satisfaction and highest goodwill, as well as of Our gratitude, for the loyal and beneficial services rendered by him to Us and to Our Royal House for a considerable number of years with the most laudable zeal, etc.!!!

8/49. Lieutenant-General von Köhler of the cavalry.

The lordship and town of Osmolin

Gostinin, 14000 Thlr.

Note. The deed of donation is dated Berlin, 3 May 1797.

[p. 90]

9/50. Prince Radzivill, son-in-law of Prince Ferdinand, the King’s great-uncle.

  1. Town of Bomilow
  2. Village of Bomilow
  3. Wola Bomislowska
  4. Chamin
  5. Wola Chydlowieka
  6. Budy Bolimowska

1–6: Suchaczew; 32500 Thlr.

10/51. Fancy-Goods Dealer von Treskow. See No. 18 in the Department of Posen.

  1. Dlugolenka
  2. Niedrzakow
  3. Budy
  4. Zabinke
  5. Skowroda
  6. Scholtisey Dlugolenka
  7. Muchnowo
  8. Muchnowo Colony
  9. Skarzew

1–9: Gostinin; 12500 Thlr.

11/52. Lieutenant-General von Wendessen in Warsaw. See No. 21 in the Department of Posen.

Osermno

Gostinin, 14200 Thlr.

[p. 91]

Experiences Gathered on a Walk in and around Berlin, in April 1807.

My Friend!

You wish to know something of the news of the day from Berlin; you call upon me to send you a few reports from here. But the wish meets, in its fulfilment, a chief difficulty — and do you know which? Siegfried von Lindenberg puts it very well when he says to his lector ornaris: Where nothing happens, nothing can be written of it! Yet I am in a position to convey trifles to you, among which there may perhaps be one or another that interests you; that not all of it is of great importance, you will grasp beforehand.

To the matter at hand: When someone has been on a journey, he has something to tell! says Asmus, and I add: even when he merely takes a walk, all manner of things cross his path that he may convey to his friends and acquaintances; it is the listener’s task to lift the kernel — if any is to be found there — out of the shell! So then, listen: my humble self took a

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walk yesterday, and hereby conveys to you her experiences and observations; she clears her throat and begins:

“It is Sunday, the air is mild and bright, all the walkers have come out, all the pilgrimage-spots of the strollers are overcrowded, today no city-dweller stays at home, everyone must greet and enjoy the spring: one way or another, seeing or gaping, hearing or listening. Well then, I too will roam about the royal city; through the dark groups of pleasure-pilgrims, through the rows of the curious I will wander and hear and see: today there is material for meditations and speculations in abundance.” With this monologue I took my hat and stepped out of the house.

There a troop of French soldiers, who arrived only yesterday, marches ahead of me, all of them very young fellows of the latest conscription; they pass across the Wilhelmsplatz, close by the statue of General Seidlitz. What? The commander’s countenance seems to take on life; his features shape themselves differently, between his eyebrows and on his brow the furrows deepen, the gaze takes on expression, the mouth seems to open to the question: Do I really behold a part of the French army? Are these the sons of those warriors I beat at Rossbach? How came they into the residence of my great King, my Frederick? Yes, good Seidlitz, you see rightly; they are

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it, they are here; but Fritz is no more, and few of your calibre command the Prussians, while over there, in place of a Soubise, a multitude of brave men, and at their head a hero, Napoleon, lives: Sink away, valiant man; in the environs of Jena and Auerstädt that people avenged the triumph at Rossbach that you had wrung from them, and you now cut a poor figure. Sink away! Sink away!

Beneath those trees a pair of men walk along solitary, two burghers conversing. Off to them — perhaps I shall overhear something. Right enough, they are absorbed in the subject of their talk, they do not notice me, I catch every one of their words; the friends lament to each other the misfortune of their present condition. When I — says the one — obtained the master’s rights in the time of Frederick the Second and established myself, all went well: the King supported my manufactory-owner, and he supported me; as soon as a piece of cloth came off the loom, I carried it to him and received cash and good payment, and even an advance if I needed it. How different afterwards! The monarch does — probably for reasons — little or nothing for the manufactures; poor payment followed, and I even had at times to wait long for it; thus I came down like everyone of our trade. And now, on top of all, the unhappy war. All commerce has ceased, or is at any rate negligible, no one dares have anything made, to buy

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anything; I have had foreign troops billeted on me, in these days I have had to pay barracks-money, because for some time now the soldiers are no longer quartered in burghers’ houses but lodged in the barracks. Now I am at the end; to beg I am ashamed, I go hungry with my poor wife and with my three crying children. He dried his wet eyes, his friend began to comfort him, I reached hastily into my pocket and — found it empty. What presses upon that poor man torments me too; our public treasuries are removed elsewhere, many officials receive no salary, no one asks for work, no one pays, whoever has money hoards it for the most pressing emergency. Whence to take it? Poor craftsman! Wretched war!

I went on.

There again a group: several merchants, telling one another that in these days the French government has requisitioned, against payment, all the Russian potash in store in Berlin, probably because at this moment some manufactories in the interior of France are short of it.

What a herd of ragged beggars, small and grown, falls upon and detains everyone there: Naturally! Who can give much when he himself suffers want? Who can be charitable when he himself is impoverished? Who gives the industrious poor employment? To be sure, charity is the Berliners’ foremost virtue — for which one forgives them

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many another pet folly — yet now what they are able to give does not suffice, and the first benefactors of the needy (our gracious royal couple) are removed elsewhere. The Poor-Relief Board is nearly dissolved, and had not worthy musicians in the course of this year given a few concerts for the benefit of the poor, despair would have had to breed dreadful scenes; indeed, the mortality among us, on account of great helplessness, has now for more than a year been so great that each week on average 30 to 40 more people die than are born. Whither can this lead?

I pass along the Wilhelmsstraße and come out under the Linden.

My, how the crowd there presses and bustles, how the motley sea of uniforms, velvet, satin, taffeta, net-lace, cambric, muslin, calico, and broadcloth surges and billows up and down. There the beggars, and here the splendour. An oppressive contrast! Fops with spectacles on their noses, false calves, feeble nerves, and empty pockets; supple maidens with painted cheeks, whited sepulchres, and beside them their bread-thieves, pretty women with a wanton look, murderesses of their children, the shame of their husbands. The wenched-for gowns gleam and rustle and the borrowed net-lace dazzles: they are the sails and flags of a privateer. And there the matron, likewise decked out to a fright. And though at home the bed be pawned

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or sold: from the outward glitter not a millionth part may be allowed to fade. The woman is like a hothouse; take from her the warmth of the pawnbroker and the leaves fall off. On the arm of yonder lady hangs a National Guardsman whose trouser-seams are garnished fourfold with gold and whose buttonholes are trimmed with the same mass: but at home? There too, perhaps, is weeping and gnashing of teeth; his bearing shows that he is a tradesman, and he probably suffers like everyone else from the circumstances, but the gold cries out: Confound it, look here, how rich I am! O, poor glittering misery! why does the crowd so gladly choose you over modest propriety! Fortunately, walking beside the gold-man are three other National Guardsmen, respectably clad in the uniform as it ought to be. Well then, let the shiny fellow pass; among a herd of four there is bound to be one beast afflicted with the staggers. Do we not also now and then find foolish princes, generals, and priests; under the moon there travels no perfection at all. Puff yourself up as you please, brass-plated man, perhaps you, poor wretch, know no better joy! Only do not become, like the former gendarme officers, the haughty scourge of your brothers without a uniform — as your gold stripes suggest — for then we shall pass you by with a smile, though not with contempt. There again a National Guardsman with a military moustache! Ah, good heavens! What is this supposed to be: he seems to want to frighten old women

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grey, as the saying goes. A burgher with such a beard is a Cato with the whip, or summer in a fur cap. Ugh, how it glitters and dazzles from the palace all the way to here! And we are expected just now to render contribution and pay quartering-money, and it is precisely those glittering people who commonly sigh and complain most bitterly about the circumstance, wanting to be considered quite poor for it. You fools! What should be the barometer of wealth but your outward show? and it is such that one must take Berlin, in its oppressive poverty, for the richest city in Germany. If only someone would advise the authorities that the fools who dress and comport and squander themselves beyond their station and their means, merely for show, should be stripped of their rags of misery and have them auctioned off for the benefit of the wiser sort, and that a dress-code be introduced for the madhouse-dwellers, for much misery springs from it. They would gladly shirk all public burdens in order to purchase a showy doublet. If taxes are to be paid, one hears complaints and refusals; when quartering comes, they would gladly cry out in vexation, as a stingy Jewess did lately: But the Emperor of France sends all too many of his people down upon our necks; does our King really let so many march off to France? People perish in their folly.

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Why does the crowd stream toward that point? What is there? Ah, about 150 Russians have arrived, French prisoners of war being led to the garrison commandant: pity and curiosity draw the people thither. I am pushed along with them, and cannot help but look at the prisoners too. Young men, but their misfortune has worn them down, they are pale and gaunt. A woman is busy distributing money among them; one sees that she gives con Amore, and so I ask a bystander the name of the charitable woman whose face speaks comfort and hope to the men while her hand hands them gifts. She is — the neighbour replies — the wife of the tailor Kräger from the Adlerstraße No. 7. How much good this woman, a native of Courland, has done for the captured Russians since they began passing through here is scarcely to be described, for that she merely gives them money is the least of it; but she supports the unfortunates still more actively and better. She and Countess Löwenstern, by their humane, almost motherly care, by their well-directed benefactions, have preserved or restored the lives of hundreds; they have nursed and refreshed the sick left behind at the pontoon house from almost every transport, with warm and undivided love of mankind; they have even staked their own health, going about among the gravely ill and half-dead (whose disease might perhaps be epidemic

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or whose exhalations poisoned the atmosphere) in order to ease suffering, to bring comfort and courage, and to apply means of preservation; they have engaged extraordinary nurses who had command of the Russian language, in order to comfort the sufferers; they have begged permission to take a number of the most gravely ill into their houses for treatment; the latter has indeed been refused them on respectable grounds, but the good will behind it is nevertheless most honourable!

— Yes indeed — I exclaimed — most honourable, and most worthy of a reward — beyond the great requital of their own conscience; and when one day the God of Peace shall again reign over the North, the Emperor Alexander will learn the names of these valiant women and will requite them for their humane care of his unfortunate warriors, even though the givers do not count upon it! — Now the prisoners are led to their quarters, the pontoon house, and the Dutch recruiters follow after them, in order to obtain a few volunteer recruits from among their number.

There at his window stands the town commandant, General Hulin, a very worthy man, strict in the enforcement of duty, but also kind and fair. The latter he has again lately proved. It was on the 10th of March, the Queen’s birthday, and several families here, accustomed to celebrate this day, had company at home. One of General Hulin’s adjutants

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from the Municipality was in one such gathering. It would surely be advisable — he thinks — if I were to notify the General that I am here, and why. With this resolve he leaves the circle and betakes himself to the General. I know it — replies the worthy man to the announcement — and I find it quite good! I too have today drunk to the health of the fair lady. Go back soon to your company! — It does me good to see this man. Berlin recognizes what he does for the peace and safety of the city.

That group consists of Prussian officers, prisoners of war released on their word of honour. In the mournful look of some, in their bowed bearing, one may read the grief over their misfortune. Truly, there are many brave men among them. But others seem to take more pleasure in their present comfortable, idle condition than in the field, if only there were always plenty of coin! the wish seems legibly written in their bearing; it seems to me that in their whole demeanour, in their smile, lies the triumph: Thank God I have got so far, that I have knocked off for the day! There are several who (as the saying goes) are fat and sleek, who seem so content with their situation that they would not exchange it for any other. Thus, for instance, the G… S……, Lieutenant in the K…… regiment, only lately gave a costly ball at the English House. What must the thinker think when he hears that? First:

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Merriment is surely nowhere worse placed than in a Prussian officer taken prisoner of war: he could sit in sackcloth and ashes without being taken for a fool. Secondly: with the really severe scarcity of money, could not something better have been done with the considerable sum of money expended? So many penniless officers vegetate here, so many very destitute soldiers’ wives weep with their whimpering, helpless children: suffering men, widows, and orphans, and the Lieutenant spends his surplus on balls. Honour to the worthy Neander, Lieutenant in the Prussian Artillery Corps! He has, according to the measure of his means, given to the poor and organized a collection for the needy; in which the better sort of Berliners actively supported him: the fed and the clothed thank him, while the ball-giver is saluted by his dancing partners with an affected nod of the head and — laughed at. Which is the more agreeable?

The recruiters in Dutch service have achieved their purpose; they lead some twenty recruits away with them, and the gaping crowd streams after. Yes, yes, dear curiosity is the original sin of the Berliners. Everywhere people like to see something new, but nowhere does one run and gawk so passionately as here. If a person stands somewhere in a street who seems to be fixing his gaze on something, a crowd instantly gathers around him and the avalanche becomes a colossus. The cry: There, right on the French

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Tower, the hawk is devouring a dove! is a magic spell by which hundreds are on the spot driven thither; it is not possible to pass by, it is impossible to tear oneself away, every falling feather creates a new remark, new lingering, new astonishment. Such a hawk causes people a frightful deal of fuss. Now imagine the streets packed full when French troops arrive, or even Russians. Whoever did not see them does not pass for a true citizen of the world. What does the spectator care for his trade at home, his business? At this moment there is for him nothing else in the world but Russians.

The throng draws out through the Brandenburg Gate, and I draw along with it. Before the gate the stream divides into several arms. Straight ahead it goes toward Charlottenburg on foot, on horseback, and by carriage, to the right toward the Tents, to the left to the Hofjäger and to Kersten’s. An acquaintance runs into me, and to please him I saunter along to the left down to Kersten’s. Whew, how full and gaudy. More crowded than ever: how comes that? The officials of various departments have in these days, in accordance with the Emperor Napoleon’s promise, received their arrears of pay. The debts contracted out of necessity are paid, and one again indulges oneself. Well and good! But that alone cannot so fill the place. The gaiety of the spring day, the mania of being seen and of seeing, that is the cause. For no

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resident of the capital goes into nature for nature’s sake, but to view large gatherings.

I sit down with my acquaintance, and we begin a conversation: about what? Political subjects furnish the matter of talk, that is now the order of the day. Whoever is not dumb speaks about the events of the time, which do indeed touch us all very closely. We come to the fall of Prussia. Many an observation already made before flows in. No more of that. The sin (that is, the political-military blunders) of the fathers is the soil from which our ruin swiftly and abundantly welled and wells forth: nothing else, nothing else at all in the world, that I maintain and on that I will die. And that — replies my friend — at Jena and Auerstädt no proper commander existed.

I. Quite right; but whence arose the deficiency, whence all the blunders? I rightly reduce them to my assertion.

He. Prove it.

I. The Duke of Brunswick commanded the army; he was sunk in negligence and in fault. He spoiled everything: why? He had not advanced in the spirit of the newer art of war, he had remained standing at the tactics of the Seven Years’ War: the fault of the old men. The King took over the command; he lacks neither personal bravery nor a grasp of the whole, for in his own person he has before

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the battle of Auerstädt he formed a far better judgment of the future than the higher masters of the art of war around him. At Weimar he voiced his apprehension of being turned on the left flank, but everyone contradicted him. After setting eyes on the French soldiers he judged them quite correctly, but those about him made him believe that he was mistaken. Julius von Voß10 has set this out very well when he says: “But why did the King not act by his own tact of intelligence, and why did he submit, with such excessive modesty, to the counsel of so-called experience — which, as has indeed now been shown, did not, in its thirty or forty reviews, learn what it now mattered to know, or else did not understand how to adapt its dim recollections of the practice of the Seven Years’ War to the case at hand? It seems to me the question answers itself in the following manner: Frederick the Great, in ordering the education of the sons of his nephew, followed principles all the more surprising in that he himself developed his own lofty intellectual powers not on the parade-ground of the tall grenadiers, but in the lap of the Muses, and in the company of the most cultivated men of his age. The princes, namely, were obliged as ensigns, lieutenants, and so forth of the Guard to submit for a long time to the rigours of petty service. This may have the merit that in unranked

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drilling, in inspecting dress and weapons, all the circumstances belonging thereto are learned precisely; but for a future sovereign it is no fitting occupation (at least not for long). Here Frederick William III., whose disposition is in any case full of modesty and moderation, may well have derived too high a notion of the intelligence of a Prussian general, since his own — in the flourishing years of vigour in which he lives, and with the knowledge he by no means lacks — would have carried him far further.” Thus it is explained. The monarch trusted the insight of the Duke of Brunswick, entrusted him with the command of the army, while He Himself modestly withdrew. His education caused this act; the education is the fault of the educator, and therefore a blunder of Frederick the Great — just as the peace concluded after the Seven Years’ War, so meagre and paltry for the victor, deserves to be called a blunder.

He. Not badly deduced. But then many things come into consideration that must be laid to the charge of our army and its commanders: ill-conceived positions and movements, negligence in occupying important points, carelessness in covering the possible retreat.

I. All the sin of the fathers, the fault of Frederick William II., who omitted all that he ought to have done for the further development of the army and for the preservation of the spirit within

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it. Frederick the Great and the Seven Years’ struggle had given the officers the confidence of infallibility; they were still proud in retrospect and held a defeat of the Prussians to be an impossibility. Hence the Elbe was left unoccupied; hence, before the battle of Auerstädt, no instructions were given for the event of failure.

He. Lack of practice also effected a great deal, no doubt, for I do not call our drilling on the Templow Hill, our reviews and manoeuvres, practice. Herzberg held that in fifteen years the Prussian army must have war at least once, and I believe he was right. The commander of our army in the campaign of 1806 always strikes me as a billiard-player who —

I. (breaking in) Why not rather a chess-player? The spirit of that game is more akin to war, and for that reason it has so often been compared with it.

He. All comparisons limp, and this one too. The disposition of army corps and of chess pieces do indeed have some resemblance, perhaps also the operations; but on the whole the allegory fits only by halves, for here no account whatever is taken of the calculation of physical forces, which yet at times come very much into the reckoning. But let me finish. Like a billiard-player, I say, our commander in the campaign of 1806 strikes me — one who has played for his amusement with his children on a little table;

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there he knows the billiard-table exactly, and his opponent too; there he knows to a hair how he must strike the ball and how hard he must push, if the opponent’s ball is to be sent here or there, or is to come to rest at this spot, and he wins every time brilliantly. (By the little billiard-table I mean our drill-grounds at Templow and so forth; the fellow players, by way of jest, are the comrades who on order let themselves be pushed back or attack, and defend a hill or fence quite charmingly, because the other is likewise only playing.) But now all at once one came upon a great billiard-table (Jena and Auerstädt), found a different opponent (Napoleon), and played for a considerable stake (here life, there the crown, and yonder millions) — no wonder that one grew confused and lost the game completely.

I. Very good; but let us break off — the conversation is no more pleasant than the matter itself.

We went through the Tiergarten to the Zelte and found there, as everywhere, everything so full that not a single chair was to be had.

At Weber’s by the water there sat at a table some political pundits (Kannengießer — literally “pewterers”, a stock name for armchair politicians), who were just then disputing with hair-splitting precision; each defended his party lively enough, though now and then they eyed their neighbours as if they wished to ask: Are you eavesdropping on us too? Your obedient servant, gentlemen! Oh yes, if you please! I should have liked

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to answer, for I was just then busy snatching here and there a fragment of their oracular pronouncements — though not in order to make any misuse of them.

You see, my good fellows — said A. — The French army is large, extraordinarily strong, every day reinforcement troops arrive, and how long will it be before the conscripts of the year 1808, eighty thousand fresh young men, are likewise in the field, for one must grant the French this: nimble they are as the wind, and that is why we Germans always get murderous blows dealt to us in all haste, because we take no trouble with speed at all. But, as I was going to say: since they are now so strong, I, if I were in the place of the Emperor of Russia, would likewise call up everything, and to the King of England I would say: Hey there, neighbour! Let him chase his people away from the roast-beef dish for once and let him embark some three or four hundred thousand men and bring them across, Scotchmen among them too, even if they have no breeches on, so long as they can shoot and hack and stab — it is not the trousers that do the business; and the King of Sweden would have to come as well with all his might. Dalecarlians and everything he would have to bring along, some hundred thousand men, and the Prussians who are still left would all have to come up, and I myself, I the Emperor that is, would set marching everything that had legs — a good million people I daresay I would bring together, everything would have to come

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along. Kalmyks and Kumyks and Bashkirs and Samoyeds, Ostyaks, Tatars and Mongols, and whatever all the devil’s fellows are called. All of them together. Now look, these would arrive on foot and would bring many oxen along; so that they need not go hungry, I mean. You see, these now come here from Russia. Here, the schnapps glass represents Russia. There the beer glass is Swedish Pomerania; there Englishmen and Swedes land, and here the spill is Prussia. There stands the army. Now we march upon it with our whole might. From behind and from in front. Those from behind go to the Oder and take away Stettin and Küstrin.

B. That will cost lives.

A. To be sure, but that does not matter, so long as we only have our way — and Küstrin and Stettin cost lives? We have enough, after all, and if they are all used up, well, then we buy others for ourselves with English money.

C. Küstrin especially is a very hard nut.

A. We crack it open, my good fellow, as sure as I live.

B. The French commanders are incorruptible and the soldiers very brave.

A. Quite right, all respect to them, but in the meantime great reinforcements of Russians have arrived near Stettin. Now it cannot possibly fail, we shall certainly get it, for our allies, the Kalmyks and Bashkirs, are cursed fellows. True devils they are; hard as cattle,

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small bullets do not even go through their skin, and they are so stupid that one can use them instead of battering rams. These we place in front when we run the assault. Quarter these people do not give; whatever they take prisoner they devour on the spot. You see, we need not worry about provisions; before the attack we let the fellows get good and hungry, then they are brave as can be. Once we have the fortresses, then we go to the Vistula, there we get our enemies in the middle and then there will be peace.

Come along — I begged my friend — this is getting a bit too much. Ha — he replied, laughing — such plans are not unusual among enraged politicians; still, I too care to hear no more.

We turned once more toward the town.

A man walking ahead of us was carrying a local newspaper in his hand and reading the first article of it, an announcement from the Administrative Committee to the inhabitants of Berlin, concerning a war contribution of one million thalers laid upon the capital and its collection. The reader shook his head, probably for the same reasons for which I too had shaken my head on reading it. For one thing: a million thalers is, under the circumstances, surely very hard to raise among us; but then at the close of this announcement it says: the one who defaults pays for the first day of delay one thaler, for the second

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two, for the third four, for the fourth eight thalers, and so on, as penalty. Assuming that a tenant of the lowest class (who, out of his rent amounting to 60 thalers, remits 5 percent) is to pay three thalers in all and does not present himself, he pays as penalty within 8 days:

Day Amount
on the 1st day 1 Thlr.
on the 2nd day 2 Thlr.
on the 3rd day 4 Thlr.
on the 4th day 8 Thlr.
on the 5th day 16 Thlr.
on the 6th day 32 Thlr.
on the 7th day 64 Thlr.
on the 8th day 128 Thlr.
Sum. 255 Thlr.

After eight days the penalty payment does indeed cease, but thereupon lawful means of compulsion are applied to collect both the contribution levy and the penalty monies. Thus the one who delays pays, after 8 days, instead of the simple 3, now 258 thalers. Good God! To raise three thalers now among us is already extraordinarily hard; of 258 there is no thinking at all. The measure appears expedient against the stubborn man, but striking, when one thinks of the bitter poverty of the Berliners. But of course the sensible Committee will take into consideration cases of real inability to pay.

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My lodging received me again. My wandering is ended, and you shall receive the picture of it at once. Yet, once more: do not criticize too severely. Prove all things, and hold fast that which is good etc.

Berlin, in April 1807. X. Y. Z.

Remarks on the Military Glory of the Prussians.

In Prussian military history there was an epoch when great and splendid military actions and deeds upon the theatre of war belonged to the order of the day. Everywhere the Prussians let themselves be seen and glimpsed, they spread fear and flight among their countless enemies, even before bayonet and sabre had once been brought to bear. Imperial forces and Swedes were held en échec by corps six times weaker, and the French, for all their exertions, could not manage to conquer North Germany. What held them back? A composite army of northern imperial peoples, but one to which Frederick had given a head adorned with heroic spirit and intelligence.

If Prussian armies and corps had to succumb to the caprices of war, they rose up again in venerable dignity, and rather reaped the advantages of victory.

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But how different is all this now. Prussia, enlarged by a quarter in extensive size since the Seven Years’ War, allowed itself, a year ago, to be mocked by the Swedes, its harbours blockaded, and treated more shamefully than a George William was scarcely treated by the most energetic man of his age (Gustavus Adolphus). The Prussians, to whom in the Seven Years’ War it was always ridiculous that they should have to fight against Württembergers and Bavarians, can now not even hold their ground against these very troops. Why, then, is all this so changed all at once? Because the whole national glory of a people is the affair of a few men who hold power in their hands; because the impeller of the French and of the Confederation of the Rhine is the most vigorous head of the present time, and Prussia’s talented and energetic men still lie hidden in obscurity; so that Prussia and the French, considering the present in relation to the past, stand in an inverse relation.

Had Prussia become France’s ally when, in the autumn of 1805, Alopäus was improper toward the King, and adopted a tone toward Prussia such as the Russian ministers were formerly accustomed to employ toward Courland and Poland: then it would not only have gained in power, but would also have transmitted its glory to posterity. The like would have made Prussia an ally of France, if the

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King, after the declaration of war by the English had ensued and the harbours on the Baltic had been placed in a state of blockade by the Swedes, had attacked Swedish Pomerania without further regard to Russia.

But can the tooth of time now efface the scandals which in so short a span of time carried Prussian glory to its grave? Will the capitulation at Prenzlau not furnish a new companion-piece to the Caudine Forks? Will the retreat of the Prussians after the battle of Jena not forever be called a second Rossbach? Will the conduct of the cowardly fortress commandants not remain a perpetual stain upon history? At Rossbach only a small band of Frenchmen fled; Broglio and Contades even raised up again, through the battle of Bergen and the conquest of Hesse, the annihilated glory of the French, and yet Rossbach was, down to the present day, still ever the standard by which French courage was mockingly judged.

But how is Prussia now to have the opportunity to wipe out these stains again? Even if the unfolding of Prussia’s for now still dark fate should turn out quite favourably, it has nonetheless lost its independence. It steps back out of the rank of great states to the level of mediocrity. Its political influence after the peace will not be great; it will never again raise itself to a great state, even should a subsequent

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Prussian ruler be endowed with the regal qualities of a Frederick the Great.

Archenholz is therefore perfectly right in what he says over the grave of Prussian glory. Only, if this reproach struck none but the guilty contemporaries, the pain would still be bearable for guiltless, upright Prussians; but the disgrace transmits itself as a heritage from posterity to posterity, and that is the appallingly conceivable thing in this catastrophe.

One might well be angry with fate, that it allowed to be destroyed in seven days what great artists had built up over centuries; that in so critical a course of time it did not set against the Emperor of the French an Elector Frederick William or a Frederick the Great upon the Prussian throne. Then, even if the powerful genius of the age had also prevented any further building up, they would at least have been lightning-rods that dispersed the dark thunderclouds even before they could gather over the Prussian throne. Strength, unity, and firm will would then have held the generals and the ministers together. The bullet or the sword would have suppressed all insolence against the person of the King, and perhaps have made heroes out of traitors; Prussia would have drawn better Machiavellians among its ministers, and sought its firmness more in intensive than in extensive size. But once the political relations of the states of Europe as of the year 1800 had set in,

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without being able to be prevented by Prussia: then Prussia would long since have united itself with France, in order, through the annihilation of that despot of the seas, to establish free trade and to give the world universal peace; it would not have let itself be carried away into hating France and the French Emperor out of prejudice; the generals and cabinet councillors could have formed no factions.

There was reverence solely before the throne, which a monarch more easily acquires by knowing how to spread a certain nimbus about himself than by carrying condescension and humanity too far. Stupid, puffed-up men take kindness and love for weakness. Through a thousandfold flatteries they win the confidence of the ruler in order to abuse it. Frederick the Great abolished the cordiality that prevailed in the Tobacco College between his father and the guards officers, immediately upon his accession to the throne.

To simple-minded writers of travel accounts, the frightful court etiquette which the Emperor Napoleon introduced at court already as First Consul was an abomination. They judged merely the form, but not the tendency of the great judge of men that lay concealed beneath it.

The more earnestness a sovereign invests in his dignity, the more he is protected from importunities. The proud gaze of such a ruler nourishes and fans ambition and instills a all the greater vigour among men. Indulgence breeds insolence; severity

[p. 117]

leads to submission. By the latter alone is the sovereign of a military state able to give a people prestige and glory abroad, prosperity and well-being at home.

Frederick William the Third’s unpretentiousness and humanity did indeed pour love and goodwill into the heart of his people, but the generals corrupted the spirit of the army, and the ministers acted as men are generally wont to act when no bond and no fear of a higher power holds them together: the whole was lost.

As with Frederick the Great, the love of a people must be reckoned with greater consistency. Save for his table companions, who were mere associates, Frederick was on familiar terms with none of his subjects. He knew, rather, a means of modifying ambition, and of casting down from their imagined height, by humiliations, those men who believed that through meritorious deeds they had acquired a special right to lay claim to distinctions. Frederick was hated for this, yet only after his death did people begin to perceive how right he had been. A statesmanlike sovereign must conduct himself thus.

Yet should there ever come an epoch when Prussia raises itself up again, then an excessive severity would first have to descend upon the nation, so that the many weeds which overshadow the noble, good plants in this nation might be destroyed.

[p. 118]

How Should the Magistrates of Small Towns Now Conduct Themselves in the War toward Friend and Foe? and How Have They Conducted Themselves? Especially in Silesia.

Immediately after the loss of the battle at Jena, the greater part of the Silesians were inclined to a defence of the province, in that they wished to raise a national army from their own midst. Everything necessary for this was present in the most complete condition within the country. Silesia contains 2 million people; if only the 20th part were armed, then 100,000 men would be on foot; besides this, there were also 10,000 men of actual soldiers present in the fortresses, and these possessed an abundance of ammunition, muskets, and field-pieces.

One may boldly assume that, the border huntsmen included, there are 5,000 huntsmen employed in Silesia in the Royal, municipal, and noble forests, who possess their own rifles and know how to handle them.

Given the greatest prosperity of the rural population, there were here a great number of fine horses, of which one could have levied 10,000 head for the cavalry without agriculture being ruined thereby.

[p. 119]

The country (so long as Austria remained neutral) presented great obstacles to an enemy penetrating across the Bober, both in its terrain and in its fortified places. Toward Upper and Lower Lusatia there are a multitude of rivers (the Neisse, the Queis, the Bober), and the whole lordship of Priebus is a morass covered with extensive forests. These are connected with the Riesengebirge, which, from Flinsberg to beyond Glatz, is full of narrow passes, defiles, and thickets and can easily be defended, since on the Austrian side it was covered against any enemy assault.

There are 8 fortresses in Silesia, of which Cosel, Neisse, Glatz, Silberberg, and Schweidnitz belong to those of the first rank.

With so many resources, it was very natural that in many good, enterprising minds one and the same idea arose:

To make proposals to the King for an arming of the people, and to make use of those resources.

I name among many only one: Count Pückler of Gümmel. This man had been an officer, possessed a clear understanding, much knowledge, and an energetic, vigorous temperament. At the beginning of November he wrote to the King and proposed to him to call up all men fit to bear arms, to join to them the soldiers returning by the thousand from the defeated army, and to place a capable head at their head. Had the King

[p. 120]

done this, and given the Count himself the commission to carry out this project, it would indeed have been carried out. He communicated this proposal, however, to Minister Hoym, who was not at all in favour of it.

Every man has his own principles, which he holds to be the best. Hoym was of the opinion that it was now too late to carry out this measure, that the assembled troops would not be able to withstand the advancing enemy after all, and that the misfortune which threatened to come upon Silesia would only be sharpened by this fruitless resistance. He held that it was better to receive the enemy with resignation, submission, and obliging courtesy, and thereby to mitigate Silesia’s fate; and to that end he had all the authorities instructed through the Chamber, the Chambers had to remain at their posts, and he himself withdrew to Neisse.

I cannot concur with Count Hoym in this. Had Silesia not possessed 8 fortresses, had Napoleon intended to march up the Oder instead of to the Vistula, then his opinion would have been the more correct one; but since it was already known at the beginning of November that the great French army was going to Poland and that the Imperial troops were to conquer Silesia, since the fortresses were to be defended and held, then indisputably Pückler’s idea was the best and the most honourable.

But it came to nothing, since the King had not at once resolved upon its speedy execution, and

[p. 121]

even ordered 7,000 muskets from Schweidnitz to Graudenz, and moreover wished to have the 10,000 recruits who were levied marched thither likewise. Pückler, in despair over his thwarted project, committed the folly of shooting himself, and his amiable wife, driven thereby to the point of madness, soon followed him by a suicide).

Meanwhile a Silesian cavalier, Baron von Lütteritz, had travelled to the King at headquarters, and had there worked toward the very same point that Pückler had striven to attain. The King resolved to effect Silesia’s defence by the proposed means through Prince Anhalt-Pless. He appeared, and under the date of 7 November, on the day of the surrender of Glogau, his well-known manifesto appeared, together with Baron von Lütteritz’s appeal to the Silesians to place themselves voluntarily under the Royal banners. But now a different point in time had arrived than 4 weeks earlier. Glogau was gone; the enemy found the provincial authorities here; they had to swear him the oath of fealty, and through their authority he forced the Glogau Department into obedience without sufficient troops, and Prince Pless might send counter-orders as much as he pleased, yet the fear of the enemy had already become so much the master of the people that even in regions to which the enemy could not penetrate (so long as Schweidnitz was not conquered) they satisfied the French requisitions imposed by the Glogau Chamber. Prince Pless, moreover, likewise took only half measures: for instead of taking the necessities for his army — huntsmen, muskets, recruits, horses — by force wherever he found them, he left it to the free will of the Silesians. Before the conquest of Glogau this would have succeeded; afterward it was not so.

[p. 122]

Now, in that Pless further ordered the defence of Breslau, instead of transferring the garrison of this untenable place to Schweidnitz and sending the Chamber to Neisse; in that he left a stupid ass of a commandant at his post in Schweidnitz, instead of appointing here the most capable officer of the artillery, a young enterprising man; in that he entered without circumspection upon aimless undertakings, instead of organizing an army in Glatz and Neisse — his defence of the country went the way of the crab.

When Breslau fell, and the enemy, through the Chamber found there, worked upon the province as at Glogau, then the conquest of Silesia was complete, and the remaining fortresses stood there only like the chimneystacks of a burned-down house.

The magistrates, Landrats, and Tax Councillors were thrown into great embarrassment by the above proceedings, particularly in those regions where today the Bavarians, tomorrow the Prussians appeared, the one revoking what the other had ordered; the Chambers in Glogau and Breslau demanded obedience, Prince Pleß forbade compliance and suspended the Chambers. Minister Hoym had counselled courteous treatment of the enemy, Prince Pleß called for insurrection.

Since fear has become more the property of men than courage, and since one saw only victories of the enemy and defeats of the Prussians, the enemy’s requisitions were obeyed with great punctuality. I cannot blame this; under the prevailing circumstances it was the best that could be done:

Obey him who has power over you.

But when many authorities could make no distinction whatever between regular enemy troops and marauders, stragglers, and deserters, allowing themselves to be plundered

[p. 123]

and mistreated by the latter, while on the other hand they also respected every scoundrel who wore a Prussian uniform and set up a robber-company, thereby delivering themselves over to the French military commissions, then this was surely the greatest poltroonery that can possibly be imagined.

I can cite cases where deserters of the Allies laid whole towns under contribution and had themselves carried onward with relay-teams. I could name burgomasters who stood with hat under arm before two or three marauders, whom they addressed with the condescension due a servant, and begged for their orders; who, when the marauders asked for brandy, set Hungarian wine before them; when they wanted 50 thalers, gave 100 thalers, and the like.

Notwithstanding that one had read in the public papers the most precise orders of the French Emperor that no one was to render requisitions to any authorities other than those authorized by him, this was nonetheless done, and thousands had not the courage to ask a marauder for his passes and warrants.

On the other hand, Prussian non-commissioned officers and privates rose up, formed a raiding corps, laid the district under contribution, and no one dared to ask for the royal authorization.

I believe the following security measures ought to have been taken, presupposing the enemy’s approval.

Every town, every community had to elect a committee charged with watching over the internal security of the place; the youngest men in the locality were drawn together into a National Guard like that of Berlin, given sabres or pikes, and employed in maintaining internal good order (the gendarmerie established is not sufficient); as soon as individual marauders or detachments (Prussians or

[p. 124]

Allies) appeared, they had to show their authorizations, and then what was demanded would be furnished.

Marauders, deserters, and stragglers, on the other hand, and unauthorized requisitioners of friend or foe, were to be arrested and delivered to the nearest commandant of a town.

The Allies as well as the Prussians could be satisfied with this, for at present unauthorized plunderers suck the land dry more than the enemy army does.

Baron Hammer.

This man is adjutant to General Vandamme on the Bavarian side and Chamberlain at the Munich court. In Silesia his praise resounds everywhere, like that of Colonel Lestok; he is humane, obliging, full of love for his fellow men, benevolent to the point of extravagance, delicate and disinterested to the point of exaggeration; in the towns where he stayed he supported the poor quite quietly, and did so much good that there is but one voice about it. Anyone who dared to make him a considerable present he had thrown out of the house. His conduct, and the exemplary conduct of the Württemberg troops, is ascribed to their King, who formerly held a regiment in Lüben in Silesia. How the Silesians will weep if these amiable soldiers should one day leave Silesia and be exchanged for worse ones.

[p. 125]

Are There Not Also War Damages in Peacetime?

It is demanded of all members of the state, of the acquiring and the non-acquiring classes, that they share equally in bearing the war contributions. In this or that district of Saxony efforts have been made to devise various modes of apportionment, of which one has been trumpeted and another censured, without taking into consideration the pressure of circumstances, the categorical imperative of momentary necessity11, which, in the absence of higher authorizations, required the most ordinary method of levying the provincial taxes, and compelled those patriotic men who, at their own sacrifice, presented themselves in the district towns to attend to the common good, to apply the most regular, most secure, and most readily available revenues (ready money, paratam pecuniam) toward contribution-relief. Besides this mode of apportioning the levy of contributions—to which perhaps not even an angel from heaven, with the scales in hand, could at this juncture and under the once-established condition of a war of all against all (belli omnium12 contra omnes) have given greater correctness—complaints have also lately been raised in various issues of the Reichsanzeiger, January, February, about

[p. 126]

the unequal distribution of the war burdens as regards deliveries in kind, draught-services, and quartering. As regards the deliveries in kind, it can by no means be denied that many a domain, manor, indeed even whole districts—notably the Leipzig one—must, by virtue of their situation, have suffered more than others. Meanwhile a commission has already been set up by the supreme authority to equalize these, like other liquidated damages13 or disproportions—of which, moreover, one may with patriotic confidence surely hope that in this matter no regard will be paid to the otherwise usual mercantile calculation and forwarding of the products, but rather that a correct proportion will be laid as the foundation: between the purchase-price given, the revenues that have risen unheard-of through the circumstances of the times, and the services incumbent under every rational law of state, from which no privilege can grant exemption. Draught-services and magazine-haulage, however much they may be multiplied by the misfortune of a war, cannot come unexpectedly to any landowner who in his deed of purchase assumes this onus reale (a real burden: an obligation running with the land itself, not the person) and is formally enfeoffed with it14, especially as he on the other hand enjoys in return the liberty of turning his produce (products) into cash commercially in any manner he pleases, as we have seen in the champagne-bottles of the country folk. In the same way, quartering, like the payment of service-monies, is to be regarded only as an onus reale, which the landowner alone has to bear

[p. 127]

in times of war and peace, whereas against it he can indemnify himself in advance for several years by arbitrary increases of the rent, restricted by no civil or police law, which need bear no proportion whatever to the taxes. Should it even be found, according to local circumstances, that the tenant is formally forbidden by the contracts (along with children’s crying and domestic animals) from sub-letting even under the most favorable circumstances15, then an onerosa sublocatio (a burdensome sub-letting) forced upon him in wartime, to which no real or personal obligation binds him, is the greatest injustice that can be conceived. — To all these sorts of landowners who complain of such necessary burdens, only apparently disproportionate, that attach to their landed property, one must make it plain that just as little as other classes acquiring through speculation—who have hitherto gained disproportionately from some object of their speculation (e.g. a kind of goods) and must now bear a burden laid upon these objects—just as little may they too expect from the state, according to right and equity, full guarantee and indemnification. Might not precisely the other, non-speculating classes of the state—from whom they demand this joint liability and indemnification—rather charge against them, on their side, the damages caused by the war in peacetime (the commercial selling-off of the grain, brandy, etc.), which fell exclusively upon these alone, while those acquiring through speculation gained thereby? The classes

[p. 128]

from whom that indemnification might in particular be demanded—who lose in war just like the others, but who, unlike the others, neither press for indemnification nor know how to recover their loss even during the war themselves—are for the most part individuals who live on rents and fixed salaries, and who, notwithstanding that they are for the most part more industrious than many a tenant-farmer who by underhand ways obtains for himself a comfortable lease, were yet, even in the flourishing times of peace, scarcely able to eke out their wretched existence16. Might not these classes—which are represented neither before the public nor at the diets of the provinces, the chapters, and the committees, and which commonly bear their hardship in silence—complain of a secret war of the speculating and distributing estates in times of peace, one that strikes them, and them especially, alone; that becomes the most pernicious innermost disease of society; that manifests itself as dearth, famine, and usury; that fills many an hour with a secret mutual bitterness, and that sooner or later, in troubled times, breaks out openly? Might not these classes now inquire:

Are there not also war damages in peacetime?

[p. unnumbered]

New Firebrands.

Published by the author of the Confidential Letters on the Internal Affairs of the Prussian Court since the Death of Frederick II.

A journal in occasional issues.

Third Part.

With an engraving.

Amsterdam and Cölln, 1807.
bei Peter Hammer.

[p. v]

Contents.

   
Explanation of the Title Engraving. p. VII
Correction of Two Passages in the Second Part of the Confidential Letters, etc. VIII
Correspondence Notices.  
A Few Letters on This and That in the Prussian Army, particularly on the Field Provisioning System. Berlin 1806. 1
The Apple of Discord among the Nations, or: What Created and Sustains the Anglo-French War? and How Can It Be Ended? 49
The Retreat and Capture of Bila’s Corps 85
Devotion to Duty 106
Interesting Trifles. 111

[p. VI]

   
On the Tendency of the Tract: Confidential Letters on the Internal Affairs of the Prussian Court, etc. and of the Journal: New Firebrands p. 123
Statement by the Author of the Confidential Letters on the Internal Affairs of the Prussian Court, etc. concerning the Black Register in the Second Part of the New Firebrands 129

[p. VII]

Explanation of the Title Engraving.

The former commandant of Schweidnitz, Herr von Haak, who after the action at Kant feared falling into the hands of the Prussians and therefore hastened to Dresden, but on the way, not far from Bunzlau, was manhandled by the peasants, visited the neighbouring little town of Jauer after the capitulation of Schweidnitz; here the townsfolk did him an honour, and smashed in his windows. He lodged at an inn on the market square. He hurried down to the innkeeper in the taproom, and said:

Landlord, you too must have many enemies here in the town; someone has smashed in your windows.

Begging your pardon, Commandant, replied the innkeeper:

The honour was on your side!

Confidential Letters, second part, p. 92, large edition.

[p. VIII]

Correction of Two Passages in the Second Part of the Confidential Letters etc.

On page 38, in the fourth letter, it reads:

I believe that Russia and France are two opposing forces which do indeed repel one another, but which can only mutually annihilate each other.

This is a complete contradiction; it ought to read:

but which can never mutually annihilate each other.

On pp. 82, 83 of the fourth letter, several examples are cited to show that certain officials did not think patriotically, in that they supplied oxen, wethers, and brandy. On p. 84, however, it is stated as an advantage to the province that it supplies the army with its necessities. This too appears to be a contradiction. But a note belonging to page 83, which lay loose in the manuscript and was sent to the printing house, has been lost. Here it is:

The delivery of raw produce can only be burdensome for the country if the sale of its manufactures to the army also brings it profit; hence meat can no longer be afforded, and its prices bear no proportion to that of grain. How is the peasant to till his field when his draught oxen are slaughtered? But how do officials come to be making deliveries? Is that seemly? Is it right? Let each man keep to his own trade.

[p. 1]

Correspondence Notices.

A Few Letters on This and That in the Prussian Army, Particularly on the Field Commissariat.

Berlin 1806.

You call upon me, my esteemed friend, to give you some account of the provisioning arrangements in the Prussian army; you wish to know how the matter has always been handled, and how far the provisioning of that army is to blame for the misfortunes that came about at the outset of this war. What experience has taught me on this head I will impart to you faithfully, in accordance with the truth:

The organization of the Prussian army was, down to its smallest parts, after the principles of Frederick the Great, a model of regularity and order, exactly suited to the age. And even though the manifold conjunctures of the Seven Years’ War produced frequent disturbances therein, Frederick’s great powers of oversight always dispelled the injurious consequences that might otherwise have been feared,

[p. 2]

The particulars of the provisioning system of that time I do not know, but its organization must have been good: for the army was victorious, kept up its courage, remained brave, had love and attachment to its king, and bore the passing want, where it could not be averted, with patience. In those days, too, the soldier still knew nothing of the softness which afterwards, and to this very day, has crept into the army — especially through the many marriages of the soldiers and the consequent passage of these men into civilian, trade-plying life — and which is of the greatest detriment to the army.

Above all things Frederick, the peerless Frederick, always saw to it that the magazines were kept filled, and these are the basis for the operations of an army. Furthermore, by the swift progress of his arms and by many-sided maneuvers directed to his intended purposes, he took possession soon enough of such provinces as secured the subsistence of his army; this the Seven Years’ War proves!

For the rest, the ration in kind then assured to the soldier by establishment consisted merely of a daily bread portion of 2 pounds and, every 5 days, 1 groschen 6 pfennigs meat-money, wherever it was not held possible or was deemed unnecessary to issue meat in kind. Such distributions of meat did indeed take place often, especially when the troops were encamped; but it was not the case without interruption. In the cantonments the householders had to feed the soldiers. The distribution of all other provisions

[p. 3]

took place only when one stood in regions where want prevailed among the inhabitants. In those cheap times, moreover, the soldier managed well enough on his pay.

The constant alternation between abundance and want brought about good consequences even within the army; for the soldiers soon made the experience that upon every advantage gained over the enemy there followed refreshment for the stomach, and this always drove them forward.

Most of the army’s necessaries were procured through contractors, and the least part only, in cases of need, through requisitions — which redounds to the true honour of the immortal hero and victor. At the same time he waged war offensively at the expense of his enemies, laying their lands under contribution, because he well knew that this would lead him sooner to his goal, and that his own states were thereby spared.

It is true that some among the contractors enriched themselves; yet that was no detriment to the army, so long as care was only taken that they fulfilled their contracts, and this they had to do at their own risk. If, then, they earned much, it was the consequence of their advantageous purchasing, and thus a lawful gain. Such business, moreover, absolutely requires men who possess capital and mercantile knowledge; and one must also make them fair terms if one wishes to prevent embezzlement and poor provisioning

[p. 4]

of the soldiers. The main thing is to strive that no one enrich himself at the army’s expense, and that the army rather receive everything it needs and everything that is paid for on its behalf. Frederick the Great had an excellent gift for making himself beloved of the soldier, and for accustoming him by his own example to frugality and even to want. Withal, resoluteness and brevity were introduced in all military affairs, and least of all might an untimely thrift hold up the course of operations. My next letter shall inform you whether Frederick’s principles in the provisioning of the army have been maintained down to the present.

1806.

Frederick the peerless departed this life in a period of tranquillity, of peace, and of prosperity for his lands. Whether hope hovered about his immortal spirit in the hour of death, and promised — continuance — to the empire he had so gloriously created, is doubtful. But certain it is that he had reigned too long for many persons, and that these regarded his death as a most fortunate event. Many people prophesied immediate war, believing that Austria would surely not leave to his cousin the Silesia which could not be wrested back from Frederick the victor; but they were mistaken. There was peace — and peace it remained. Frederick William II., who was so wholly made for enjoyment, and who during Frederick’s lifetime had been permitted to enjoy only so furtively,

[p. 5]

now gave himself over to the unrestraint of his own will, and the beginning of his reign’s history consisted of a very mixed multitude of noble traits of his heart, of benevolent intentions, and of the sad proofs of his weaknesses and dissipations, through which he gradually delivered himself into the hands of a few scoundrels or ignorant men. In the meantime the splendour of the capital increased considerably through the streams of money that flowed from the court into the public, as is the case with every prodigal government.

The army had every reason to rejoice in the new sovereign; for his earnest solicitude for its welfare afforded it considerable benefit. It was completely re-equipped and outfitted in exceedingly tasteful fashion; the young officers, who as yet knew nothing of the military estate but the uniform, took great delight in this; they never ceased to assure everyone how much the army had gained through the new sovereign — for the uniform, after all, was handsomer. Yet with better right the common soldier rejoiced, whose kit had become far more complete and comfortable, and who received some assistance in money and bread for his children. The insolence of the Dutch patriots toward their Stadtholderess, the sister of William, was, during his so brilliantly begun reign, the first occasion for a part of the army to take up arms and march into Holland. There was great suspense over the outcome of this campaign,

[p. 6]

for people believed in nothing less than the union of Holland with Prussia.

The troops marched off bravely; Frederick’s spirit still hovered over them, and they were vexed only that there was no greater enemy to conquer than the unmilitary Dutchman, who, instead of soldiers, had only boatmen, and, instead of cannonballs, only cheese.

The preparations for this small expedition clearly proved what a great lover the King was of everything complete and of everything superfluous.

The Duke of Brunswick soon chastised the discourteous Dutchmen, and the soldiers had somewhat lightened the cupboards and pockets of the patriots; they brought back much money, watches, and other silver plate, and they also praised the Geneva gin.

With respect to the provisioning of this army, nothing remarkable had occurred; the march went through Westphalia and Cleves, the King granted extra allowance on the march, and the peasants too were to be paid for the entertainment of the troops passing through (whether this was done I do not know). In Wesel, etc., filled magazines were found, and in Holland the patriots had to entertain the uninvited guests. Where the men encamped, meat, vegetables, brandy, and beer were distributed with much order. After this small march of execution, which was merely a family matter of the King’s, Prussia enjoyed undisturbed peace until, in the year 1790, a political cause called the army into the field.

[p. 7]

It was, namely, jealousy over Austria’s growing greatness through the conquests in the then Turkish War, upon which Frederick William, supported by the insurrection of the Netherlanders and by the intention of the Hungarians to follow this example — which they let the King know through magnates dispatched in secret — wished to set limits.

The preparations concerned the whole army; they proceeded briskly; the soldiers rejoiced to fight once again against the Austrians, their old enemies whom they were accustomed to conquering, and to lodge themselves in Bohemia.

Throughout the whole country no apprehension was noticeable, but only the liveliest participation. All the workshops were filled with workmen making the splendid field equipages. Fine horses and well-dressed grooms crisscrossed the capital. The finest spectacle for the Berliners was the King’s equipage, which very often paraded through the city; it consisted of new, beautifully painted wagons, whose purpose was announced by their inscriptions, e.g. Royal Pr. Silver Wagon, Cellar Wagon, Kitchen Wagon, Treasury Wagon, etc., and furthermore of more than 100 mules which, adorned with fine caparisons and colourful plumes, were intended to carry burdens. It was an oriental magnificence, and people compared it to the military procession of Xerxes. The veterans of Frederick II. were indeed of the opinion that of war

[p. 8]

there was no question, and that no luxury at all ought to be indulged in with it; but these words were quite in vain.

The march of the troops was to take place in May, but it had to be postponed for 3 weeks, for there was a lack of magazines. Schulenburg, the then minister (a cousin of the present one), ended the distress into which he had fallen through his own fault with a bullet, which he shot through his head to escape the impending accountability. (A pity that this tragic example had no effect whatsoever upon his successors.)

In June the magnificent army at last marched out from its garrisons, and blessed Silesia received it; they fronted toward Bohemia. The peaceable Leopold saw the host at his frontier, fulfilled Prussia’s demands, gave back to the Turks the advantages won by Joseph, thwarted the hopes of the proud Hungarians, and at Reichenbach the peace was signed.17 The provisioning arrangements for this campaign were, since no preparations at all had been made, very poor. There was indeed no lack of forage, for Silesia had to supply it, and the commissaries lived well. With the food provisions matters stood badly,

[p. 9]

for Silesia too has many poor inhabitants who cannot support any quartering of troops. The Turks made the army a gift of a few tuns of rice; everything else fell as a burden upon the country. In October all the regiments returned to their garrisons. A host of officials was thrown out of bread again and lamented the short duration of the campaign; each had meanwhile provided for himself as best he could. At the main magazine in Frankfurt alone, several hundred Wispel were declared as spoiled by mice. Since nothing more was to be gained by investigations, they simply — wrote everything off.

This campaign already showed clearly how, with rapid strides, Frederick’s system was being abandoned at every point. The band of Korah founded their empire ever more firmly, and everything that happened in these brilliant times was their work, their profit.

In 1791 there was another campaign into Prussia, occasioned by misunderstandings with Russia; it did not concern the whole army and was likewise concluded within a few months with the pen. Both marches had cost the state much money, and the country many horses and much forage. The officers too had exhausted themselves and had had to run into debt.

In 1792 a part of the army went to the Rhine, where, after two futile marches, a serious war at last broke out. Although only a part of it marched thither, the King nevertheless followed in person, and indeed with the greatest pomp. In his retinue were:

[p. 10]

comedians and musicians, favourite mistress and chamberlains; spirit-seers and body-tailors, so that at Frankfurt am Main a complete court establishment assembled, with a great superfluity of useless persons, all living in the greatest abundance and practising an extravagance that was bound to exhaust the Prussian state.

Out of an over-clever mania for improvement, more elaborateness had long since been introduced into every branch of administration, and this happened most of all in the army’s commissariat during this campaign.

More officials were appointed than were necessary for the whole army; their entire personnel consisted of nothing but men of connexions: favoured lackeys, good-for-nothing idlers, even journeymen artisans — for there was actually among them a tailor’s son who had already learned his father’s trade, and a button-maker’s journeyman; further, bankrupt merchants, corn-Jews, and horse-copers; and so it went up to the superiors, who were likewise creatures of patronage and darlings of fortune. What was to be expected from a campaign begun in such a way — the men of insight in the state foresaw in advance, and the enormous sums this campaign cost proved that they were right. Sadder still was the experience: that amid the most outrageous extravagance the army suffered the greatest want, and only the iron perseverance and the frugality of the troops, together with the laudable subordination peculiar to the Prussian

[p. 11]

army, brought about the victories that were won there.

Taking the success of the campaign, and the defeat of the French national power, too surely for granted, no great commissariat arrangements had been made for it, although such were more necessary than ever, since the war had to be waged not in one’s own country but in neighbouring friendly lands, and in part in the lands of the allies. Meanwhile it had been assumed as absolutely certain that the army would conquer and live in France.

Frederick William was too great a friend of mankind not to provide, or rather to have provided, in the best manner for the welfare of his army, especially in war; for everything he did consisted in the orders for what was to be done! But whether all this was really carried out? — that his eye did not investigate, for the spirit of deception had encamped about his throne and robbed him of every prospect of the truth. His weakness had been seized upon, and under his very eyes abuses were shamelessly heaped upon abuses.

Some councillors of high standing had been placed at the head of the army’s commissariat; elaborate service instructions had been drawn up for the officials — everything was to be documented, calculated, and controlled — and yet men had been appointed who were utterly unfit for such business.

[p. 12]

It seemed, however, that nothing else mattered than the enrichment of the officials, and each constantly followed the example of the other. A magazine left behind at Longwy during the retreat, worth about 6,000 thalers, was entered in the accounts for more than 100,000 thalers; men were not ashamed to enter 60,000 thalers for sacks alone; the Austrians were secretly provisioned out of our magazines wherever private advantage demanded it. And at the very time when the English army under the Duke of York, delivered out of the Netherlands and out of Holland by unscrupulous contractors and destroyed by hunger, was embarking there, the Prussian army too was abandoned to usury and suffered want, while the contractors and commissariat officers, down to the lowliest subaltern clerk, intoxicated themselves with costly wine and their faro-banks were laden with money.

This mischief was overlooked, and had of necessity to be overlooked, for it came down from above. Instead, men clung to the most elaborate and equally useless form. Millions of lines were drawn just as uselessly as millions of thalers were squandered; accounts were written, false vouchers fabricated, and tables made. Every error in calculo and every offence against the form were reprimanded in sheet-long admonitions, and often, over ⅔tel pfennigs that did not agree either with the establishment or with the returns, letters were written back and forth ten times

[p. 13]

and at last — written off. But it was never examined whether the sums entered in the accounts had actually been spent, and had necessarily to be spent; still less whether, and how, the soldier and the servant received everything that was guaranteed to him by the establishment, or whether the personnel strengths actually agreed exactly with the submitted lists. Just as little did anyone see the wretched horses that hunger was destroying, while the train officials foraged for themselves and carried on the ruinous trade in rations with the magazine officers.

A couple of groschen spent over the establishment always occasioned a lengthy inquiry, yet sums uselessly expended or falsely entered into the accounts could never arouse the slightest suspicion, so long as the form was satisfied. The failure to lay in the magazines before the war, and the hasty procurement of them through contractors — to whom, in return for generous offers, the most advantageous terms and prices were conceded, and who, upon delivery, were assured of every indulgence by the magazine officials through their own liberality — made the war incredibly costly. The soldiers received little provision in kind, and, given the strict discipline and the forbearance the King had promised the Rhinelanders, had for the most part to live in their quarters on their pay; how far this could stretch amid the dearness of goods may easily be

[p. 14]

imagined, especially since a soldier in the field can almost always buy only from the sutler. The items of equipment too — long since manufactured, on a ruinous principle, only by the lowest bidder, and supplied to the army through merchants, monopolists, and Jews — were, as was natural, very poor. And yet the army held out under the burden of these abuses against an enemy who lived in abundance, fought with enthusiasm, and, without any military laws, practised unbridled licence everywhere.

The officers likewise were left a prey to usury; a couple of Jews had followed the army with every article of officers’ equipment, and stood ready behind the gaming tables with ready cash as well; they took on considerable deliveries, ruined the family fortunes of many noblemen, and returned laden with heavy riches.

Three years this draining-off of the national wealth lasted — increased still further by the war that broke out in Poland at the same time — until at last the peace with France in 1795 and the annexation of South Prussia brought the war to an end. The commissariat officials returned with magnificent equipages and heavy baggage; they had reaped a harvest for their whole lifetime, and were so little ashamed of their gains that they spoke of them very freely and in detail — one even led behind him, on his return to Potsdam,

[p. 15]

several wagons loaded with Rhine wine. The last opportunity for gain they all exploited by introducing a quantity of contraband goods.

Their poor colleagues in Poland, meanwhile, had a hard time of it, for there was much hardship there and little or nothing to be earned; they returned with bitter envy against their fellow officials, some of whom, despite their ample earnings, still received pensions or lucrative posts. Inquiries into what had happened began, but could be ended by nothing except quashing, which indeed came to pass after some years. The record offices took in the colossal bundles of files, which contained nothing but the proofs of great faults and great embezzlements. From my next letter you will be able to judge whether the Rhine campaign was not at least turned to account as a school of experience for the future. etc.

1806.

Frederick William II. sought to heal the wound that had been dealt to the state by the Rhine campaign; but this was in vain, for self-interest found ever greater scope. The army did indeed recover outwardly, and its splendour grew greater than it had been before, but the officers had once and for all been delivered into the hands of the usurers, and fell ever deeper into debt.

The monarch looked on — though not without concern — yet calmly at the further spectacle in Europe; he did not again draw the

[p. 16]

sword, but sadly did nothing either to prepare the state against a future war or to secure it. His bodily sufferings increased and at last, despite his zest for life, laid him with his fathers.

For the country a morning full of hope dawned; Frederick William III. entitled us to the fairest expectations. Many bad officials were dropped from the ranks of the active, and with them many abuses gave way to better administration. Only of the army could this not be said; there was too much toying with the soldiers, and a spreading spirit of pettiness threw the true military character quite out of its proper course. The good arrangements that still existed in the matter of uniforms, especially for the officers, were wholly abolished through a mistaken view of the matter and through an imagined notion of compulsion, and the officers were granted a freedom in the matter of uniforms that could not but be highly injurious to them. It was a measure such as the Jews themselves might have invented, for through it they got almost the whole uniform business into their hands, which was all the more lucrative for them since the King made some change or other in the uniforms every year, which ruined the greater part of the officers. The common soldier’s uniform too was thoroughly altered; the character of the whole was — simplicity, but they were

[p. 17]

too tight, too poor, clothed the soldier too meagrely, and were especially quite unfit for field service. Universally as this arrangement was recognized to be faulty and highly detrimental, yet no one was found in the army who might have drawn the King’s attention to it. Through all these arrangements the army lost much of its usefulness.

Peace Frederick William loves above all things; this is attested by the great sacrifices he has made for its preservation, and many a good institution throve only through the continued tranquillity. The young ruler had also very much damage to heal, and it did indeed require so temperate, so thrifty a king to begin, with so much resignation, the economies upon his own person and upon his family so earnestly. Why has the monarch, who so earnestly wills all that is good, not also the self-confidence so utterly necessary for distinguishing the false from the true? Why is he timid toward the great men of his realm? and mistrustful of his own better insight? whereby there arises a wavering that is an obstacle to all that is good.

Peace remained — so long — — as it could remain peace; the war last year between France and Austria at last compelled the cautious monarch to cover his frontiers with his army. The political grounds and the military measures of this march you know. Only of the provisioning arrangements

[p. 18]

for an army that was to fight for the fatherland under the leadership of a new king, to prove its old renown, and to bring its great commander the first proofs of its devotion, its fidelity, and its courage — of these I will here sketch you a picture.

It was hoped, and one was entitled to hope, that under this King everything would be arranged for the war with wisdom and fitness, for the high officials to whom these manifold important affairs were entrusted had all won a favourable prepossession for themselves, and everywhere they bore the air of infallibility.

Given the frequent abuses which had occurred in the provisioning of the army during the Rhine campaign, and of which the King was precisely informed, one might presume that this instructive school of experience would now serve as the guideline for choosing the better course. It is also indisputably certain that this was intended; only the means were greatly mistaken.

In the main, the provisioning of the army was arranged according to the very same constitution that had existed in the Rhine campaign, except that new service instructions were printed for the various provisioning offices, which were still far more prolix than the former ones, and whose observance remained impossible even for the ablest man of business. These new artificial forms, which must have been invented by someone who was utterly unacquainted with the course of the provisioning system

[p. 19]

in the run of a war, were supposed to make all abuses, all embezzlements impossible! But every avenue remained open to the disloyal official to fulfil this form fraudulently.

The Commissariat (Provisions) Department at Berlin had the ordering and direction of the whole. The chief of this department is indeed a very worthy general, but an old man of some 70 years, and burdened with more offices than it would be possible for the greatest genius of business, in the best years of his life, to administer. He is, namely, Quartermaster-General, chief of the Engineer Department, and Inspector-General of all fortresses in the whole country! Under his supreme command a Field War Commissariat was established for each Army Corps, so that five of them came into being. The directorships of these were for the most part distributed among War and Domains Councillors who were quite capable men, some of whom had already taken part in the Rhine campaign. Each of these commissariats consisted, under the director, of several dispatch clerks, registrars, calculators, chancery clerks, and copyists, etc.; these formed a corpus collegium of 10 to 15 persons. Each corps had its own war treasury, and subordinate to it there were also established: a hospital treasury, a chief field-magazine treasury, and a chief field-provisions treasury, among which the manifold expenditures for the army were distributed. Next to these treasuries there were also the special treasuries at the field bakeries and

[p. 20]

the provision-transport columns. — All these treasuries stood under the Field War Commissariat of the Corps, which had to authorize and approve all expenditures. The establishments were fixed by the War College and sent to the principal treasuries for compliance. The small treasuries were furnished with advances from the principal treasuries in proportion to their needs, and rendered account to them with the approval of the Commissariat; these accounts, appended as vouchers for their expenditures, they likewise submitted to the Commissariat, but then had to send them to the General Field War Treasury in Berlin, thence to the Commissariat Provisions Department, and finally to the Supreme Audit Chamber as the last instance, from which they awaited their discharge.

The whole of this War Commissariat business was so artificial a contrivance, so confused in its very design, that both immense cumbersomeness and frequent disorders and abuses were bound to arise from it, especially since the most unfit subjects were taken on as provision commissioners and officials — most of whom were suited to no business whatsoever, had never before served, and could therefore find their way all the less in so artificial a course of business, one that even its inventor could not carry out. The army suffered most from it, for no single provisioning official had authority, in urgent cases, to do what the circumstances required

[p. 21]

without incurring responsibility; over every trifle it was first necessary to write and write again, and with what negligence was many a thing not done? For example, an official in Silesia reported on several matters to Erfurt, and urgently required a reply by return of post — but he received none at all. Cases arose daily that had not been thought of in drafting the instruction, and out of irresolution, or lack of authority, or because the case could not be fitted to the form, usually nothing at all was done, or at least not the best. In this way disorder heaped upon disorder, some of which came too from the numerous commanders, who chicaned one another and often contradicted one another.

The army had most to fear from the quality of the provisioning officials who, as already said, were all ignorant in such business, all very needy, poorly paid, and had gone into the field united only in their intention of acquiring riches for themselves, as their predecessors in the Rhine campaign had once done.

A councillor from the War College had been charged with the appointment of all the field officials, and whoever was an attentive observer here could not but become most anxious for the fate of the army and for the fortunate progress of its arms. Before this man’s house there gathered daily an incredible throng of supplicants, all wishing to contribute to the glory of the Prussian state through

[p. 22]

the provisioning of the army. They were people of every station: discharged or cashiered officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers from the invalid list, ignorant surgeons, bankrupt merchants, copyists, servants, breadless artists and craftsmen, hairdressers, tailors, cooks-shop keepers, horse-hirers, victuallers, cooks, second-hand dealers, and finally those who are nowhere lacking — baptized and unbaptized Jews — were not lacking here either. Almost every one of these supplicants brought a letter of recommendation from some man of consequence whom he had prevailed upon to procure his appointment through his intercession. Most of these supplicants were so importunate, and many of the letters of recommendation that came in were so weighty, that the poor councillor fell into the greatest embarrassment, the more often he observed how the supplicants failed altogether to answer to the recommendations they brought. He himself had made his fortune by way of connection, and his obligations toward many persons were of such a kind that he had to give ear to their recommendations without any regard for the subjects recommended. The good councillor therefore fell into great anxiety over his responsibility for the personnel appointed, and later had much vexation and scandal from it as well.

In this way the taking-on of the field officials was done almost without any real selection; it was rather a drawing from a wheel of fortune in which there were 50 blanks against one prize. And even if it subsequently

[p. 23]

proved that not all the individuals of this personnel had acted faithlessly and fraudulently, still there were none among them who by knowledge of the service or by skillful conduct of office would have justified the choice that had fallen upon them.

This mixed personnel was soon sworn in (vain trouble), provided with the meagre salary which was still squandered in Berlin in the splendour of the uniform, and then they all went off in various directions to their places of destination. They set out from Berlin with empty pockets, on foot, on horseback, or by post, and soon along the way made use of the orders handed to them, taking quarters upon them and levying forage. Some even had themselves given advances of money under all sorts of pretexts, or levied their forage in more than one place in order to sell it, and some also extorted teams for transport from the country people.

A considerable detachment of this personnel was sent to South Prussia, where, however, they had to spend some time idle in Kalisch, since the Chamber and district tax officials there had already established the magazines, saw to the provisioning of the troops themselves, and for reasons easy to guess did not wish to hand over to the provisioning officials, especially as the march-through of the Russians was expected daily, and the magazine-keepers looked forward with certainty to their harvest. This turned out very abundant too, the Polish estate-owners

[p. 24]

were severely squeezed at the deliveries; they had to hand over as many Polish quarters, measured generously, as they were obliged to give only in Berlin bushels. Herr von T.y in Little Kl., a very poor nobleman, complained to me that he had been required to deliver 16 Berlin bushels of flour to S.z; he had wished to make friends for himself, and had therefore sent 21 Polish quarters there, yet had received only a receipt for 12 Berlin bushels, which he also showed me. In K. a magazine-keeper sold 200 bushels of oats to an innkeeper. The Russians took the forage granted to them out of the magazines, but at once sold it back again to the officials, and foraged from the peasants by force.

For the field officials this whole harvest was lost; they sat idle for 14 days in Kalisch, without any means, amid a rather great dearth, and yet could not resist the crude, sensual pleasures of the place, drink and games of hazard, whereby they were soon compelled to have recourse to the usual expedients — the sale of their few effects and the contracting of debts.

After the political situation had changed, the forsaken men were at last delivered from their exile; an order summoned them to Erfurt. Not a single one among them was in a position to meet the costs of this long journey from his own means, and most left debts behind, on account of which they removed themselves from the town with much

[p. 25]

adroitness. As far as it would go, the personnel were loaded onto empty cash-wagons, and on the road as far as Erfurt many tragicomic adventures, and among them also excesses, occurred.

The gentlemen finally arrived in Erfurt, where they were distributed among the magazines and bakeries in the surrounding district. The army, to be sure, stood quiet and inactive, so that the provisioning could be carried out in the greatest order and according to all proper form. And yet there soon arose investigations, arrests, deficits. Men had to be cashiered and driven out, and one could not find one’s way out of the multitude of embezzlements and disorders. The abuses that had occurred came to the King’s ears, since the Electoral Saxon government complained to him directly of the oppressions practised against the peasants, and he ordered severe punishment.

The idle bakeries turned to marauding, since the bread for the army was baked in the towns; the master bakers and head master bakers, who have only 10 and 15 thalers of field pay respectively per month, indemnified themselves by false returns of their personnel in order to pocket the wages. The train officers exchanged and sold horses, procured knacker’s certificates in order to be permitted to enter sold horses as lost, and even later entered the horses that had really been lost (starved to death) on the report, so as to draw the rations still. The tradesmen had to practise, according to the prescribed laborious

[p. 26]

form, writing up accounts for work that had not been done, the sum of which was collected and distributed among themselves, while wagons, harness, and baking requisites were left in the same bad condition as they had been issued from the train magazines. For wagon-grease, traces, and stable-lights the most shameless demands were made; the veterinary medicine was likewise an occasion for false account-writing, and even apothecaries lent themselves to it, while the horses frequently suffered from glandular diseases and were cured with a little goitre-powder. The train surgeons, likewise paid barely enough to starve on, and not content with 6 pfennigs of medicine-money for each servant, followed the example and liquidated considerable sums for medicine that had neither been prescribed nor taken. This they were permitted to do, for they were needed not as physicians, but for the fabricated account-writing.

Thus were the resources of the country squandered by faithless officials, while men merely watched with all anxiety over the fulfilment of an artificial form.

In the magazines things went no better; for carriage-hire, day-wages, and utensils great accounts were written, and little disbursed. At the acceptance the peasants were squeezed either with the measure, or they were made to wait so long that they offered considerable presents merely to be dispatched.

[p. 27]

Given the inactivity of the army, a considerable sum ought to have been saved from the establishments, but under such a constitution this saving was lost through embezzlement and fraud. All the provisioning officials regulated themselves by the establishment, and took the greater part of the savings into their own pockets. Meanwhile the confusions and disorders had risen to the highest pitch.

In South Prussia a train and a bakery of 5 ovens had been left standing; it remained a whole month exposed to the greed of the inspectors, until it was decided to let it march to Silesia to the v. Gr. Army Corps. Another train and a cavalry regiment arrived in a certain town in the Saale region and demanded forage, which was, however, refused them from the Prussian field magazine, because they were not on the provisioning designation of that magazine.18 A money transport from Berlin, sent to a treasury in G., was not accepted by that same treasury, because they had no order for it. Indeed, even some regiments often did not know to which corps they belonged, since they received now this, now that order. Similar confusions occurred among the chief treasuries, which either had received no provisioning establishments at all, or whose corps increased or diminished, so that they often did not know who was entitled to draw money from their funds

[p. 28]

or not.19 All these disorders arose first from the War College and next through the collisions into which the General Staff so often fell with the War College and with the Intendancy, and which were only a consequence of the jealousy, the arrogance, and the private hatred or the actual personal animosities between the two.

What, then, was to be hoped for from a war before whose opening such disorders had already taken root — disorders bound to wrest away the army’s confidence and dishearten it? The campaign was, however, ended without hostilities in the spring of this year, and the army went home.

The Saxon principalities and some other adjoining territories had borne the burdens of the Prussian billeting and the heavy forage deliveries for nothing; they had freely and willingly furnished everything demanded of them, without being able to hope for anything in return for their future security, for after the withdrawal of the Prussians Germany’s situation had only become more precarious still.

The Prussian army had lost much of its private property and marched back into its garrisons in ill humour, because it had never come to a battle.

[p. 29]

The host of officials returned most sorrowfully to their old sphere, dejected over the failed attempt to make their fortune. All complained of a deficit, none had a surplus; most had so entirely given up their former livelihoods, in the certain expectation that the war would put them in a position to live independently and free of business after the peace, that they could not return to them. They therefore cursed the King for not having actually begun the war; they complained bitterly that there had been nothing to earn; they delayed rendering their accounts until they were strictly held to it and set close deadlines.

Only the Field War Commissariat established in Silesia for the v. Gravert Army Corps, by the arrangement of the Minister Count von Hoym and under the direction of the Privy Councillor Count v. Schack, distinguished itself advantageously by the soundness of its officials. Its personnel had for the most part been chosen from the Breslau and Glogau Chamber officials, without any foreign interference and without any patronage. All other applicants were turned away. Those appointed were better provided for; they were men in whom, through their very conditions of service, a spirit of honour already dwelt, and once the campaign was over they returned again to their former posts.

[p. 30]

All the Commissariats were now instructed to close their accounts, to submit them to the Commissariat (Provisions) Department, and to dissolve themselves at once. The Department busied itself with ordering the chaos of irregularities, investigating the abuses, laying before the King the sum total of the whole campaign, forwarding the bundles of accounts to the Supreme Audit Chamber for a final review — so that this college might have a couple of years’ worth of work in reserve — and finally consigning to the registry the only lasting proofs of this campaign, begun irresolutely and without a plan and ended to no purpose.

The discerning, true patriots who had observed the daily, disaster-threatening confusions of this campaign were very glad that this storm had passed over so happily, and that a war had been prevented which, in view of the want of a plan and the wretched provisioning arrangements, gave no hope of a happy outcome.

The train officers attached themselves to the slow retreat of the army with the starved horses; they had provided splendidly for themselves, and concluded their harvest with the horse auctions, where they exchanged the best horses for poor ones, and entered others — which they had quietly sold for 40 to 50 thalers — in the record at a price of 3 or 6 thalers. Only in Silesia was this fraud either not possible at all or at least very difficult, for the wise Hoym safeguarded the royal

[p. 31]

interest too well, and had these auctions conducted by Chamber deputations. I myself one day saw 3 horses stopped which were to be led into the town from the Schweidnitz common by a harness-master and a groom. The train officer, Lieutenant v. Tr., could find no excuse whatever; he was indeed thoroughly rude, but the horses were still not allowed to go — it was obvious that Tr. wished to sell these horses secretly, but the Chamber department held them back.

Under the worthy Hoym, Silesia everywhere presented, in these matters, a fine picture of orderliness and system, and in this province alone one had the pleasure of seeing battalion, artillery, and train horses sold for good prices, although their number was very considerable,20 whereas in other provinces such horses had to be given away almost for nothing.

1806.

The army did indeed march back, but a part of it remained mobilized in the garrisons, or moved into Pomerania, where likewise an investigation was opened against a certain train officer, Captain of Cavalry v. St., which ended for him in cashiering and fortress imprisonment.

It was indeed peace, yet the joy did not last long; the apprehension of experienced men in the state — that the fire was not extinguished but only ominously covered over,

[p. 32]

so as to blaze up terribly again — was very soon fulfilled. While efforts were still being made to obliterate all traces of this campaign, the muffled call to war was already sounding anew, and it was confirmed soon enough, and to the horror of the discerning citizens of the state.

The first thing one noticed at this new departure was a disaster-threatening wavering in the preparations. Some regiments received orders to march, and then counter-orders to remain; some others had actually already set out on several days’ marches and had to return to their garrisons. This conduct was called mysterious, yet the preparations deserved that name only in so far as many could not divine their purpose. For the rest there was nothing mysterious in the matter, least of all for France.

The hundredfold errors of the previous campaign, scarcely ended, and with the investigation of which one was still occupied, lay still so fresh before one’s eyes that one might cherish the most well-founded hope of a better organization of the army. Yet daily there were disquieting disappointments: the men on furlough came together in the garrisons (especially in Berlin) so singly and so slowly that after three weeks they were still not all assembled;21 so that one again began to doubt

[p. 33]

the seriousness of the affair. Just as slowly went the delivery of the horses, the bringing in of the servants, and the whole mobilization, in which one saw nothing but contradictions. Was it a plan to be so slow, so contradictory, and so ambiguous? Did one hope so confidently in the genius of Herr von Lucchesini that he would make our armaments unnecessary, or did one also believe that the mere show of arming would end the quarrel? And that the French would be so discreet as to await our slowness unexploited and patiently? All this is inexplicable, and nothing remains to us of it but the sad memory of the reality of these errors and of their unhappy consequences. Various gratifying pieces of news about improvements in the army were current, among them the ordered reduction in the number of horses for the officers’ baggage, and the strict command to leave behind the officers’ and soldiers’ wives. Several of the bad commissariat officials from the previous campaign were not reappointed, and patriotism let us hope and believe all things good.

The march of the Silesian troops resembled now a funeral procession, now a race, according as the frequent orders contradicted one another. At Löwenberg, Bautzen, and Dresden there were halting-points, and in the latter city the Prussian cavalry officers displayed daily their high spirits and their bravado in riding, in driving,

[p. 34]

in drinking, gaming — — — etc. The plain, simple Saxons gazed in wonder at these Herculeses, and beside them took on a schoolboyish appearance.

In Silesia peasants and noblemen, tenants and estate-owners cursed over the deliveries and the through-marches, and hence the troops were also not particularly well received and entertained in their quarters. It seemed to the Silesians an unbearable burden, and they gave vent to their feelings against it in their coarse manner without moderation.

In Saxony it went better; the peasants there are more polite and more good-natured, and they also thought much of the Prussians, and hence the provisioning too, with slight exception, was quite good. Moreover, staged provisioning (billeted ration system on the march) had been introduced everywhere, and this is, on marches where provisions are to be had, indisputably the best. In every quarter the soldier received 2 pounds of bread, 1/2 pound of meat, and 2 cans of beer, and although most districts in Saxony had not yet been paid for this provisioning from the previous year’s march, they nevertheless furnished the prescribed portions very abundantly, and voluntarily added a first course and brandy as well. The actual field provisioning from the magazines and through the Field War Commissariat was to begin only where the army meant to concentrate and take up a position. But unfortunately the army was there sooner than the provisioning arrangements, for after the long irresolute marches it was at length forced into rapid advance, and the provisioning arrangements

[p. 35]

could not follow so quickly. But when it then had, entirely on account of the threatening movements of the enemy, to change its position in the greatest possible haste and make great marches — then a shortage of provisions was unavoidable. The fear, the irresolution, the earnest conviction that one would very soon have to fight, and the too-late insight that the circumstances were not the best, had all at once produced such disorder in the whole that every particular inevitably had to suffer under it. One order contradicted another; the commanding generals never let the intendants of their corps know in good time and definitely where they were marching, so that no arrangements could be made by them. The measures for the war, which up to that point had been kept so very secret, and from which so much was expected, may indeed have been agreed upon quite methodically and in the best form, but there was one circumstance on which one had not reckoned, namely: so-called cross-strokes; and, according to the old German proverb, one had reckoned without one’s host!

The bad, wrong-headed provisioning arrangements are therefore certainly in part the cause of the misfortune that has befallen the Prussian army.

I will cite only a few occurrences that substantiate this assertion.

[p. 36]

While the troops halted so often on their slow marches, and needlessly drained the peasants through the staged provisioning, no arrangements whatsoever were yet being made for their reception ahead of their front and at their preliminary destinations. Instead of moving ahead of the army, the provisions officials trailed slowly behind it. They wrote and wrote; they practised the artful forms, and instead of filling the magazines — filled only the registries. In Jena it was only on 6 October that a contract for foodstuffs was drawn up, which were unfortunately to be supplied by a Jew whom they had brought along as commissary of provisions. The items were numerous and the quantities large. Namely: meat, bacon, butter, rice, groats, peas, dried fruit, tobacco, etc. — all lucrative objects for the Jewish spirit of speculation; only one thing was remarkable: the salt the Jew was not to supply; on this cheap and trifling article the Hebrew was to earn nothing; this, they said, we can indeed draw directly from the Saxon salt-works. The place of delivery of all these things, so gratifying to a hungry army, was assigned to the contractor within a circuit of 10 miles around Erfurt, and the delivery was to be made as gradually and as soon as possible. The matter had only advanced so far that the Jew was to submit his demands. On 6 October, then — when the whole army already had to be set in motion to face the

[p. 37]

threatening enemy — only then did they think of feeding the army, and! — were so sure of their cause that they fixed the place of delivery within the probable line of operations!! The contract, however, probably never came about, for before it could be dispatched, engrossed, and confirmed, the fate of the army between the Saale and the Elbe had probably already been decided.

A bakery too had been set up at the gates of Jena, but it can scarcely have got its ovens heated, or at most have baked a few hundred loaves, when the unfortunate affair at Schleiz compelled it to flee in all haste toward Weimar, abandoning its stocks of flour, bread, and dough.

During the staged provisioning of the troops it was quite useless to haul stocks of bread about; and yet this was done. Many regiments, battalions, and artillerymen carried nine days’ stocks with them, needlessly tormenting their draught animals thereby, and the bread they had received from Saxon bakeries or in the countryside grew so mouldy on them that they could not get rid of it even at the lowest prices, but had simply to throw it away. On the marches, then, there was waste and abundance, and where it mattered to feed the army, there was want.

The numerous and cumbersome bakeries, which cost so incredibly much and are of such very little use, could

[p. 38]

or rather had to, so long as one could march quietly, advance well ahead, so that the army might find bread everywhere, and only when the war actually began were they to fall far back behind the front, in order to be able to go on baking there in peace; but instead, some of them were only made mobile when the army was already on the march, and were then left to trundle slowly along behind, or to stand idle, while towns and villages had to procure bread for the troops.

On the decisive days, however, which broke so unexpectedly over Prussia’s fate, several bakery detachments were still on the march and had done nothing at all. — Others had been taken along to the front; for example, at the gates of Weimar stood 13 ovens, and at Diefurth on the Ilm eleven were to be set in operation. The camp had been pitched here only on 13 October, after the retreat from Jena, after two days and three nights of anxious wandering about without definite orders. On the 14th at midday 7 ovens were full of bread, and several hundred loaves lay steaming in the tents, and the detachments, which had arrived earlier with their wagons to collect bread than a single oven was ready, gazed hungrily at the hot supplies. More and more bread-collectors kept coming, and no one knew who was to be served first. Unfortunately, probably none of them got anything, for the thunder of cannon came ever nearer and rang out so frightfully that

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the bakers no longer wished to work. The small-arms fire, which could be heard very distinctly, placed the nearness of the battle beyond all doubt; the consternation was indescribable. The beautiful countryside was crammed full of baggage, which, mixed with scattered troops of cavalry and infantry, streamed off in dense throngs toward Weimar. A crowd of wounded came through the bakery camps at Diefurth and Weimar; they all brought bad news, and yet the train directors had the most positive orders not to budge from the spot, not to let themselves be thrown into confusion by anything, but calmly to go on baking. And this was indeed done (if not with the ordered calm). From time to time news came from the town of Weimar, from headquarters there, and all of it assured that the battle was going quite well. At last — and indeed after preparations for flight had already been made, against all orders and involuntarily, for the sake of one’s own safety — a courier arrived and brought the official news: that the French had been beaten and that we had triumphed everywhere! Bakers and hands were given schnapps and had to cheer. — — A couple of flour columns, which had after all been sent ahead as a precaution beyond Weimar toward Erfurt, were recalled by ordonnance, but did not come, on account of the exhausted horses. This ill-starred joy of victory did not last long, however; the powder-smoke soon clouded the fine day on the horizon. Musket and pistol fire could be heard clearly and

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ever more distinctly; one heard the cannonballs whistle in a manner that raised horror, and all at once it shot like an electric jolt through everyone who was on their feet there. We are lost! let us flee! so they all cried in confusion and left everything standing as it stood; many bakers forgot their bundles, and everything without exception — whatever was not already on the wagons — was left behind; at Weimar 13, at Diefurth 7 ovens full of bread, and the complete camps with all their appurtenances! Was it for this, then, that these heavy trains, which cost the country so many horses and so much money, had been made to trail slowly behind the army — in order, as it were, to take them into the engagement on the days of danger? Was it ever heard of, that during a battle bread should, so to speak, be baked in the front line? and that the subsistence of an army should, precisely on the most perilous days, be so little secured that, after it has been beaten by the enemy, it must also be utterly destroyed by hunger? More about the retreat in a future issue.

1806.

The retreat is heading to Erfurt! — so ran the general cry in that moment of terror, and I believe men would have run there even without orders, or rather, no one knew where he ought to run. One followed another, and the fleeing mass soon grew so densely crowded that the spectacle it presented defies description. Burning Auerstädt, together with yet another village and a windmill, formed against the sky

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several dreadful columns of smoke; to this was added the unbroken thunder of the guns, and the numerous wounded, who — covered in blood and powder — whimpered aloud, and, mutilated and disfigured as they were, had to be carried or driven off, or else were left helpless by the highway, abandoned to the dreadful oncoming enemy, sinking down here without strength; and the French, advancing swiftly as arrows with thundering artillery, victorious upon the heights beyond Weimar — all this formed a ghastly scene and hastened the flight.

The fleeing, cowardly hordes looked upon their mutilated comrades lying there without pity, and no entreaty could move them to take the unfortunate men along with them. Instead of such a sight kindling their courage, it only heightened the fear that had driven them to run away. — Bad for the few brave men who had to swim along with this current; they went under in the cowardly mass.

Once it was the ABC of military science: to bring the baggage to safety ahead of the enemy; this time, however, it had been kept close behind us on the battlefield, and so on the retreat one could not move. Yet this error had now been made, and there was really nothing to be done in the matter but to bring as much as possible of the enormous baggage to safety ahead of the enemy. What wealth of the state, and how much private property, was not lodged in this

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mass that covered the whole field from Weimar to Erfurt? How much, then, was there not to lose here? and how keenly felt was this loss not in war? Was it therefore not a duty, at every hazard, to bring the baggage — as well as the guns and the ammunition wagons — to safety? The Eckartsberg near Weimar was an advantageous point at which to hold out and defend oneself for at least a couple of hours, during which time the wagon-fort could still have been for the most part saved. Instead of this, however, the baggage had to make way and halt everywhere, as often as a cavalry troop appeared that wished to continue its flight at the trot. Back with the wagons, off with the pack-horses! so men shouted everywhere, and were usually brave enough at it — to thrash the poor drivers. By these measures all the troops naturally got ahead, and the transport was left behind and abandoned to the enemy.

There are unquestionably cases in the course of a war where one must sacrifice a wagon-fort or a baggage train to the enemy in order to gain more important advantages; but could that be the case here, where nothing more was at stake than deliverance? and could one have saved anything in a better way than by seeking to hold back the enemy for a short while longer? Or did one intend, through the senseless swift flight, to attain greater advantages? What, then, has been the result of it? Did the

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army rally at the Elbe and defend that important river? Who will one day answer for this failing!?

With regard to the baggage, matters were conducted entirely according to the old German proverb: Honour lost, all lost. —

Night fell and multiplied the terrors of this flight, for now men rode and drove over one another, or gave orders to and thrashed one another. Subordination had been left lying on the battlefield along with glory. No one commanded, no one sought to bring order into the confused colossus; but everyone argued and rebelled. The air resounded with the far and near din of the fleeing. The villages were empty of people and became the prey of those soldiers who, in despair over their fate, allowed themselves every excess, or whom hunger drove to every crime. The wounded threw themselves into the empty peasant houses; grown insensible and indifferent to their fate, they let everything take its course here. For thousands realized that all order had ceased; the otherwise so laudable care for the wounded was found wanting, and they were abandoned to their fate. There was no field ambulance, no surgeon, no hospital wagon at hand.

At Apolda a Saxon-Prussian hospital was only to be established on 13 October. The shooting-house was to be fitted out for it, but it stood without doors, windows, or stove; all this was first to be procured with small-town

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slowness, while in the meantime both the sick and the surgeons were without quarters. Where and how may all this have ended up on the 14th?

The whole road from Auerstädt and its environs, by way of Weimar, Erfurt, out beyond Langensalza — indeed, even as far as Nordhausen and into the Harz — lay strewn with discarded baggage. The pack-drivers, treated as they were, could hardly have had any attachment to their officers, and it was of no concern to them whether the baggage entrusted to them was saved or not; they flung it onto the highway, doubtless plundering it first, and then rode off with the emptied horses. For this reason the road, especially between Weimar and Erfurt, was so littered with field-gear of every kind that the transport was thereby held up. Even regimental armoury, registry, and treasury wagons lay overturned upon the highway, and the wind toyed with the torn registry papers. Here accounts were closed which would have left the Supreme Audit Chamber and the poor clerks racking their brains for years.

The quantity of officers’ baggage thrown down upon the highway also proved with what elaborateness and effeminacy the Prussian officers had taken the field; their traveling tea and coffee services, the food and bottle cases — in short, the most ridiculous articles of effeminacy — were here, in chests and little boxes, among the heavy baggage of the poor overburdened pack-horses

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to find. I have no wish to tell tales out of school, but a certain gentleman may as well know this: that a red morocco case, adorned with the coat of arms of the Right Honourable owner and containing certain safety devices against Priapus’s treachery, together with a selection of delightful books with engravings, were found in a field-equipage during this flight. — The field baggage was all as complete as if the war were to have been waged on a desert island. Indeed, things were found that had not the remotest connection with field baggage, for example family trees, family covenants, patents from ensign up to colonel, private correspondence, and lottery tickets! While abundance here covered the earth, and the Prussian officers were made poor by this loss — the French officer marched across the field of victory with his little pack on his back, to pursue the fleeing enemy.

Many military officials and officers to whom the state had entrusted funds and other effects acted irresponsibly against their duty. They threw such things away or abandoned them to the marauders.

On the retreat, a cavalry detachment found four casks of money in a forest; the gallant officer brought them safely to Magdeburg and reported the find to the authorities, and, given the prevailing ill humour, he was received into the bargain none too gently by way of recompense. Misfortune is said to improve a man; yet no

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rule without exception. Whoever observed the Prussian officers on their retreat must have made interesting, characteristic observations. The noble ones, whose bravery had gone under in the disorder and in the want of any plan, came back from the battlefield where they had fought in vain, with sorrowful looks, in earnest reflection, quiet and modest. They were a burden to no one; they paid for their needs with their last groschen, or went without. Where it was still possible, they hastened to bring order into the chaos and to gather the scattered; many had their clothes shot through and tattered, and were themselves wounded, but they took no heed of this, for their hearts suffered far more at the misfortune of the fatherland. So it was that, with several others, I came upon the worthy Captains v. Br. of the infantry regiment v. W—n and v. L—w in the infantry regiment v. M—f, whose laborious careers had at last attained advancements which the war now perhaps destroyed for ever.

In many others one noticed unexampled exertion to arrest the misfortune in its consequences; they overtaxed themselves in doing so, showed courage and despair — and could accomplish nothing. A great part, however, displayed an outrageous cowardice, especially the old comfortable gentlemen whom the loss of their company had struck like a thunderbolt, who had still to fear the loss of their estates, their wine cellars, and the stores in their equipment depots; and whose parade-life on the drill-ground, where it is so easy to inspire a high opinion of oneself, had suffered so hideous a metamorphosis!

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They were utterly crushed — and in the anguish of their hearts often showed a ridiculous deference towards the French soldiers, who did not even understand these compliments at all, since the fewest of these gentlemen could speak with them. On the other hand, true to the character of cowardice, they were downright coarse towards their subordinates, and wherever their retreat led them, they played the enemy in advance, so as to prepare the country a little for the real enemy.

The young bravos, the scourges of the land, on the other hand — for whom in the garrisons no rank is worthy of respect, no laws sacred, who did not even know how to honour their own estate — remained here too entirely in character; they boasted in the most ridiculous manner, made mock of their own disgrace, railed at their superiors, spoke contemptuously of the victors, everywhere betrayed their ignorance, and on the whole conducted themselves very basely. Their imposing pride did not, however, desert them in this, for they did everything — upon my honour! They rejoiced in their whole skins and continued their swiftness. — Enough of this!

The terrible condition of this fleeing mass, hemmed by the night into a small space, was increased still further when, at the exit of a village in a

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sunken road, a couple of heavy artillery wagons overturned. Here the whole mass came to a standstill; a wild uproar arose, mingled with abuse and curses; but the mass could not be brought a single step forward. To right and left, whole throngs of scattered infantrymen clambered past the wagons in deep mire; grooms and horses were beaten black and blue, and the cumbersome carriages of the generalcy and the staff officers, asserting their rank, pressed their way through everywhere. If their owners could secure no rank and place for themselves on the battlefield, at least this was to be done on the retreat. Through this pressing, every possibility of advancing came wholly to an end, and with every moment the anxiety of those present rose, for off to the right one saw, quite near and in a dreadful multitude, the watch-fires of the French, and heard their war-cry and their singing. This sight lent wings to the steps of the riders and those on foot; only the wagons, with all the persons belonging to them, remained in a state of helplessness and in veritable mortal terror. Had the French known this state of the flight — they would surely have exploited it, and a couple of hundred chasseurs would have sufficed to capture, on the road from Weimar to Erfurt, everything that here found itself in the throng. After a few hours the sunken road finally became open again, and, like a funeral procession, one drove ever forward, over fallen men and horses, as well as over discarded

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baggage. But soon several wagons had to halt again, whose horses would go no further, and although the enemy threatened to attack at any moment, the beasts nevertheless had to be fed. This second terror likewise passed, and now, on the human side exhausted by hunger and thirst, one drove towards the long-desired goal, and at the break of day saw the towers of Erfurt.

The Apple of Discord among the Nations, or What Created and Sustains the Anglo-French War? And how can it be ended?

Fearsomely does rough Mars brandish the fearsome sceptre, gruesomely resound the lament, the curse of despair; for in the train of the mighty one Death mows down the fair harvests of human joys, of human hopes, and of human life.

Almost every part of the known world is — directly or indirectly — entangled in the general struggle, or will yet be.

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Europeans and Asiatics tread the fields of battle, but among them there gradually mingle the subjects or the mercenaries of the contending powers drawn from the three remaining parts of the world.

For this present moment the Austrians and the Danes still stand among the Europeans peaceably, inactive; but who will vouch for the future?

The inhabitants of Denmark look anxiously into the time to come, for at the borders stand the troops; the army of Austria draws itself together. Whether for the preservation of neutrality, whether for earnest struggle: who may foretell the events of the coming months with certainty?

Universal, then, is the discord; about all parties winds the brazen chain of dissension. From West to East, from South to North the weapons clash, the roll of the drum resounds, the trumpet blares, here and there the thunder of battle rages, and the nations tremble or foam, howl or gnash their teeth.

Ask why they fight, and the answer is: For peace! Wondrous, most wondrous. For this, then, do millions stand under arms; for this do worlds arm themselves for strife, and fearsome hosts stand opposed to one another. Men destroy in order to complete, kill in order to give life.

Therefore from every direction move armed multitudes on horse, on foot, and by ship, flooding the earth and the sea.

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Fight for peace! command the gods of the earth, and from the neck of the loving wife, from the encircling arm of the weeping bride, from the bosom of lovely children the grave warrior tears himself away, seizes the murderous weapons, and hastens forth out of the happy stillness of life into the raging tumult of annihilation.

Give up your property or die! wild bands cry out to the defenceless citizen, and sighing the poorest man surrenders to the violent ones the precious fruit of his industry; here flees the once-contented countryman half-naked from the ruined ancestral cottage; there abandoned and starving orphans whimper for bread; yonder the blazing pillar of fire strives crackling upward toward the reddened horizon, engulfs with its roar the howling of the despairing, and illuminates the ghastly scene.

Here the wave carries dead bodies to the shore, and there fields miles long are covered with corpses; there the earth drinks the heart’s blood of the combatants, and here the waves of the sea are reddened with it; groaning, yon fallen man breathes out his agonized existence, and there the life of the mutilated one runs out in a curse.

Want, devastation, and death walk hand in hand, fraternally, through the trembling world. Here Death cracks forth from a thousand fiery gullets; there brother swings against brother the flashing sword, the sickle of corruption; and there man, filled with fury, thrusts

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the cutting bayonet into the entrails of man.

All, all for the sake of peace!

But where peace is to be, there is war beforehand. It exists — every individual feels that.

Why does it exist? A very natural question, the most natural one; there is none more in place than this one, here and now. Men who formerly took not even the remotest part in the affairs of the world, to whom every single word spoken about politics was loathsome, are at this moment drawn by the force of near interest to instruct themselves, to inquire after the cause of the general strife. They strive to learn why they are separated from beloved parents or children, why their sons bleed, why they themselves suffer want and fall ill in the vicinity of the theatre of slaughter.

Only a few are perfectly familiar with the grounds of the war. Well, whoever knows them, let him not read this essay; it was not written for them; it is calculated for the remaining parts of the multitude, to whom only the effect instead of the cause was shown, or who, with the best will, obtained a murky view of things.

First the question must be: Why do Prussia, Russia, and Sweden at present wage war against France and its allies?

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Prussia feared the aggrandizement, the ever-growing power of France; Prussia held that the possession of the Electorate of Hanover, conceded to it by France, would be disputed by England if Britain should conclude peace with France and lay the restitution of Hanover as the basis of that peace. Note, in the background, the Anglo-French dispute.

Russia began the struggle anew in order not to see the colossal power of France still continually rising — a power that would one day be far too superior to it, one that, in the increase of its strength and in its attainment of high fearsomeness, would be able to oppose itself as an enemy to Russia’s own designs — and because it was called to the struggle by like-minded England and supported by considerable sums of money to defray the costs of the war. Consequently its war is only a partial one; the main matter is England; for England, as England’s ally, Russia for the most part contends.

Sweden came forward because a personal enmity exists between the King of Sweden and the Emperor Napoleon, ever since the Duke of Enghien died; but it also wishes to help prevent the growth of France; it entered the lists against France as a power allied with England and subsidized by it.

The finances of Russia and Sweden permit no long-lasting, costly war, and every war costs

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vast sums: both would not wage this one at all were England not in the game with its sterling. Be it so that their other grounds — the fear of the eventual predominance of France, which through family alliances and other federations indeed appears still more highly significant — are of the greatest weight for them: both would by no means have taken up arms had the Cabinet of St. James not incited them, nor in part subsidized their troops. Let Russia believe that its naval power, still in growth, can only gain by closely attaching itself to sea-ruling Britannia: it would not have arisen without those supports.

Prussia held to its neutrality, so long as French and English lived in a state of peace.

Thus it appears incontestably certain that the French and the British are the principal figures in the painting and other powers merely secondary individuals; and for this reason the impartial expert reduces the present Continental war to the Anglo-French one; upon this, and upon nothing else, is it based. The French and the British alone — those giant nations of the modern world — contend against one another; every other struggle hangs upon this one; every nation that takes the field in arms is a moon that receives its light from these suns. Whatever else fights against France is the auxiliary force of the islanders; whatever surges with

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it is its ally. Everything is done for the profit of the principal nation, little for its own sake.

And what aim does France pursue in the Continental war? It augments its own strength and durability in victory over the European North in general; but in particular it gains by England’s being struck in its allies; it contends on the mainland against Britain, since its naval power does not suffice to continue the struggle upon the seas against England’s universal dominion over that element. When Emperor Napoleon abandoned the plan of landing upon the coasts of Britain and — as he put it — defeating England in England, he substituted for it his present one: by victory to close the ports of the Continent to the enemy; thus to diminish its great means of existence and to compel it to conclude peace. England lives in and through its world trade; whoever reduces this fights it, indirectly to be sure but fairly surely. Thus the Emperor concluded, and no one may fault his logic, even though for this reason the inhabitants of the North bleed guiltlessly from a thousand wounds.

Let us go back to the campaign of 1805, and the same phenomena come forth, addressing us.

The Peace of Amiens was concluded in 1802 between England and France, and the great man who, as a hero on the field of battle, first founded France’s real (hitherto only dreamed-of) liberty, also gave,

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as a statesman in the cabinet, the new empire peace and the hope of internal strength and lasting prosperity; but the peace lasted only a short time; apparent advantage in the struggle determined the Sully of England, W. Pitt, upon new hostile steps. All the public English papers reviled Bonaparte, who nevertheless took no notice of it; but when the commercial agents he had sent to the island were sent back, as though they were spies, then he prohibited the importation of English goods, took measures against smuggling, and both powers now adopted their measures calculated for feud. The war began.

Bonaparte, resolved to meet the enemy with every exertion of strength, determined upon a landing in England, and seized upon several other measures conducive to this end. After he had set the imperial crown of France and the royal one of Italy upon his head, united Liguria with France, and installed one of his kinsmen as Prince of Lucca and Piombino — (all in order to increase his prestige and his power on the Continent for the subjugation of the enemy) — he went himself to the coast, to accomplish the intended landing; but at the very first step upon this course he saw himself suddenly halted by the armaments of Austria and Russia (which could only be directed against France).

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Austria, which in the last conclusion of peace with France had lost considerably, had long since looked with vexation upon the growth of France and especially its expansion in Italy upon its own borders; now came the coronations and the annexations; the danger seemed to become more pressing; war was resolved upon, but it was only resolved upon, for its execution required pecuniary means, and of these there was a lack. But England accompanied its pressing summonses to an alliance against the French with considerable offers of subsidies. That decided it. Russia, likewise summoned by England through promises of support, allied itself on the one side with Austria, on the other with Sweden, which was allied with England. It was demanded that France’s Emperor should conclude peace with England; inclined as Napoleon seemed to be to this, he would not do so upon the conditions proposed by Pitt.

Thus the new war was merely a diversion in England’s favour, and hence indirectly the Anglo-French war.

But the days of Ulm and Austerlitz and the Peace of Pressburg put an end to this subsidiary feud, and the two great peoples again fought solo. And why did they fight one another? What sustains this struggle, now already (with the exception of the brief interval of the Peace of Amiens) lasting 14 years?

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It is not amiss — though not gratifying — thus to wander along the chain from link to link, until at the end one reaches the last.

What — I asked — sustains this war?

France’s interest is called: navigation, maritime trade, colonies! But England believes that it must not permit it all this. England is a merchant state, to which it matters to destroy every germ from which a rival might one day spring forth. If Britain permits — so the Englishman concludes — France the competition in trade and navigation, then its existence becomes more difficult; if France has colonies, then England goes under! That is the sum of British policy.

Before the Revolution France possessed considerable colonies; now they are for the most part lost; that it may not win them back again, England wishes to prevent with the exertion of all its strength, that it may not be able to take part in the profitable world trade: that is the tendency of England against France in the present feud. Especially now the island of St. Domingo is England’s chief object of attention; this colony must remain lost to France; it absolutely must not be cultivated — so thinks the author of the new Leviathan, and with him every expert — England would rather see a Negro republic on this island than any social

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condition that would endanger its universal system of trade and credit; for even if the Negro republic was once dangerous to it, it is not always so, not now, and not to so high a degree as if the island were the property of clear-sighted nations. As for conquering this important island itself, England has had to abandon all hope. It is true that some people suppose Malta to be the true object of the present war; but what is Malta? A fortress in the sea.

But when the whole country, in or upon which a stronghold lies, is lost, can no longer be contested, then the fortress itself has no value any more. Everyone understands that. It is just so with this fortress; it lies in the sea, and this sea is at present almost the exclusive property of the Britons: thus this rock, if one thinks away St. Domingo, has for France only an exceedingly slight importance.

If, then, the French government were willing to give up its claims to St. Domingo, the present struggle would be at an end; but France cannot suspend this claim without sacrificing all the advantages gained in the Revolution, without sacrificing all hope of that prosperity which is ever the companion of a flourishing world trade. The so-called carrying trade the French have from the very beginning contested with no nation; they have always left it to the English and the Dutch, doubtless because it does not accord with the inclination and the aptitude of the

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people. Should the French see themselves reduced forever to internal trade, they must either do without a good many necessities, or be and remain dependent upon Britain, which in that case would dispose and dictate over France’s state power at its own pleasure. The French must wish to take part in the world trade that lies exclusively in England’s hands; their national freedom, their internal prosperity depends upon it, they formerly shared it with other nations, and so it appears very natural that France neither will nor can reconcile itself to the loss of St. Domingo, and that with the exertion of all its state powers it continues the war in order to win back that important island in its struggle with England.

One need only cast a searching glance at the development which Europe in general and France in particular has undergone in its needs over three centuries, to find at once the correctness of that assertion, to perceive that on the whole globe there is no compensation for St. Domingo. It is therefore no wonder if everything that has occurred for years in England and France turns most decidedly upon the eternal withholding and the re-conquest of that island. In order not to be struck once and for all from the list of the naval powers, France exerts all its strength; in order to preserve its constitution and its credit, England would rather fear the

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worst, and dare the utmost, than permit a re-conquest of this island, whose peaceful cultivation under French rule would bring about its own inevitable ruin.

Could France tolerate a Negro republic on St. Domingo, then England would gladly and willingly lend the Emperor Napoleon its hand for any undertaking on the Continent; for the affairs of the Continental powers interest England only insofar as they protect its naval power, and it knows its own advantage all too well not to find that it holds a great superiority over the best power on the mainland, so long as the monopoly trade in colonial produce is in its hands. Yet France will hardly, or never, make such a sacrifice, because the whole mainland is no substitute for St. Domingo. That seems exaggerated, but upon closer examination one finds it the simple truth.

By the creation of a universal monarchy in the proper sense, France would only lose its concentricity; it would not only grow weaker in the same measure as it gained in extent, but it would also have to sink into an infinite dependence upon England, because this empire, through its continued universal trade, will forever dominate the mainland of Europe; here no cessation can be conceived, because we are accustomed to the luxurious products of their colonies, because we can no longer do without coffee and spices, since we

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still crave even after their — partly prohibited — manufactures.

Only if we could set ourselves back a thousand years in our needs might we live independent of England. Let no one, then, for the sake of his own understanding, believe that Napoleon conquers the Continent, and installs his relations and high servants as kings and princes, merely in order to rule over us. No, the winning of the mainland is always only a means to an end, to the defeat of England.

If one thinks away St. Domingo (as, indeed, for years past), then there is no object of dispute between the two powers, then everywhere the arms rest, then every antagonism is for the moment resolved. England can do without this island, for it has no interest in seeing a still greater quantity of articles of luxury put into circulation, so long as those which it is capable of supplying suffice for the needs of Europe, as is really the case; France, however, cannot do without this point of the earth without being at the most manifest disadvantage, as has already been proven above.

Therefore Napoleon conquers one piece of the mainland after another, in order to close the harbours to his enemies, in order to diminish or wholly prevent their sale of goods of every kind. If England suffers here continually, then it must incline to peace, then it must give back to France the colonies in the West Indies,

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then it must support the French government in the re-conquest of St. Domingo (one way or another), then it must tolerate French trade competition.

Now, in order to enable everyone to judge whether I do not attribute too high a value to that island, I will lead the reader in spirit to St. Domingo, will show in some measure how matters stood with this colony before the outbreak of the French Revolution; what it was, and — with undisturbed cultivation — can become again, and what importance it has as an object of the continuation of the war for a state whose wealth hangs upon the possession of colonies.

“The island of Hispaniola, or St. Domingo, was discovered by Colon on his first voyage in the year 1792 [sic], and named Hispaniola by him. But since he afterwards built a town, which he named St. Domingo in honour of his father Dominic, this name was first extended to the district and finally to the whole island, so that it is known just as well under the name of St. Domingo as under the former.”

“This island, of which one part belongs to the Spaniards, is, next to Cuba, the largest of the Antilles. It extends from 17° 37’ — 20° north latitude, and from 66° 35’ — 74° 15’ west longitude, and is 426 English miles long from east to west, and nearly 124 miles broad. It lies midway between Jamaica and Cuba toward the north-west, and the island of Puerto Rico,

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from which it is separated only by a channel, toward the east.”

“The climate is exceedingly hot, but is cooled and refreshed by sea breezes. Since some of the inhabitants are said to reach more than 100 years of age, the air is held to be healthy, and this is attributed in great part to the splendid alternation of hills and valleys, forests and rivers, which everywhere present themselves to the eye. This island is held to be the most fertile and pleasant in all the West Indies.”

“The forests consist of cabbage-trees, palms, elms, oaks, firs, and other trees which are taller and larger, and also bear finer and more savoury fruit, than in most of the other islands. To the latter belong chiefly: pineapples, oranges, lemons, grapes, dates, and apricots.”

“Here too are found all the West Indian birds.”

“On the savannas or meadows one sees countless herds of horned cattle, which run wild and free about the country.”

“In the French portion there are so many horses that all their neighbouring colonies can be supplied with them, and besides these a great number of wild horses and swine, remaining from the breeding stock which the Spaniards had brought over.”

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“The hunters shoot the oxen for their hides, as is also done in Cuba. Scarcely any country is better watered, both by brooks and by navigable rivers, which teem with fish, as do the coasts with turtles.”

“In the sand of these rivers gold-dust is found, and the island formerly had gold, silver, and copper mines.”

“The chief wares of the island are: hides, sugar, indigo, cotton, cacao, coffee, ginger, tobacco, salt, wax, honey, ambergris, and various kinds of medicinal wares and dye-woods; but there is little grain here.”

“The French are said to equal the Spaniards in number, or even to surpass them, yet both taken together are far from being so numerous as the size and fruitfulness of the island could support.”

“This land was treated by the Spaniards with the utmost cruelty, in that they slaughtered, in battles and in cold blood, no fewer than 3 millions of men, women, and children, and in this way exterminated the whole of the inhabitants (many of whom had nevertheless met them very amicably at their first settlement on this island).”

“The Spaniards once made the attempt to destroy the colonies on St. Christopher, when that island was divided between the French and the English; but

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this undertaking drew upon them a very severe revenge. For several of the French inhabitants who had been driven from St. Christopher, and thereby reduced to very wretched circumstances, began to turn their thoughts to desperate enterprises. They united with some Englishmen, Dutchmen, and other resolute men, and began a piratical war against Spain. At first they contented themselves with the seizure of Spanish ships and the destruction of their trade; but later, emboldened and strengthened by their successful operations, they landed on the mainland of New Spain, and burned and plundered the open country. Their number and boldness grew with their fortune; united they took some of the strongest fortresses and rich cities of the Spaniards (Portobello, Maracaibo, and Campeche); they even took the city of Panama by storm and burned it, after having defeated an army that came to its aid. In all these and other places conquered by them they found incredible booty and committed the most unheard-of cruelties.”

“Another band of these pirates went through the Strait of Magellan into the South Sea, and made the whole coast of Peru, Mexico, and Chile a scene of devastation, for fortune accompanied them everywhere, because they always conducted themselves so bravely and so skilfully

[p. 67]

that in a just cause they would have earned the greatest renown.

“These pirates, whom the French call flibustiers, but the English buccaneers, often brought their prizes and booty to Jamaica, and thereby enriched that island; others, who found that the Spaniards on St. Domingo were so weak that they had in a certain manner abandoned a great part of that island, made it their rendezvous.”

“Those who followed hunting found, in the wastes created by Spanish tyranny, a very good place to ply their proper trade. To these two kinds of men there came yet a third, namely some Frenchmen from the Lesser Antilles; these perceived how much was to be gained by supplying with necessaries men who were extravagant in their spending and not very exact in their dealings; they learned besides that this island had the best soil in America: therefore they betook themselves hither and lived here as planters and merchants.”

“These three kinds of men, who were mutually useful to one another, lived in great harmony together; often, it is true, they were driven off by the Spaniards, but they always returned reinforced, and the latter could scarcely maintain even a part of the island.”

“The French court at first looked on in silence at the traffic of these men, and when complaints came in,

[p. 68]

it merely disapproved; but when later the French on St. Domingo became numerous, powerful, and rich, then it acknowledged them as subjects, and sent them a governor and regular troops to protect them in what they had acquired. The old custom of practising piracy was still tolerated for some time, until the hide trade increased considerably and the plantations spread.

“At last France acquired a lawful right, when in the Peace of Ryswick in 1697 the Spaniards formally ceded the north-western part of the island to it.”

“This is the best and most fruitful part of it, and at the same time the foremost colony of the French in the West Indies and in all America.”

“This colony has been greatly fostered since its acquisition by France; already in the year 1726 — according to the account of several writers — it contained 30,000 Europeans and 100,000 Negroes.”

“Before the outbreak of the French Revolution the inhabitants were reckoned at 600,000 blacks, 42,000 whites, and 44,000 coloured or brown persons.”

“As early as the beginning of the eighteenth century, 60,000 hogsheads of sugar, each of 500 pounds, were manufactured on St. Domingo; the indigo amounted in value to half as much as the sugar, and a great

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quantity of cotton, ginger, and cacao was shipped to France.”

“The cultivation of coffee has since that time come into extraordinary favour, just as every branch of trade flourished.”

“The produce of the plantations in the vicinity of Cap François, the capital of the French territory of Hispaniola, which was partly exported from here and partly consumed on the spot, was reckoned at 30,000 tons of coffee, sugar, tobacco, and indigo, to the value of 600,000 pounds sterling.”

“Altogether, everything that was annually exported from the French portion of this island amounted in value to 1 million 200,000 pounds sterling.”

“To this was added the considerable trade in French manufactured goods to the Spaniards living here, who gave silver for them.”

“This article alone brought France yearly some 2 million piastres.”

“Such was the state of things on St. Domingo shortly before the French Revolution.”

One readily perceives that I am setting up no commonplace hypothesis, no paradox, when I assert: this island is the object of the present war.

But even so we are not yet at the roots of the tree; we must go still further back, back

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to the primal source of the strife, of which mention was already made in passing in this essay.

Now we stand at the last question, and with it at the last link in the great chain of the causes of the war.

I said before that the English system is by no means to allow France to rise as a trading state and a naval power. Now one asks: But why not? Could there not be competition between the two powers? Answer: No, it cannot exist, and never will be able to. England must either carry off the victory or fall, fall utterly, utterly. Another Why? Well then: if so industrious a power as France really is takes part in trade — that is, in its own trade and in world trade — then England loses extraordinarily, then it can no longer pay the enormous interest on its enormous national debt, and collapses in upon itself. To avert this misfortune, the British Ministry will wage war eternally, or regenerate it through its subsidies.

Let a man who is of my opinion (the author of the New Leviathan) here speak for once on my behalf. He has fixed his subject deeply, squarely, and correctly in his eye; he has convinced thousands who were previously of another opinion; he is the man of sharp sight and of truth.

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“Few persons” — he says — “have knowledge enough of the connection of political life to form a clear conception of the irresistible necessity which the enormous national debt of England carries with it, and of how greatly disadvantageous this is for France. It creates, in those with an interest in it, adherents of England at every point of Europe; hence, at the same time, the great number of France’s enemies.”

“People believe in France’s ambition because they do not know that the whole English constitution must collapse the moment the government is no longer able to pay the interest on the national debt; and because they have no idea of the collision into which France is brought with England through this national debt. France has no interest in extending its frontiers; for, rounded off and protected on all sides as it already is, it would, by the extension of its territory, only lose its concentricity — that is, the most essential part of its strength; but France has the most definite interest in not letting its colonial system be ruined; for as soon as this is the case, it is and remains dependent on England, until England sinks in upon itself, which cannot happen sooner than when the liberty of the whole world has perished in England.”

“In this way has the present war arisen — the war through which the English government seeks to avert a civil

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war which will break out from the moment the government cannot fulfil its promises” — (which always means again: cannot pay the interest on the national debt) — “and its erstwhile friends (the capitalists of England) are compelled to go over to its enemies (the working class of Great Britain).”

“What appears to be ambition or heroism on France’s part is pure necessity and the effect of the instinct of self-preservation. The Emperor of the French is entirely free of reproach, unless one wishes to make a crime of his perceiving that France cannot maintain a political independence without its colonial system, and of his acting in accordance with this unity. And in like manner the English government is entirely free of reproach, if one grants that it has laid upon it the duty of averting a revolution which will set in in England from the moment the realm is compelled to renounce sole dominion of the sea.”

Anyone even somewhat acquainted with England’s financial constitution readily comprehends that in this sole dominion of the seas lies the means of paying the interest on that national debt. England will never be conquered so long as the English credit system maintains itself through universal trade: for in this system lies concealed the enormous power of the Britons, because each individual, having lent a part of his fortune to the

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state, has a high interest in wishing for the maintenance of this state, of its constitution and its whole polity, and in helping, if need be, to bring it about himself.

There are few families in England that do not either themselves hold a share in the stocks, or have an uncle, an aunt, a brother, a sister who either place their entire fortune in the stocks or draw part of their income from them. There is no station whatever whose members do not have a sum in these stocks. The ease with which one may buy quite small sums, even down to 10 pounds, in the stocks; the punctuality with which one receives the interest on the very day it falls due; the convenience with which one may collect it, year in and year out, almost daily, in cash or in banknotes — these are attractions enough that many prefer to place their money in the stocks rather than take a higher rate of interest for it in some other way. In many households the servants’ wages are withheld guinea by guinea, interest is paid to them on it, and once a small sum has accumulated it is converted into stocks, from which they then draw a certain income for the future.

From this it naturally follows that not only the government, the two Houses of Parliament, the landed proprietors, the merchants, and the scholars, but the whole people must do everything to keep up the national credit,

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and upon this, in the present state of affairs in England, hang the constitution and the welfare of the realm.

Further, the country gains from the credit system an increase of national industry, for the state debt, through its recompense (the taxes), calls forth new activity in the working class. And finally, under this constitution the national wealth increases. To this belongs the promoted circulation of money. In this way the millions do not pile up in the coffers of a few rich men; rather, through the stocks the mass of money moves in an eternal circuit through the whole country; the capital of the land, too, continually increases through the balance of trade and its reproduction; and just as taxes are raised in England, so too does the price of things rise. The poor man here pays very little in direct taxes, because they are so laid on that three-quarters of them fall upon the rich or the well-to-do classes.

Hence the Britons’ attachment to their constitution, hence their love of country, their fury against the enemy of Britain, and the utmost exertion of strength when the state is threatened.

It was this system that determined the Britons at the beginning of the French Revolution to provoke the French so long that they themselves declared war on England (in 1793); this system has continually

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blown upon the flame of the fires of war, so that in our own days it still blazes on devouringly. This system enervates the whole world, in that it makes England alone — with its good fortune in the naval struggle — mighty, almost invincible. This system must be attacked, if England is to be brought out of fear to incline toward peace.

But how? That is the question. France for the moment possesses no navy so complete that it may hope for happy success from a continued naval struggle alone. A landing on Britain is, precisely on account of the credit system (which binds that people so all-powerfully to the interest of the fatherland), difficult and of little promise. Thus the present measure of Napoleon — to close the ports of the Continent to the Britons and their goods — appears the most expedient.

If the Emperor of the French can attack the credit system from the mainland, then much is accomplished. A diminution of the sale of those articles which are the basis of all political life in the state of England seems, for the present, to be the most effective means of ending the war — inasmuch, that is, as not the English alone, but all the European nations besides, must pay the interest of the enormous national debt. The same is thought by several sensible writers and by every unprejudiced expert. But this means alone is nevertheless not sufficient, for all England — let one consider what that means —: All England

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will call forth its strength to prevent the catastrophe (the ruin), or at least to hold it off as long as possible; and then it might yet be a long way to complete dissolution.

Let us pause for a moment at the case that the Emperor Napoleon succeeds, that the whole Continent is closed to the Britons, that they can nowhere any longer place their colonial and manufactured goods. What happens then? What do the inhabitants of England do then?

The government reduces the interest of the national debt and gradually raises the taxes; capitalists, manufacturers, mariners, and merchants undertake a reform in their livelihood, in their way of life: the first pass over from the consuming into the working class, and the second, third, and fourth take up the occupation of agriculture, when their former trade prospers only in a small part still.

There still lie in England and Scotland great fruitful stretches of land unused and uncultivated, whose yield, according to the calculations of the committee which the Board of Agriculture — in the year 1795, I believe — appointed, would amount to 20 millions 700,000 pounds sterling. Agriculture will then nourish many who now exist by navigation and trade.

Then, too, one must not forget that the Continent cannot do without the dye-goods, that our palate

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is so accustomed to the spices and colonial products which the Britons alone bring to us that we can by no means give them up; even the English manufactures we shall never be willing to abandon, and smuggling will put us in possession of those things, once open commerce with us is forbidden to the great commercial nation: thus only then could the epoch arrive when the English people would no longer be in a position to pay their taxes — when the manufactures and arts of all other countries shall have attained the very degree of perfection which the English possess, and when the taxes of this people shall have driven up every kind of handiwork to such a price that the other nations can produce goods just as good at a more moderate price: an epoch which, given the present superiority of English goods and the almost exclusive possession of machines of every kind, is still far, far off.

Furthermore, it must be noted that the navy of the English is almost as strong as that of the entire rest of the world: who, given its excellence, will defeat it? And to this question others attach themselves: who will contest with that nation the sole dominion over the seas? Who will ever be permitted to take part in world trade?

Thus a great span of time still lies between us and the downfall of the English nation; ten generations might easily still be born and die before that

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moment arrives which nearly everyone wishes for and yet, coffee-cup in hand, keeps pushing off.

David Hume, so celebrated as a historian and philosopher, was asked shortly before his death up to what sum, and up to what period, he believed the national debt could be increased. His remarkable answer was: “Neither can be determined. England will not fall in war unless it has previously (in time of peace) laid the ground for its ruin. The symptom that may be regarded as the surest herald of the approaching moment of decay is when the government is compelled, in years of peace, to borrow money for the ordinary needs of the state. The first war to follow will then set the national debt its limit.”

If he judged rightly, as is very probable, then my own opinion is confirmed by his pronouncement, and that time is still far off, for the case of an increase of debt in time of peace has not yet occurred, as appears from a precise survey of the state debt, which follows here.

England’s wars since the change of government of 1688, the extraordinarily large land and sea forces which it maintained during them, the many subsidy monies which it paid, demanded extraordinary costs, and recourse was taken to a hitherto still

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unknown expedient, to a state loan. The state debt at that time consisted only in a brief anticipation of the revenues; sums that, upon the receipt of moneys from the imperial treasury, were at once replaced again.

Under the reign of King William the national debt amounted to 16 million 500,000 pounds sterling, the interest to 1 million 320,000 pounds sterling.

In the wars of Queen Anne, and up to her death in 1714, it was increased to 54 mill. 250,000 pounds sterl., interest 3 mill. 352,000 pounds sterl.

From 1714 until the beginning of the Spanish War in 1739 it was reduced by 7,750,000 pounds sterl., the interest to 1,414,000 pounds sterling, so that the debt in the year 1739 was:

  Pf. St. Pf. St. Int.
(1739) 46,500,000 1,938,000
Through the Spanish War from 1739 to 1748 it rose to 78,250,000 3,054,200
During the peace from 1748 to 1755 it sank down to 75,000,000 2,373,000
Now the Seven Years’ War began; at its end it was 146,625,000 4,842,000

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in size; the state of peace from 1763 to the beginning of the American War in 1775 reduced it to:

  Pf. St. Pf. St. Int.
(1775) 136,000,000 5,058,000
In this war it grew to 216,000,000 8,160,000
In 1785 it amounted to 270,000,000 9,500,000
Here W. Pitt made the plan of paying off one million of it annually, and began with it; hence in the year 1795 it was 264,102,100 9,000,000
Through reduction of interest and repayment it amounted in the year 1793 to 204,000,000 7,400,000
Through the beginning of the French War it increased by 1796 to 360,000,000 13,000,000
With the continued war up to the Peace of Amiens it was in the year 1802 408,000,000 14,800,000
Upon the renewed outbreak of war in the following year it amounted to 400,000,000 14,000,000
At present it is reckoned at 600,000,000 30,000,000

and thus at 3,750,000,000 187,500,000 thalers in gold.

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Whether this sum bears upon the destiny of Europe is surely no question; the object is weighty enough to sustain an eternal war, if, as in England, every individual takes a cash share in it, and Europe bears the disadvantage of it, while England alone is exclusively in possession of the advantage.

This, then — the state debt of England — is the chief apple of discord among the peoples.

It is visible what significant damage the Emperor of the French inflicts upon his enemy by binding the princes of the Continent to himself, by defeating England’s allies and conquering their possessions — (fortresses, commercial towns, and harbours); visible is the gain, in the very growth of the English national debt; but all this does not suffice to destroy it entirely; it is not enough to move it to conclude peace. Stubbornly it persists; it will by no means permit France any share in the great commerce; conscious of its resources, it fears nothing and hopes for everything.

But how — asks the cosmopolitan in an anxious tone — but how is the world’s quarrel to come to an end? If there is no hope of England’s near decay; if the Britons continue further on, secretly or openly, to trade us their colonial and manufactured wares; if France strives above all after navigation, trade, and colonies, and

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England’s sea-ruling fleet denies them to her; if England does not so soon go to ruin in its debt-system: how long, then, will the destructive, raging struggle yet endure? When and how is the discord to be extinguished? Or shall our fatherland forever bleed from these painful mortal wounds? Will peace never return to our fields, to our once happily quiet cottages?

Only one prospect remains to the troubled man: a settlement, a conclusion of peace, in which these political tensions vanish, whose results might reconcile both nations and lead to general repose: a world-peace between France and England!

Here I find myself again compelled to return to the author of the new Leviathan. He has, provisionally — (according to his own expression) — determined the principal articles of such a peace treaty, and one must confess that only under those conditions proposed by him does a lasting peace seem possible.

“England must retain in its power, at the conclusion of peace, the means of gradually reducing its national debt: therefore let it keep possession of the Viceroyalty of Peru which it has conquered, and let France even guarantee it that possession, though under the condition that it make no claim upon the remaining possessions of Spain in America.”

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“Let the sea be free; let every maritime despotism vanish; let all Navigation Acts be annulled, annulled by being made universal. Of commercial treaties there is no longer any question.”

“France returns into possession of its colonies lost in the West Indies; and since the island of St. Domingo must be formally reconquered, England pledges itself to support France in this.”

“Portugal and Spain henceforth constitute no longer two kingdoms, but are united with one another forever. Both contracting powers bind themselves to induce His Majesty the King of Spain to renounce the Spanish Crown, which — that the Spanish nation not be abandoned to its fate — shall pass not to his descendants, but to the hitherto Prince Regent of Portugal and his descendants, in such wise that the latter, as head of state of the Spaniards, unites both kingdoms into one, and Brazil comes to profit the Spaniards just as much as the Portuguese.”

“Gibraltar is returned by England to Spain, that this realm may recover its full liberty.”

“Likewise Holland recovers its colonies and Ceylon.”

“Finally, Malta too is given back to the world. Here, upon Malta, let a Congress be established which,

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composed of deputies from all European nations that have a share in maritime commerce, shall undertake the framing of a maritime code, according to the measure of the present treaty, and, after its completion, shall decide as supreme authority in all naval matters. Every sea power is bound to submit to these decisions, and the Order of Malta shall thenceforth exist solely for the protection of the Congress established at Malta, for the upholding of the law of nations. Thus it receives an honourable purpose, which until now it almost entirely lacked.”

“From the moment this institution is organized, there exists for matters of maritime law no other forum.”

Under such a conclusion of peace both parties would be satisfied and all antagonism would have vanished. Spain alone would lose its Peru, and the heir to the throne the prospect of ruling. How often has the individual been obliged to make a sacrifice to the whole! And here it is a question of the salvation of an entire world, of a world that has been gradually drawn into the continuation of the struggle and that in the great strife will suffer, and must suffer.

Would that the rulers of the world took this proposal into consideration! that, upon these conditions, they reached out to one another their blessing hands for the restoration of peace! No other salvation blooms for us than in this or a similar

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accord, which perhaps for centuries would guarantee to the human race repose and security.

The happiness of nations blooms only upon the tree of peace!

Thus thinks, thus vividly feels the whole of Europe; even the coldest prose-writer here echoes the immortalized Schiller:

“O beauteous day! when at last the soldier “returns home to life, to humanity!”

And to that end may the Genius of quiet, domestic joy soon help us! the guardian god of the weeping motherland!

Retreat and Capture of Bila’s Corps.

When the Prussian army assembled in the Thuringian Forest at the beginning of October 1806, the Regiment von Grävenitz received orders to occupy the town of Nienburg and Hanover. At the end of September the second battalion of this regiment marched to Hameln; the first battalion was assigned as the garrison of Hanover.

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The first official news of the outcome of the Battle of Jena reached Hanover on 16 October.

Colonel von Scharnhorst reported to General von Bila that the enemy had attacked Prince Hohenlohe at Jena. General Rüchel had hastened to the Prince’s aid. But both engagements had turned out so unfortunately that the enemy had already occupied Weimar on the 14th. Three divisions of the King’s army had likewise been defeated, while the entire reserve army had not come into action at all.

This hint would have sufficed for any general whom age had not dulled, and who possessed only quite ordinary common sense, to come to his decision. I, in General von Bila’s place, would have reconnoitred the enemy’s positions on the Saale; would have pictured the state of affairs to myself quite vividly, and would have considered that the defeated army would inevitably retreat across the Elbe. Accordingly I would have marched on the 18th by way of Hildesheim and Brunswick to Magdeburg. But Colonel von Scharnhorst had, out of modesty, been unwilling to spell out to General von Bila what he ought to do, presuming that he would surely see for himself that, matters standing as they did, his remaining in Hanover could continue no longer. General von Bila, however, remained undisturbed where he was, and I believe he would

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not have stirred from the spot even at the enemy’s arrival, had not a second letter from Colonel von Scharnhorst arrived on the 19th, in which the latter expressed his astonishment that he had not yet marched off from Hanover.

Since it was foreseeable that the Prussian troops under General von Bila, consisting of the 1st Battalion Grävenitz, the fusilier depots, the battalions Wedel and Carlowitz, and 120 cuirassiers of the Regiment Baillotz, could no longer reach Magdeburg by way of Brunswick, it was resolved to march by way of Zelle, Uelzen, and Tanneberg to Lenzen.

This corps therefore marched on the 20th to Zelle, on the 21st to Uelzen, on the 22nd to Tanneberg. On the 23rd the general saw fit to make a rest day, which might properly have been dispensed with, since the corps thereby lost a march. Although the corps’s right flank was covered by the corps of the Duke of Weimar, who intended to cross the Elbe at Havelberg on the 24th, General von Bila nonetheless crossed the Elbe at Dömitz instead of at Lenzen, so as to make two marches out of what should have been half a march.

So on the 24th the corps crossed the Elbe at Dömitz, on the 25th it marched as far as Lenzen, on the 26th as far as Wittstock, on the 27th as far as Mirow. At this night’s quarters we were informed by countryfolk that the enemy had attacked General Blücher at Fürstenberg

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but had been beaten back by General Blücher.

General von Bila ought to have looked more closely into the grounds of this report, sent spies to Fürstenberg, and had patrols sent out toward Wesenberg and Fürstensee. But none of this was thought of. It was only on the march on the 28th from Mirow by way of Neustrelitz to Neubrandenburg, where travelling journeymen confirmed the occurrences at Lychen, Fürstenberg, and Boitzenburg, that preparations were at last made to receive the enemy — that is, the infantry loaded their muskets. General von Bila, on the other hand, remained placidly seated in his carriage, and — would one believe it — the cavalry rearguard, which on the previous marches had at least stayed behind the baggage wagons, now closed up almost to the very tail of the infantry. The advance guard was close in front of the column; of flanking patrols there was no thought whatever. Had thirty chasseurs come charging up unexpectedly, they could have taken the whole column prisoner.

As far as Mirow, General von Bila was resolved to march by way of Woldeck and Pasewalk to Stettin. But when Lieutenant von Kyuilenstirna, who during the march was always two days’ march ahead, reported that it was no longer possible to get through by way of Pasewalk, our commander hit upon the notion of marching to Demmin instead. But more clear-sighted men, who could not look upon this outrage

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with cold blood, took out the map, showed him Demmin and Anklam on it, and pointed out to him that if he marched to Demmin he would have but two things to choose between, namely throwing himself into the arms of the Swedes, or laying down his arms before the French.

Whereas if he marched to Anklam, and reached that place before the enemy’s arrival, it was not merely possible but in the highest degree probable that he would come safely through by way of the islands of Usedom and Wollin to Colberg or Stettin.

The idea of going to Demmin was accordingly abandoned, and it was resolved to march on the 27th by way of Friedland to Anklam. Near the village of Küssow it fell in with some fugitives from the corps of Prince Hohenlohe.

They related that Hohenlohe’s corps had suffered severely at Boitzenburg (they were for the most part gendarmes), and that the enemy had partly turned toward Friedland and partly was pursuing them. General von Bila at first took no notice of this report; but when afterward an officer likewise appeared in flight, and not only confirmed that report but added further that the enemy could no longer be more than a quarter of an hour distant from the point where the head of the column stood, and that one had even ridden forward to the edge of a wood, and in the grey of dawn

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had observed that the whole field was black with the enemy, the corps deployed for battle. After it had stood for a good half hour, with cannon unlimbered and sabres drawn, and while several more fugitives but not a single enemy showed himself, General von Bila fell into great perplexity over what he should and should not do. He had only to send patrols toward Sponholz and Rühblank in order to be resolved in fixing his decision. But the officer’s statement had so thoroughly seized his imagination with the idea that he was cut off from Anclam that he gave the order to turn back.

Thereupon an officer went to General von Bila to represent to him that marching back at random would infallibly result in the captivity or the destruction of the corps, for which he might be held to account. He further observed that this countermarch after all rested only on the statements of men whom terror and fear were tormenting, who were probably cowardly fellows that could not have done their duty, since otherwise they would surely have remained with the main body. No enemy had yet been seen; he ought to send out patrols, and then, if, having seen with his own eyes and judged the enemy’s strength, he found a breakthrough impossible, there would still be time to turn back and seek out another Prussian corps

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wandering about, in order to share a common final fate with it.

These reasons struck General von Bila as empirically sound, and he ordered that the column should, in accordance with the original disposition, resume the march toward Friedland. So a further countermarch was made, in the course of which about three hours had been lost in the circling about near the village of Küssow — no small matter with men so fatigued, who had marched 6 and 7 miles three days in succession and had found only a few hours’ rest in their bivouac during all this time.

The whole course of this incident could not have occurred if better security measures had been taken. The aforementioned officer therefore requested permission to form the vanguard with 20 volunteer cuirassiers. He posted himself half a mile ahead of the head of the column and pushed his flank patrols out so far that he could be informed in time of all the enemy’s movements toward Friedland. This officer, however, reached Friedland without having seen a single enemy soldier. According to all reports, Anclam was not occupied by the enemy, but the baggage of nearly the whole army had gathered there.

General von Bila was informed of this and directed to the Karel Pass near Friedland, behind which, in case the enemy were not already

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advancing via Uckermünde toward Anclam, he would have nothing more to fear.

After the corps had arrived near Friedland and had passed the Karel Pass, the previously mentioned officer went ahead with a major to Anclam in order to arrange the crossing to the island of Usedom, and likewise to make provisioning arrangements. These officers found near Anclam an enormous number of wagons and scattered Prussian soldiers, all of whom wished to withdraw across the island.

Since, fortunately, the director of all these trains, Lieutenant-Colonel von Prittwitz, is a man of intelligence and patriotism, who did not fail to grasp that the King must set more store by seeing a million thalers in ready money (which the 1st Battalion Grävenitz had brought along from Hanover) and several thousand men of good troops saved, than if a few thousand flour-wagons fell into the enemy’s hands — he not only lent a helping hand so that baking was begun at once, but also promised to arrange that the three ferries at Barschau, Pinnow, and Wollgast should remain solely at the disposal of General von Bila. The officers also commandeered a vessel in order to convey the above-mentioned million thalers with all haste by water to Swinemünde and Colberg.

By the calculation of these officers, General von Bila ought to have arrived near Anclam on the evening of the 29th.

[p. 93]

But how great is their astonishment when he is still not there on the morning of the 30th; when a courier dispatched during the night returns to Friedland and assures them that he has met not a single man of Bila’s corps; and when, on the 30th, despite all inquiries, it cannot be ascertained what altered line of march Bila’s corps could have taken. That this had happened was clear; that a further false alarm had given occasion for it was probable: but how General von Bila could now still be led astray into making such a decision, without awaiting the reports of the officers sent ahead, and, without employing his cavalry, fall into the very same error as the preceding day, was most striking.

On the 30th, toward noon, word came that the enemy had occupied Bugewitz and Rosenow. Everything fell into alarm; the two officers of Bila’s corps concluded from this that Bila’s corps had been taken prisoner. They therefore held a vessel in readiness to go to Colberg or Stettin.

Had they carried out this decision, they would individually have escaped the disgraceful captivity that followed.

But they thought it contrary to duty to take flight without necessity. They wished, therefore, first to await the actual arrival of the enemy, and then to seek out the King’s army.

[p. 94]

On the night of the 30th, at 10 o’clock, General von Bila at last arrived with his corps at Anclam. Major von K. of the Prussian General Staff had, by a courier, informed General von Bila of the events at Prenzlau and had advised him to help himself as best he could. A singular notion — deliberately to instil faintheartedness into a corps that was throughout determined to spill its last drop of blood for the King and the honour of the fatherland. Had the corps of the Prince of Hohenlohe grounded arms — very well! what need had the remaining troops of the Prussian army to take any notice of it?

Since Major von K. did not know how to give sound advice in a time of need, he would have done better to keep it to himself, for without it the Bila corps would have been saved. It arrived at Anclam twenty-four hours earlier, and on the 31st, when General von Bila’s incapacity compelled it to lay down its arms, it would probably have reached Wollin.22 Besides this, a runaway non-commissioned officer from the Bila Hussar Battalion had also given occasion for the corps to change its direction of march.

He met the column and assured them that he had intended to go to Anclam. But since Anclam was occupied by the enemy, he now wished to try whether a passage could not be made along the coast of the Haff,

[p. 95]

by way of Uckermünde, Neuwarp, and Politz, to Stettin. This foolish reasoning seemed so plausible to General von Bila that he adopted this very idea. But he did not consider that if there was no getting through at Anclam, there could be even less chance of it at Uckermünde, and that since no trace of the enemy had yet been discovered in the neighbourhood of Friedland, the enemy must necessarily have marched by way of Uckermünde to Anclam, and must therefore also have occupied that place in order to remain in communication with the enemy stationed at Pasewalk. This single reflection could have saved General von Bila from making an even more pointless flanking excursion than the one at Neubrandenburg; but to calculate according to the principles of warfare, and thereby, among several unfavourable eventualities, to take the best measures, did not seem to be this general’s forte. Enough: General von Bila pursued the march plan proposed by the runaway hussar non-commissioned officer. At Leopoldshagen, however, he was met by the Gettkand Hussar Regiment and the Bila Hussar Battalion. This cavalry had separated from the corps of Prince Hohenlohe and had advanced to within two miles of Stettin. The commander of this cavalry, in accordance with etiquette, dispatched an officer to the Commandant of Stettin to announce to him that this cavalry would pass through Stettin the following day. The Commandant of Stettin, would one believe it, sent back word

[p. 96]

that he could not sanction the passage, because the enemy was already skirmishing before Stettin, and it might therefore happen that the enemy would force its way into the fortress along with this cavalry.

Fifteen squadrons of hussars, which could very well have been preserved for the King, thus saw themselves compelled to turn back and march to Anclam.

Through this cavalry General von Bila was at last roused from his dream; he accordingly turned back at Leopoldshagen and marched to Anclam. Extremely fatigued, the corps arrived at Anclam on the 30th at 10 o’clock in the evening. The enemy followed at its heels. Notwithstanding this, not the slightest measures of defence were seen to be taken. Since the corps of General von Bila happened to have grown to nearly 4,000 men, in that, besides the 15 squadrons of hussars, the Sacken Grenadier Battalion and several hundred cavalry fugitives who had been scattered in the actions at Boitzenburg, Prenzlow, and Pasewalk had also joined it, a position might well have been taken with this force upon the heights before Anclam. One could have remained standing there until bread and forage had been received in Anclam, and until one had seen the enemy. One would then at least have escaped the reproach that the Bila corps had been disarmed by 600 men — for the Becker division is really said to have been no stronger than that. But how far one was from taking such a heroic

[p. 97]

resolution was proved by the order that the battalion guns of the Grävenitz Battalion should be drawn up in the market place. One of the aforementioned officers had made himself acquainted with the terrain, not by any means according to instructions from General von Bila, but on his own initiative. He proposed that the corps should take a position before the town and should not withdraw until the trains had carried off the magazine stores, and the necessary arrangements had been made for crossing over to the island of Usedom. But no one would hear anything of offering any further serious resistance; all that could still be obtained was that the guns were at least not packed away in the town, but were left before the gate.

Could General von Bila have resolved to begin his safe retreat across the Peene only after he had been compelled to do so by force of arms, then it was a very certain case that the enemy would have suffered a severe échec (reverse).

According to General von Becker’s own statement, he was in Anclam on the 30th, disguised, with an adjutant, in order to acquaint himself with the situation of the town and the terrain.

But since General Becker found only the Sacken Grenadier Battalion there, it is to be believed that his expedition on the 31st was calculated only upon this catch.

[p. 98]

Through the arrival of the 15 squadrons, of the Grävenitz Battalion, and of the 150 horse of the Baillotz Regiment, the Prussians were at least four times superior to the French.

It was expected that General von Bila would draw up a disposition, or would at least concern himself with the locality of the place, since it could be foreseen with certainty that the following morning the enemy would advance upon Anclam.

But how little he resembled General von Ziethen, whom Frederick the Great called the watchman of the army, since on no march did he lay down his head before he had ridden round the entire chain of outposts and made himself acquainted with the terrain. General von Bila was dulled; I believe he was ill, for he gave himself up to sleep without knowing the terrain, without having ordered when, and in what order, the troops were to withdraw across the Peene; without having taken measures to have the ships and boats brought over to the Swedish side; and without having ordered Captain of Cavalry von Hiller — who, without any consideration whatever, had been left cantoned in the Prussian villages before Anclam — to cross the Peene during the night as well, like the rest of the cavalry. Everything commanded itself. Throughout the whole night the baggage and the cavalry filed through Anclam across the Peene. Of holding one’s ground on this side of the Peene there was therefore no longer any thought.

[p. 99]

Nevertheless, at daybreak the infantry assembled and remained lying in the streets. To what purpose was not to be seen; for since the gates were locked, and no way could be shot through a city wall sixteen feet high without scaffolding, it would have been better for it to follow immediately upon the cavalry; for if the enemy opened the gates, incalculable disorders would arise at the bridge, the actual point of defence in the town’s ring-wall. Two hundred men were designated for the defence of this bridge. At last the infantry marched off. Before the arrival of Bila’s corps, a cavalry officer reported that in the village of Stredense a major of the horse artillery had brought forty pieces of cannon into position. He had pressed several officers to sign a capitulation, which he wished to propose through a trumpeter to some enemy general; but they had rejected such a proposal with contempt. A baseness of this kind was an abomination to every honour-loving Prussian.

It was therefore denounced to General von Bila as soon as he had arrived in Anclam, and it was urged upon him to give this major immediate orders to withdraw with his ordnance across the Peene. He promised to do so. But nothing further was seen or heard of this fine artillery; probably the artillery major’s wish had been realized.

[p. 100]

Can the disadvantages of placing feeble generals at the head of army corps be marked out more glaringly than in this single example? Physical incapacity and moral ignorance are coupled together in armies among the greater part of the generals, where seniority alone decides. Had a young, vigorous man with his head in the right place commanded at Anclam, there would be a great many fewer unfortunate men in the Prussian army.

At nine o’clock the enemy advanced against the gates of the town. Although all passages and roads had been occupied by the captain commanding the rearguard, the enemy nonetheless succeeded in throwing back the post at the warehouse, whereby the troops in the town were cut off from the Peene bridge. The captain therefore withdrew with his men across the Peene; here, after the bridge had been raised, he posted himself on the bank of the Peene to receive the enemy. Several enemy officers thereupon reconnoitred our position, on which occasion fire was given, which was not without effect. From this time on a musketry fire was engaged on both sides, which continued uninterrupted, with no inconsiderable loss on both sides, until toward five o’clock in the evening. The Prussians kept the bank clear and cut the anchors from the ships and boats in order to let them drift downstream. In this work

[p. 101]

several men were wounded, because it was carried out under the rain of bullets from both sides. The enemy, on the other hand, established himself firmly in the houses and fired from the roofs and windows. During this engagement the corps had occupied the heights between Ziethen and Relzow. It was expected that word would be given of its march toward the Pinnow and Wolgast ferries, but it made no arrangements for this, probably in order first to await the crossing of the baggage.

The post at the Peendamm bridge could, with some attention to the flanks — especially if the Stolp ferry had been seized — very well have been held for twenty-four hours.

It was therefore a possible case that at least the infantry of this corps could have been ferried over onto the island of Usedom, had it marched off successively from the heights near Ziethen toward the Pinnow ferry. But the old gentlemen had no knowledge of the terrain, hence the purposeless position at Ziethen and their inactivity in not occupying Menzlin and the Stolp ferry, and not even having this district patrolled. Hence their irresolution, that they did not give a single order which would have indicated any will to cross over onto the island of Usedom.

The two Generals von Bila looked at each other in mute despair, but did not act. Had they but taken the map before their eyes, it must have

[p. 102]

become clear to them at once that only a little more exertion was needed to see their honour and so many brave men saved.

Toward evening the detachment posted at the Peene bridge was relieved by the first battalion of Grävenitz. A captain of the Sacken grenadier battalion came marching up with his company. He made a terrible din, spoke of the bravery his men had shown at Jena, and seemed to hold it beneath his dignity to accept instructions from the relieved officers. So they let him have his way; yet the danger soon convinced him that he would have done better to accept good advice. His men’s bravery was not called upon any further, but it was brought home to him that the men of Grävenitz had defended this post courageously for seven hours; if he did likewise, the infantry would probably have full time to cross over. But this post was scarcely in the hands of the grenadiers when the firing ceased, which gave the French General von Becker hope that it might now be more advisable than a few hours before to enter into negotiations.

Parleying began. General von Becker announced the capitulation of Prince Hohenlohe and the surrender of Stettin. He brought home to General von Bila that they had put themselves into a cul-de-

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sac,23 from which they would not be able to escape the fate of being taken prisoner; if they were willing to capitulate on advantageous terms, there should be an armistice of one hour. Shortly before the appearance of this letter one had really been resolved to march off to Pinnow, but the surrender of Stettin was something terrible, because one had just fixed upon falling back through the islands onto that place. The situation was indeed bad, but not to be despaired of. If the retreat on Stettin was cut off, a way might yet be found toward Colberg.

If, given the proximity of the enemy, there was not time enough to cross over to Usedom, then the cavalry and artillery could march to Stralsund. It was possible that General Bila might yet be forced to lay down his arms at Wollin or Camin. The cavalry too had to reckon with being neither admitted into Stralsund nor granted permission to be shipped over to the island of Rügen. But then everything had been done; one was wholly free of reproach.

The equipages and knapsacks would, to be sure, be lost, but one would save one’s honour. The King could one day replace the lost property, but the King himself could not be replaced, if one withdrew from the fatherland, in so

[p. 104]

distressing a situation, even a few thousand defenders without the direst necessity.

Had the matter been weighed a little more sharply, a negotiation over the capitulation of the corps ought not to have been accepted at all; one ought to have reinforced the post at the Peene bridge, and, as soon as darkness fell, to have marched off to Pinnow and Wolgast. Throughout the whole night the fires on the heights near Ziethen, where the corps had stood, had to be kept up, in order to conceal the intention from the enemy. The cavalry and artillery set off on their march toward Greifswald and Stralsund. Everything of the baggage that could not be shipped over had to be burnt that very night.

In the character of General von Bila there lies no obstinacy, for as often as a plain and useful piece of advice was given him during the preceding marches, he lent his hand to it with the greatest readiness. It is to be believed that, had some person of weight come forward to instil in him, by force of these reasons, an aversion to the capitulation, he would readily have been brought round to it; but by ill luck chance had brought along some officers of the gens d’armes onto the heights near Ziethen, who declared aloud that nothing better could now be done than to accept the capitulation; their ill conduct at Jena had lowered their boastful tone; the drubbing at Boitzenburg had made them

[p. 105]

faint-hearted, and here the preservation of their English racers seemed to lie nearer their hearts than Prussian glory.

An officer was accordingly sent to Anclam to conclude the capitulation. A general dissatisfaction spread over this, which had the effect that in the night from the 30th to the 31st an extraordinary desertion broke out. Everyone crowded toward the ferry at Pinnow. The greater part of these runaways arrived safely in their fatherland.

On the morning of the 31st the corps laid down its arms; the treasury mentioned above had been shipped off in the night of the 30th and, under an escort, was safely conveyed to Swinemünde and Colberg.

By reason of higher command it would probably have been forgotten, had not the officer already several times mentioned conferred with the district collector Behrend and with the War Councillor commanding at the treasury, and most urgently recommended a speedy departure.

Notwithstanding that the approach of the enemy in the night of the 29th was reported to General von Bila, he nevertheless neglected to notify Captain of Cavalry von Hiller of it, which had the consequence that this captain, with his whole troop, fell into the enemy’s hands on the 30th.

[p. 106]

Devotion to Duty.

Glatz.

In the Glogau Chamber department, order has been restored — the order which some time ago was disturbed by a few young, fiery officers in Sagan and the neighbouring region. This town has had to atone for it, because it was imagined to be full of patriots; Grünberg came off better. The French cannot be blamed for covering their rear. But they are also vigorously supported by the civil authorities. There in Glogau is the old and venerable President of the Oberamt, Baron v. C., who as early as 1802 celebrated his fiftieth jubilee of service, and on that occasion was rewarded for his faithful services by the King with the Order of the Red Eagle, and by the province with a monument and a commemorative medal — this old man, now but two fingers’ breadth from the grave, came forward with devotion to meet the victors, executes their commands with great severity, and is the only one among the Government Presidents

[p. 107]

of the province who issues the government rescripts under the name of the Emperor:

We, by the Grace of God, Napoleon, etc.

One must truly confess: this old man possesses much worldly wisdom, and applies the maxim: Obey the authority that holds power over you!

Were one inclined to regard this conduct as the weakness of old age, then the Chamber Referendary v. Tschirschky offers an example of worldly wisdom that is unique. This talented man was once a landed proprietor and a Chamberlain; an unhappy accident deprived him of his estate, his inheritance, and his wife, and he devoted himself to chamber service … The Tax Councillor of the second Glogau department received a commission in Berlin that lasted two years, and the minister Count Hoym installed him in that post as administrator. He had always been a vehement opponent of the French, until they themselves appeared; the clever man then naturally performs a changerite [about-face], and so did Herr v. Tschirschky. He anticipated the advancing enemy in everything, served them with praiseworthy fidelity, reconnoitred (a thing that was not even part of his office) the strength and position of the Prussian partisans, and pointed out the roads to the French General Regnie. The French authorities honoured him in confidence with the title

notre vilain Chambellan.

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To the towns of his district he issued the following highly telling rescript, which expresses his cleverness plainly enough; it is whispered about that Napoleon will elevate him to Chamber Director.

Copy.

Although one should suppose that reason, prudence, and the instinct of self-preservation innate in all men would move every single individual, in the present state of affairs, to have particular regard for everything that may serve his personal safety, and not to expose himself needlessly to unpleasantness and danger, various events that have occurred in several towns have nonetheless convinced me only too well that this maxim of prudence is entirely lost sight of by many, inasmuch as, by their utterances in public places and by their actions, they give occasion to be held for suspect persons. Examples of what is here stated were furnished by Grünberg and Sagan, where on various occasions burghers or other townsfolk permitted themselves utterances of sympathy with what had occurred which were in the highest degree ill-considered, and which could neither serve the interest of the King of Prussia nor be detrimental to the French, but were very well noted by the persons interested therein,

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and, even if not punished under the altered circumstances, are by no means forgotten.

By order of His Excellency the Governor-General v. Verrieres, and moved to it most particularly by a verbal conversation with General Monbrun, I hereby direct the Right Worshipful Magistrates named below, for their own welfare and that of their families, and for the good fortune and preservation of the towns entrusted to their oversight, to command all inhabitants in the strictest terms not only to keep quiet and within their dwellings upon occurrences such as the taking prisoner of French officers or skirmishes in the towns themselves, but also, upon the passage of troops, not to assemble in the marketplaces, nor to discourse about the passing troops, of whatever nation they may be.

More or less, all Frenchmen understand German; only the circumstance that they are not entirely masters of the language is the cause of their being mistrustful, for the experience of several countries—for example Tyrol, Calabria, etc.—has given them occasion for it. Being precisely acquainted with the state of things as they really are, I feel moved thereby to avert unavoidable misery, the inevitable ruin of the towns, the most dreadful lot that could befall magistrates, burgherhoods, and inhabitants, and

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with the best intention to lay the foregoing to the hearts of the Right Worshipful Magistrates named below, so that such precautions may be taken by them as shall, so far as possible, keep away from our province those ruinous consequences which those countries have felt, and still feel, that the force of arms and an unexampled fortune of war24 subjected to these invincible conquerors.

Glogau, the 26th of February 1807.

v. Tschirschky.

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Interesting Trifles.

At the time when the Prussian fortresses of Magdeburg, Küstrin, Stettin, Spandau, and Plassenburg were surrendered one after another in such quick succession, an officer asked a Jew of his acquaintance: Well, my treasure, how goes business? “Good”—the other replied—”the fortresses are selling like hot cakes, our people are earning a bit of something!”

Not long ago a prisoner-of-war officer came to Berlin and to the commandant, General Hulin, in order to obtain permission to be allowed to remain in the capital.

The general’s clerk (a private of the Imperial French Guard) receives him in order to take down his request in writing, and addresses him in French, of which the officer, despite the good education he had enjoyed at the local Cadet Corps, is not entirely master.

[p. 112]

“What is your name?” the clerk asks in French.

Only after some delay does the officer state his name, having first translated the question in mente (in his head).

“Where were you born?”

In long pauses and after long deliberation he answers.

“How old?”

Again a great pause before the reply.

“In what regiment did you serve, and in what rank?”

Confound it, that takes quite a while again.

“With what will you occupy yourself during your stay here, and why do you wish to remain here?”

Yes, this question is desperately involved for him, and he must ponder a long while, translating word for word into his mother tongue.

The fiery Frank loses patience. He calls out: “Well?”

That throws the man off entirely; at the exclamation he has forgotten again what he had translated, and perspires with anxiety.

“Presumably”—says the clerk drily—”you have come to complete your education here?”

Yes—answered the sweating man; laughing, the clerk writes it down, and the officer withdraws,

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heartily glad to have escaped the twofold French predicament.

Berlin received fresh proof of the keen policing vigilance of the French authorities. A Criminal Commissioner, who had long been famous as the shrewdest detector of secret criminals and passed for an honest man, was denounced as a participant in thefts and arrested by the criminal court. When this incident was reported to General Hulin, he said: “I did not wish to forestall the local police; but”—as he opened a book—”read here.”

And beside the recorded name of the man now under arrest the deputy read: “A good head, but in league with notable thieves!” And so it truly proves to be.

Kotzebue, in his comedy The Epigram, has the Chamber Councillor Hippeldanz say: I know a little country where titles are absurdly cheap! Which little country might he have meant? In this connection Swedish Pomerania, among others, always comes to my mind. Here, at least until a couple of years ago, the trade in titles and offices was thoroughly at home. There one could still

[p. 114]

—at least on a small scale—become anything one had a fancy for, for money. For example, a Court Councillor was worth 100 ducats; that is what the title cost. Actual offices one obtained for a pittance from a state servant who could no longer, or would no longer, carry on. A minor post yielding 400 to 500 thalers was purchased with 4,000 to 5,000 thalers. At that time the post of a weigh-house director, which brought in about 450 thalers, was sold off for exactly 1,800 thalers; as in the civil service, so it went in the military too: for money one became an officer, of as much consequence as one pleased, that is, as much as one could pay for. A captaincy with the company was paid for with 2,000 to 6,000 thalers. Probably this has not changed in the past two years. The possible ill consequences are plain to see. Men come into offices who possess nothing besides the purchase sum to qualify them for it. One can be called secretary without knowing how to hold a pen, be a captain without possessing the slightest military knowledge. But in return one hears here—as in Berlin—all manner of edifying little titles ringing out; no man is called by his father’s name. No, he simply must be something in the state, whether he wants to or not. This Krähwinkel custom, however, is not native to Berlin and Swedish Pomerania alone: one finds it in many other towns and townlets, countries

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and little countries, where—thank Heaven—rank is not for sale.

“Imagine”—says the true philosopher Moses Mendelssohn—”an exceedingly irregular city, in which a letter-carrier has performed his function his whole life long, and has thereby become so familiar with all the crooked streets and corners that he finds every house even in the dark. Suppose this city were now, in a single night, transformed by magic into the most regular one imaginable—what will the letter-carrier say the next morning about the change? He will complain of disorder, of harmful innovation. He will not be able to find his way.”

Just so do our men of business, who know only the old routine and do not think for themselves; to them every good reform in the constitution or administration is a disorder, a harmful innovation; exactly thus did many officers behave in the campaign of 1806; in the art of war they still stood at the close of the Seven Years’ War, they had remained there in the conviction that all was well, and had played l’hombre while the French advanced a thousand paces. Naturally the innovation displeased them, whose spirit they did not know. Naturally they could not

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find their way in it, like that letter-carrier in the transformed city.

The now-murdered Emperor of Haiti, Jacob Dessalines, in order to promote the sciences and the art of printing in his state, granted two years ago a—with the exception of several trifles—wholly complete freedom of thought and of the press. The writer had only to refrain from setting down anything censorious against exalted persons, no remarks on missteps in the state constitution or the administration of office, nothing against the military and the clergy, against great criminals and blockheads, no censure of shortcomings, nor any truths that gave offense to anyone. Otherwise he was permitted to have anything printed. He could sing praises to his heart’s content.

Let us compare with this grant of freedom the Berlin censorship before the outbreak of the present war. There, too, everything could be printed, only nothing against religion, the King, and the State. That, thought of so simply, was indeed very reasonable; but how far could the meaning of this condition be stretched, if a weak-headed or narrow-minded censor so pleased, for he was by no means responsible for his actions in this regard; he could construe a wholly innocent passage according to his own fancy, and strike out of a piece of writing

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whatever pleased him. Complaints about this were not entertained. A man of significance close to the King, who was once asked for advice in such a matter, replied: One must leave it to the discretion of the appointed censor what he permits to be printed. If one once reproaches him for his severity, then in future he lets everything pass, and that must by no means be allowed to happen! Sad it is, when a writer is thus delivered up to the whim of such a prejudiced person, who, like a gelded gravedigger, can only bury but cannot himself beget anything. And if such a censor is downright malicious, then may Apollo stand by literature.

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When men begin to wage their war,
Then too the lies begin to soar!

says Hans Sachs, and with great justice. What rumours run through the people in time of war! In all of them there is usually something, but scarcely a thousandth part of the tale; that too is what Musäus means when he says: No rumour runs among the people but a little grain of truth swims within it. Everyone is now a politician and has his say, no matter whether his judgement is prompted by insight or not. That things go with the tales of war-events just as they really do go is in the order of nature; the avalanche that rolls down the snow-mountain grows larger with every turn, and so too does a piece of news in every mouth through which it passes, especially when the owner of the mouth takes an interest in the importance of the matter. Every new listener, as a re-teller, adds a trifle of his own.

For example: Mr. No. 1 meets his friend No. 2 and says to him: A courier has just arrived, but where he comes from, and what he brings, no one knows. No. 2 goes on and tells No. 3 that a courier has come, and that it is supposed an engagement has taken place. At once No. 3 tells No. 4, his acquaintance, that there has been a great affair at N. N. Importantly No. 4 exclaims, on entering the wine-house: Do you know already that at N. N. a murderous battle has been fought,

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in which 3,000 men were lost? Thereupon Messrs. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 hurry off swiftly by various routes, this one home, that one to the club, another into a shop, another to a friend, and yet another into a different wine-house. Each one adds something, and in the end it is 10,000 dead, 10,000 wounded, and 20,000 prisoners, a couple of commanders lost, and many cannon and colours captured. If one asks: From whom does the news come? then the answer is: “From a man who may well know it, but whom I do not name.”

If one wished to be candid, one would have to answer: No. 12 says that No. 11 confided to him how No. 10 overheard that No. 9 had spoken, No. 8 supposed that No. 7 had heard that No. 6 said, No. 5 had talked to him about it, that No. 4 had proclaimed, No. 3 had learned how No. 2 had said it again, which No. 1 had scouted out. So it goes with war-rumours among the political pundits!

Whoever has an inclination to know how wonderfully often individual men can attain to rank, weight, and high offices for which they possess not the least abilities,

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let him read the following short, simple, and quite true accounts:

There was once a young man of great family who, as was the custom in his fatherland, became a soldier — that is to say, an officer. He was placed as an ensign. He lived with his comrades after their manner, in other words: he practised, as well as many others, carrying bestial debaucheries and vices as far as possible. In this respect they sometimes undertook formal contests. One evening the ensign found himself in the company of his brothers-in-arms, where there was hearty drinking. One of the circle of the brotherhood, who were gradually growing merry, hit upon the notion that they should try which of them could swallow the greatest quantity of spirituous drinks without becoming intoxicated. The proposal met with loud approval, and they began to drink con Amore, and the favoured drink was — imagine! — arrack.

Naturally, it was not long before several of the tipplers found themselves dead-drunk under the table, and to this class the ensign belonged. Yet the collapse was by no means the finale of the bacchanalia; the ensign’s lungs, not invulnerable to begin with, had been attacked by the drastic flame of the drink, he thought he should faint from the heat in his bowels, and at last fell into a lingering, painful disease of the chest.

[p. 121]

A sensible physician advised him: he should take leave, go into the country, and drink much asses’ milk. This he did, the remedy took effect, and he was so-so restored again. Now the physician thought that, on account of his weak lungs, he should quit the military service altogether, and take up something else that would not act so injuriously upon his weakened bodily constitution as this occupation. This advice too was followed, he took his discharge, and out of boredom began to leaf a little through books on cameralistics and finance, so that in the end he obtained a superficial idea of this field. His influential relatives, who at the time, when the fatal arrack cast him out of his military career, had pulled wry faces at him, now grew friendly again, and resolved on the spot to make something proper of him in the civil service. Since he possessed all the advantages that raise a man — such as money, hereditary nobility, and the protection of his high family — it could not possibly fail. He was advantageously appointed as soon as he had scarcely reported himself, and rose from office to office ever higher, up to the most respected and most important office of state, one who even wore an order of merit.

Another flew swiftly up one rung after another in the military, because a court lady, back when he was still a Second Lieutenant, said of him to the Prince’s consort: Yesterday I danced with N. N. “D,

[p. 122]

“my God, he dances like an angel, and was dressed like a god!” — and Her Serene Highness prized handsome and nimble dancers.

Can one then really ask for more, than that dancing here, and arrack there, should lead to offices and dignities?

Are these events not miracles in the spirit of the age?

[p. 123]

On the Tendency of the Tract: Confidential Letters on the Internal Affairs of the Prussian Court etc. and of the Journal: New Firebrands.

It is high time that the author of the former and the editor of the latter declare themselves aloud on this matter, since so many reviewers have asked after it — reviewers who lack the faculty of comprehension; for otherwise those works must surely have drummed it into them.

These reviewers have also said: one must censure a fault beforehand, not afterward, and that the Letters were not written back in 1786 but only quite recently, and more of the same sort of thing.

For all I care, these gentlemen may say what they will, it is entirely a matter of indifference to me; for they only ever busy themselves with the form and with titles, misprints, and I know not what else.

[p. 124]

But since those works are widely read, and since this or that person might be in doubt whether it be well done to lay bare, with an open brow, the faults of one’s native constitution, I find myself moved to explain myself more fully on the subject:

So long as a state, weak within, still overawes its neighbours from without by its dazzling appearance, so long is it the patriot’s duty not to expose its weaknesses; he may then work quietly, advise, warn — help where he can. Whether I have done this honestly? On that I cannot explain myself here. Even Napoleon, who knows everything, yet did not know our weakness as thoroughly as he afterward found it. This is proved by his address to the troops before the 14th of October, this is proved by his words:

Certainement ils se tromperont ces perruques!

(“These old wigs [perruques] will certainly be proved wrong!”)

and upon the Napoleonsberg:

Les prussiens sont encore plus stupides que les autrichiens,

(“The Prussians are even more stupid than the Austrians,”)

when he beheld their confused position.

Whoever then steps forth publicly, as Bülow did in his campaign of 1805, makes only a sacrifice to his own vanity; he does indeed earn himself the name of a prophet,

[p. 125]

but he has betrayed the state’s weakness to the enemy.

But when there is nothing more to keep silent, when the state lies shattered in ruins; when the foremost men of the land brand themselves as traitors, poltroons, and blockheads (is there any lack of that?); when the King stands forsaken; when the greater part of the educated native public, despairing of the state’s restoration, throws itself upon the enemy, swears fidelity to him, betrays the state’s property to him, names to him those who still mean honestly by their beaten, forsaken King; when a host of officials, to whom the levying of the enemy’s army requisitions has been entrusted, shamelessly enrich themselves — then it is surely time that a voice cry out in the wilderness, and make the causes of the shattered state comprehensible to the better-minded public, point the finger at the wretches who are to blame for it, brand the scoundrels who grasp nothing further than what fills their pockets. It is surely praiseworthy if, on the other side, one names the noble men in the nation who did their duty, and perhaps still more?

Shameful is the reproach in these times (I mean against the Journal): that the King is portrayed very favourably, in order that his weakness may stand out all the more.

[p. 126]

He would have to be just as miserable a flatterer and lickspittle as that critic — a spiteful reviewer is one who preens himself on paltry lawyer’s tricks — who could say of the King:

He is a great mind, a second Frederick, a great commander, etc.

The King is a good, moral man, has sound common sense, and accomplishes what he is able to accomplish.

What more should one demand of him? By having said this, I cannot take from him the nation’s confidence, but rather I seek to preserve it for him.

Others maintain: even if the Letters and the New Firebrands did contain truths, they still come at the wrong time. A sun that merely gives light, but no warmth!

I should indeed like once to see how this warming is supposed to come about?

Thus the gentlemen suppose, there behind the warm stove. But they ought once to step outside among the people, and there they would soon perceive that all warming is at an end: it is all in vain!

[p. 127]

Now there must be torn down and burned down whatever abuses now stand exposed; the traitors to the state must be publicly branded and punished; the King must surround himself with the noblest men (not, mind you, the nobility) in order to build up something of substance out of the old rubbish.

For that, the Letters! for that, the New Firebrands!

For the rest, I shall not tolerate that anyone be done an injustice, and if it has happened without any fault of mine, it shall be set right.

Now I still hear many a voice calling out to me: To what persecutions are you exposing yourself? How they will slander you when the King returns! They will bring suit against you, cast you into prison, put you on trial, and heap abuse upon you.

To that I give very little heed. I shall name myself to the King; may He, the just one, sit in judgment over me. Patiently shall I hold out my neck to any punishment, and my consolation will then be: that the letter is not extinguished.

If adherents of the true, genuine Prussian system of state can be judged and punished, then this is the greatest proof that it exists no longer.

[p. 128]

So much on the tendency of my writings, and now let me be in peace with them, you review-manufacturers, and you weaklings who have not the courage to enter the lists, and who would rather strew incense before the enemies (which nauseates them) so that they may pay you your paltry few thalers of salary.

The Editorship of the New Firebrands.

[p. 129]

Declaration by the Author of the Confidential Letters on the Internal Affairs of the Prussian Court, etc. concerning the black register in the second Part of the New Firebrands.

On the title page of the first Part of the New Firebrands I rightly appear as editor; for, save the last essay by Benkowitz, all are by my own hand.

The second Part contains only the treatise on page 118 by me. This Part did not come before my eyes until I had just returned from a two-month journey. The essays were therefore not read by me before printing.

[p. 130]

I now find in this Part the black register, and I feel called upon hereby to declare that this register mingles truth and falsehood together, and bears the stamp of animosity and vulgarity. It abuses and slanders, whereby no one lends any support to truth and justice. The author has not named himself; the manuscript was sent to the publisher of the New Firebrands through a third hand, but the public will easily recognize him by the title, by the form, and by the tendency. Let him answer for his handiwork.

Let him go to law with the many who are compromised and slandered in this register; let him answer for it that precisely now this libel appears, and perhaps becomes the occasion for founding the misfortune of many a family, should the State reclaim these grants, some of which are already in a third hand.

I do not defend the censured donations; I have given my opinion on them in the first Part of the Confidential Letters. If it is certain that Count Hoym protested against the confiscation of the ecclesiastical estates and starostas, how can he have set the donations in motion?

[p. 131]

Yet I will censure the inaccuracies which are known to me only in the black register, and thereafter the public may judge the whole.

p. 67. No. 7. City President Eisenberg in Berlin.

After the uprising in Breslau, Eisenberg had to travel to Breslau and investigate the matter. Hoym fell on his knees before him and begged him for God’s sake not to bring about his ruin — hence this gift.

The falsehood of this calumny is self-evident. Anyone who knows Count Hoym at once grasps that it is physically and morally impossible for him:

To fall upon his knees.

How could the lame man have managed such a thing?

Under all circumstances Hoym’s shrewdness had resources enough to spare him such a degrading act toward a man like Eisenberg. The blame for having provoked the uprising fell upon Werner,

[p. 132]

the City President in Breslau, an immediate favourite of Frederick William II., for whom, while he was Crown Prince, he had negotiated funds.

P. 69. Prince Hohenlohe.

The exchange that Hohenlohe proposed between the domain of Crotozcyn and his donations would not have been unjust, had it taken place according to the valuations made of both objects of exchange. The Minister of State von Voß thwarted this project, perhaps with good intentions. But Hohenlohe’s possessions served the King better than Crotozcyn; for they rounded out so many of the South Prussian domains from which they had been imprudently torn.

P. 71. Count Lüttichau.

The Government Councillor von Grevenitz is done too much injustice here; he is quite plainly accused of bribery.

Grevenitz was not in fact a judge in the matter at all, but the official counsel of Countess Gurovska; nor was the legal dispute of the Gurovsky spouses as to the property (quo ad Bona) ever adjudicated, but rather settled by agreement. (One sees how poorly the author

[p. 133]

was informed.) All the sums given here are false. What is stated here about the Justice Councillor Reinhard is entirely untrue.

p. 75.

Hoym bought Murowanna Goslin for 120,000 reichsthalers, and sold it for exactly the same price.

If the purchase had been made by him as a favour to Bischofswerder, how could he have been so imprudent as to profit by nearly 40 per cent on it straightaway? One sees how far the rage to vilify has carried the author away, and how inconsistently he has proceeded in it.

p. 76.

The Knighthood Councillor von Unruh is as upright a man as General Köckeritz, and it is not true that the aforementioned estates were given to the latter as a gift; rather, they were granted to von Unruh in hereditary tenure (Erbenzins) against a hereditary tenure fee and the buying-out of the previous holder, Count Lucas v. Bninsky. This buying-out Mr. v. Unruh had to pay for dearly, and moreover had to match in money the inventory found on the estates. He put the

[p. 134]

buildings, which had been neglected, into good repair, and made many improvements before he sold them.

P. 83.

Beneath the assessment of the Triebenfeld estates and their sale price are concealed the estates that belonged to him in his own right.

Let these corrections suffice, being all that occur to me now, far from the sources.

With the fourth Part the editing passes solely and entirely through my hands, and from then on I answer for every article in the New Firebrands.

The third Part, save for this postscript, had likewise already been printed.

[p. 135]

Publisher’s Note.

I must acknowledge, in accordance with the truth, that the author of the Confidential Letters knew nothing of the printing of the black register; I informed him of its arrival: but my letter failed to reach him, as he had already departed. He finally received it, and replied at once:

“Beware of this piece; the black register is known to me in manuscript, it contains many inaccuracies, it is directed particularly against Count Hoym. I will have no part in any invective against this old man, all the less so as he is now out of service [illegible]. Count Hoym may have his weaknesses, yet he was nonetheless one of the shrewdest Prussian ministers.”

This reply came too late; the second Part of the New Firebrands had already gone out into all the world.

[p. 136]

Errata.

P. 108, line 3 from the top, read, instead of “Napoleon would raise him to the office of Chamber Director”: “the King would one day raise him to the office of Chamber Director.”

[p. 137]

Reply to an Anonymous Letter from the Author of the Black Register.

A letter from the black registrar has reached the editorial office of the New Firebrands, in which sundry charges are laid against the man he presumes to be the author of the Confidential Letters, which we here wish to answer publicly. It reads:

You have done me no favour in any sense by having my table of the South Prussian donations printed in the Second Part of the New Firebrands.

Still less to the present editor and author of the Confidential Letters; it is not by his will that this table stands in the New Firebrands. There still lie before us fragments from the trial records of a certain Herr v. **d, likewise sent in to the editorial office, whose handwriting bears an extraordinary resemblance to that of the said letter. We shall make no use of them.

I am not one of the poltroons; for reasons which I have no inclination to develop here, I shall perhaps keep silent against you publicly, but at your expense I shall justify myself privately with a very coarse portrayal

[p. 138]

of your character, should the squadron of donataries seek to cause me vexation, even though you play the panegyrist of those people.

The black registrar may take that as he pleases; he must know to whom he addressed his register; whether, moreover, he means to attack me from the front or from the rear is all one to me, since I am armed against him on every side.

Little as I shall retract the contents of that scandalous table, I must nonetheless now protest against its untimely publication; I hold it ignoble to affront an unfortunate government.

In that the letter-writer is quite right. But was his register stolen from him? The publisher does after all assure us that he obtained it from solid hands. Might the author not have communicated it somewhere?

I have found a portion of my ideas — judgements (only, to be sure, tricked out with a few flatteries) again in the Confidential Letters.

Not that I know of. Let the letter-writer only not imagine too much of himself. To be sure, his very self would have written a different characterization of the Prussian court than I did.

It is a manifest lie when you say in the Confidential Letters: I suck poison out of all things.

Does not the black register itself bear witness to this?

[p. 139]

Mockery and censure have in me at all times a moral tendency. Your own writings contain materials in abundance for the vindication of my prophecies, only with this difference, that you always draw back when it comes to proceeding personally, whereas I charge boldly upon the persons, etc.

In that you do very ill, my dear sir!

I have nothing to do with persons, everything to do with matters: the most upright man can carry out the most ruinous projects, believing them to be good: exempli gratia, Baron v. Stein and the treasury notes!

What good you might do, and in what noble light you would stand, were your character of as pure a metal and your virtue as firm as your knowledge is comprehensive and your insights for the most part correct.

Can the registrar then know so certainly that the man to whom he wrote his letter is the author of the Confidential Letters?

For the rest, virtue does not consist in affronts against the persons who direct the affairs of state. One holds to the matters, not to the persons, and if the author in the second part has now and then departed from this rule, he is now sorry for it.

One sees: it is not possible to please all men in all things.

[p. 140]

You, the panegyrist and partisan of Hoym, you publish my table of estates!

That would indeed be a great inconsistency, if only it were true!

But despite your invectives, my dear registrar, I shall remain the panegyrist of Count Hoym, and do not forget that he is out of office and can therefore neither profit nor harm me. I would add: that he does not know me; if only you would let yourself be instructed.

The most vexing thing is that the table of estates has not only been printed after an incomplete manuscript, in which much was lacking, but also (here I receive another reprimand) that confusions have crept into it.

The public sees, then: that black register is not authentic. I will have nothing further to do with it.

For all I care, the registrar may now have an authentic one printed, or retract the former, or find out who sold the manuscript behind his back; it is all one to me.

[p. 141]

Announcement.

Now just completed:

Heinrich Brosenius
Technology
for
Teachers in Schools
and
for Self-Instruction.

First and Second Volume.

75½ sheets of text and 9 copperplate tables in quarto.
Leipzig 1807, at Heinrich Gräff’s.
Retail price 3 thalers. Bulk price for 6 copies at 2 thalers each.

If it is true that of all forms of knowledge the practical ones, or those which stand in immediate relation to practical life, are the most important and the most indispensable, then technical knowledge, by the unanimous judgement of all educators, belongs among the most indispensable of all; and thus what the author of that work says in the preface to the first volume is surely correct: “that everyone who lays claim to cultivation must know roughly as much of technology as is contained in his book, if he does not wish often to be placed in the embarrassing position of exposing his sorry ignorance.” — One may therefore without hesitation recommend this work as an indispensable item in every library of every cultivated man, however

[p. 142]

small, and especially in that of all young people, since it has the advantage over all other similar writings of greater richness and completeness. Yet this too one believes must still be remarked: that here one is not to expect a merely dry enumeration of the operations as they are performed by craftsmen and in factories, but rather that the description of the crafts, etc., is, as it were, seasoned with a quantity of useful and interesting notices drawn from the history of the arts, so that the work thereby gains much in value, and will also richly reward repeated reading and study each time. Here is the content of the whole work:

Volume One.

First Part. On the Working of the Natural Products of the Animal Kingdom.

I. Meat. — Butcher (slaughterer), cook.
II. Blood. — Preparation of Prussian blue.
III. Fat and spermaceti. — Soap-boiler, candle-maker, train-oil boiling. Preparation of spermaceti.
IV. Hides and skins. — Furrier, the tanners, namely the tan-tanner (bark tanner), white-tawer, chamois-dresser, parchment-maker. — Further preparation of leather. — Leather-dresser, shoemaker, saddler, strap-maker, pouch-maker and upholsterer, glover, harness-maker, leather-gilder, preparation of leather boxes and of leather hangings, — the glue-boiler.
V. Bladder. — Preparation of isinglass, — of the cloister-pictures, — of English court-plaster.
VI. Guts. — Manufacture of catgut strings and of the goldbeater’s skin.
VII. Hair, bristles, wool and feathers. 1. Hair. — Hatter (hat-trimmer), felt-maker, wig-maker and hairdresser, brush-maker (paint-brush maker), sieve-maker, preparation of hair-cushions and of hair-cloth floor-coverings, hair-boiler, horsehair-plaiter. 2. Bristles. Brush-maker. 3. Wool. Cloth-weaver. (Cloth-dresser — cloth-shearer.) Stuff- and rash-maker, tapestry-weaving. Stocking-knitter and stocking-weaver, lace-maker or braid-weaver, button-maker, tailor, blanket-maker. 4. Feathers. — Quill manufactories, feather-flower manufactories. Beating out of birds.
VIII. Horn, bone, ivory, pearls, tortoiseshell and coral, together with similar natural materials — the turner, (art-turner, game-call maker, rosary-bead maker,) comb-maker, (horn-turner), ivory manufactory. Dressing of pearls and mother-of-pearl, coral manufactory, whalebone-splitting.
IX. Milk. — Preparation of butter and cheese.

[p. 143]

X. Honey and wax. — Honey-cake baker. Wax-bleaching, wax-candle making, preparation of wax tapers and wax torches, the wax-modeller.
XI. Silk. — Dressing of silk. Silk-weaver, wadding-maker, preparation of Italian flowers.
XII. Cochineal. Preparation of carmine.
XIII. Gum-lac and gall-nuts. Preparation of sealing-wax. Manufacture of ink.

Second Part. On the Working of the Natural Products of the Vegetable Kingdom.

I. Wood. This is worked by 1. the wood-workers proper, in that they leave its substance unchanged but give it another form. To these belong: the joiner, chair-maker, carpenter, well-maker, cooper, block-cutter, basket-weaver, wheelwright, gunstock-maker, organ-builder (harpsichord-maker), violin-maker, flute-borer, wood-carver, wooden-button maker, last-cutter, box-maker, whip-handle and hourglass maker. 2. For other uses of wood its substance is destroyed by fire; hence charcoal-burning, potash-boiling, lampblack-burning — the preparation of Indian ink. — 3. The resinous saps of wood are used for tar (tar-distilling) and varnishes (the varnisher). (Oilcloth manufacture.) 4. The bast and bark of wood are worked partly by the mat-weaver, partly by the cork-cutter.

II. Fruits. — 1. Technological use of grain. — Preparation of flour (miller). Baker, wafer-baker, maker of vermicelli. — Preparation of pearl-barley, groats, semolina; starch-making, brewing, vinegar-making, distilling of brandy. 2. Treatment of oil-rich fruits and seeds for the preparation a) of fatty oils (oil-mill), b) of essential oils and fragrant waters. 3. Treatment of juicy fruits into spirituous drinks. (Cider.) Preparation of wine. 4. Working of cotton. Cotton manufactures. Calico-weaver, calico-printing, canvas- and fustian-weaver, and so forth.

III. Plant stalks. 1. Flax and hemp. Working of both, preparation of lace, of linen goods. (Linen-weaver, damask-weaver.) Dressing of raw linen, the bleaching; the ropemaker. — Rags: papermaking, pasteboard-making, preparation of coloured papers, of paper hangings, playing-card manufacture, bookbinder. (Papier-mâché masks.) 2. Sugar cane and tobacco. Sugar-boiling. Confectioner, preparation of smoking- and snuff-tobacco. 3. Straw and reed. Preparation of straw wares, plait-maker, dressing of Spanish canes. 4. Dye plants. Woad manufacture, madder manufacture, indigo-works, preparation of orchil and litmus. The dyer. 5. Medicinal plants. The apothecary’s art.

Second Volume.

First Section. Earths and Stones.

I. Clays. 1. The Potter, preparation of crucibles. Preparation of stoneware. Faience factory. Porcelain factory. Pipe-baking. The Brickworks.

[p. 144]

II. Siliceous materials. The art of glassmaking. Preparation of glass fluxes and of the melt. The art of enamelling. Manufacture of imitation pearls. The Mirror factory. The Glazier. The Glass-grinder. The Glass-cutter. Precious stones. The Lapidary. The Jeweller. The Gem-engraver. Mosaic.
III. Limes. Gypsum-burning. Stucco-worker. Plasterer (plaster-caster). Lime-burning. Mason. Stonecutter. Roofer (slater). Sculptor. Serpentine-stone turner.

Second Section. Salts.

Common-salt boiling. Saltpetre boiling. The powder mill. Aqua-fortis distilling. Alum boiling. Sal-ammoniac works. Vitriol boiling. Oil-of-vitriol distilling. Borax refinery.

Third Section. Metals.

The extraction of ores. (Mining). The processing of ores, (Smelting).

I. Gold and Silver. Coinage. Gold and silver manufacture. Goldbeater. Gilder (decorative painter). Gold- and silversmith (goldsmith).

II. Copper. Copper hammer-mill. Coppersmith. Redsmith (red-metal caster). Bell-founding. Cannon-founding. The statue-founder. Copperplate engraver. Copperplate printer. Verdigris manufacture. The alloying of copper with other metals, especially zinc, or the making of metal compositions, of Mannheim gold (semilor), tombac, prince’s-metal, pinchbeck, and especially brass. Brassworks. Pin-maker, yellow-metal caster, girdler, clockmaker (watchmaker), mechanic, Leonic gold and silver manufacture. The tinsel-beater (spangle-maker), counter-token beater, weight-maker, maker of scales, candlesticks, boxes, bells, spigots, and rings (ring-turner). Thimble-maker, trumpet-maker. Clasp-maker.

III. Iron. Iron-founding. Iron hammer-mill (bar-hammer), plate-hammer, wire-drawing. Steelworks. Ironworker. Locksmith, tower-clockmaker. Coarse-smith (farrier and weaponsmith, standard-smith). Anchor-smith. File-cutter. Gunsmith (gun-smith), (firearms manufacture). Sword-cutler, nail-smith, knife-smith, surgical-instrument maker, winch-maker, tool-smith (compass-smith, drill-smith). Spurrier. Die-cutter, steelworker. The sewing-needle manufacture. Spoon manufacture. The tinsmith. Awl-smith.

IV. Tin. The pewterer. The button-maker. The tinfoil-beater (foil-beater).

V. Lead. The minium-works (red-lead burning). The lead manufacture. (or the making of lead plates and lead rolls, of shot and balls, and of white lead). The type-founder. The book-printer.

VI. Mercury. The preparation of cinnabar.

VII. Cobalt and Arsenic. a) Cobalt. Preparation of saffior (zaffre) and smalt (blue-pigment works). b) Arsenic. Poison-works.

Fourth Section. Combustible Minerals or Bitumens.

a) Sulphur. Sulphur works. b) Graphite. Manufacture of pencils. c) Amber. Amber-turners.

  1. It is peculiar that both of them, the Duke and Haugwitz, went blind after the battle. ↩

  2. Even now (1807) this essay may still be of interest. ↩

  3. This worked as a new, general idea, exalting the whole, more powerfully than everything that could be set against it by art (standing armies). ↩

  4. In place of the idea of the balance of power, Napoleon now wishes to set that of the formation of confederated states under France’s protection, in order to destroy England’s universal commercial coercion. He is right! ↩

  5. The King of Prussia is certainly the most upright man in his state, the Queen the most amiable of women; the nation loves them both. ↩

  6. As in the previous year the troops went home without having accomplished anything, and both the nation and the army were jealous of the French victories, and still kept thinking of the Seven Years’ War, so both grew discontented; this was displayed publicly in various, often unseemly ways; the cause itself was no longer considered, passion alone was consulted, and it is certain that the King was thereby led to place himself alone upon the field of battle. ↩

  7. They ought long since to have established as many military schools as were required to train soldiers; but instead the cadets were often even ranked below the noble Junkers taken quite raw into the army from the countryside. ↩

  8. Since only the purest possible truth is to be admitted into these pages, and since I call upon others to present it without disguise, I could never forgive myself if I myself were to deviate from it in the slightest. The above assertion I set down from the mouths of many who saw the battlefield, and who could have had no intention of concealing the truth. ↩

  9. Rauhthal, not Rauchthal, is the name of this romantic valley, which all know who studied at Jena and visited its paradisiacal surroundings, such as few towns in Germany have the good fortune to enjoy so close at hand. Oh! whose heart, among those who know it, is not sometimes drawn there, especially in the month of blossoms? ↩

  10. What was to be done after the Battle of Jena to save the Prussian state? Note. Page 5. ↩

  11. Especially the districts through which the military road passes. ↩

  12. Knights’ estates, peasants’ holdings, and so forth. Schock, Ember-day taxes, donative moneys, magazine-Hufe — Sapienti sat! (a word to the wise is enough!) ↩

  13. E.g. ravaging, bivouac, and so forth. ↩

  14. Just as little as the misfortune of war itself, of which many usurers had long since been forewarned in prophetic spirit. — ↩

  15. On the other hand, it is only fair that whoever obtains the sub-letting and makes a trade of it may be drawn into sharing the costs of quartering. ↩

  16. To an official who, with much work, could not support himself and his children on the salary allotted to him, and who applied for a modest supplement, the answer given was: who told him to marry! — And to another, who declared that he simply could not subsist, the reply was: why, he himself applied for this post and knew that he would receive no more salary. — Fiat applicatio (let the inference be drawn). Might one not also say to the landowner: you knew that these burdens (onera) attached to it. ↩

  17. Would that they had rather conceded to the Austrians their conquests in Turkey, come to an understanding with them, and used this moment to give the Prussian state what Frederick had neglected, and what was so necessary to it, namely — a better frontier in the west. ↩

  18. And the supplies too were not sufficient. ↩

  19. This was also the case with the field war chest of the von St. Corps. ↩

  20. The grenadier battalion of von Hahn in Breslau sold its horses there at some hundred thalers above the delivery price. ↩

  21. And some regiments even let theirs go home again. ↩

  22. Provided that the same, on the island of Usedom as at Tanneberg, did not again crave a day of rest. ↩

  23. Indeed in the opinion of General von Becker, but not in the opinion of General von Bila. ↩

  24. Here Herr von Tschirschky seems to step out of his role, but in the main he is right; for what is wiser than the rules of self-preservation, and can one win over the enemy better than by yielding? C….m….r. ↩