from which they had annoyed the French left; and at the same conjuncture the division of Ney, and a large reserve of cavalry, appeared upon the field of battle. Napoleon thus strengthened, advanced the centre, consisting in a great measure of the Imperial Guard, who, being fresh and in the highest spirits, compelled the Prussian army to give way. Their retreat was at first orderly; but it was a part of Buonaparte's tactics to pour attack after attack upon a worsted enemy, as the billows of a tempestuous ocean follow each other in succession, till the last waves totally disperse the fragments of the bulwark which the first have breached. Murat at the head of the dragoons and the cavalry of reserve, charged, as one who would merit, as far as bravery could merit, the splendid destinies which seemed now opening to him.The Prussian infantry were unable to support the shock, nor could their cavalry protect them. The route became general. Great part of the artillery was taken, and the broken troops retreated in disorder upon Weimar, where, as we have already stated, their confusion became inextricable, by their encountering the other tide of fugitives from their vn left, which was directed upon Weimar also. All leading and following seemed now lost in this army, so lately confiding in its numbers and discipline. There was scarcely a general left to issue orders, scarcely a soldier disposed to obey them; and it seems to have been more by a sort of instinct, than any résolved purpose, that several broken regiments were directed, or directed themselves, upon Magdeburg, where Prince Hohenloe endeavored to rally them.

Besides the double battle of Jena and Auerstadt, Bernadotte had his share in the conflict, as he worsted at Apolda, a village between those two points of general action, a large detachment. The French accounts state that 20,000 Prussians were killed and taken in the course of this fatal day; that three hundred guns fell into their power, with twenty generals, or lieutenant-generals, and standards and colors to the number of sixty.

The mismanagement of the Prussian generals in these calamitous battles, and in all the manoeuvres which preceded them, amounted to infatuation. The troops also, according to Buonaparte's evidence, scarcely maintained their high character, oppressed probably by a sense of the disadvantages under which they combated. But it is unnecessary to dwell on the various causes of a defeat, when the vanquished seem neither to have formed one combined and general plan of at

tack in the action, nor maintained communications with each other while it endured, nor agreed upon any scheme of re treat when the day was lost. The Duke of Brunswick, too, and General Schmettau, being mortally wounded early in the battle, the several divisions of the Prussian army fought individually, without receiving any general orders and consequently without regular plan or combined manoeuvres. The consequences of the defeat were more universally calamitous than could have been anticipated, even when we consider, that, no mode of retreat having been fixed on, or general rallying place appointed, the broken army resembled a covey of heath-fowl, which the sportsman marks down and destroys in detail and at his leisure.

Next day after the action, a large body of the Prussians, who, under the command of Mollendorf, had retired to Erfurt, were compelled to surrender to the victors, and the Marshal, with the Prince of Orange Fulda, became prisoners. Other relics of this most unhappy defeat met with the same fate.General Kalkreuth, at the head of a considerable division of troops, was ov? eken and routed in an attempt to cross the Hartz mountains. Prince Eugene of Wirtemberg commanded an untouched body of sixteen thousand men, whom the Prussian general-in-chief had suffered to remain at Memmingen, without an attempt to bring them into the field. Instead of retiring when he heard all was lost, the Prince was rash enough to advance towards Halle, as if to put the only unbroken division of the Prussian army in the way of the far superior and victorious hosts of France. He was accordingly attacked and defeated by Bernadotte. The chief point of rallying, however, was Magdeberg, under the walls of which strong city, Prince Hohenloe, though wounded, contrived to assemble an army amounting to fifty thousand men, but wanting everything, and in the last degree of confusion. But Magdeberg was no place of rest for them. The same improvidence, which had marked every step of the campaign, had exhausted that city of the immense magazines which it contained, and taken them for the supply of the Duke of Brunswick's army. The wrecks of the field of Jena were exposed to famine as well as to the sword. It only remained for Prince Hohenloe to make the best escape he could, and, considering the disastrous cicumstances in which he was placed, he seems to have displayed both courage and skill in his proceedings. After various partial actions, however, in all of which he lost men, he finally found himself, with the ad

vanced-guard and centre of his army, on the heights of Prenzlow, without provisions, forage or ammunition. render became unavoidable; and at Prenzlow and Passewalk nearly 20,000 Prussians laid down their arms.

The rear of Prince Hohenloe's army did not immediately share this calamity. They were at Bortzenberg when the surrender took place, and amounted to about ten thousand men, the relics of the battle in which Prince Eugene of Wirtemberg had engaged near Weimar, and were under the command of a general whose name hereafter was destined to sound like a war trumpet-the celebrated Blucher. In the ex tremity of his country's distresses, this distinguished soldier shewed the same indomitable spirit, the same activity in execution and daringness of resolve, which afterwards led to such glorious results. He was about to leave Bortzenberg on the 29th, in consequence of his orders from Prince Hohenloe, when he learned that general's disaster at Prenzlow. He instantly changed the direction of his retreat, and, by a rapid march towards Strelitz, contrived to unite his forces with about ten thousand men, gleanings of Jena and Auerstadt, which, under the Dukes of Weimar and of Brunswick Oels, had taken their route in that direction. Thus reinforced, Blucher adopted the plan of passing the Elbe at Lauenburg, and reinforcing the Prussian garrison at Lower Saxony.With this view he fought several sharp actions, and made many rapid marches. But the odds were too great to be balanced by courage and activity. The division of Soult which had crossed the Elbe, cut him off from Lauenburg, that of Murat interposed between him and Stralsund, while Bernadotte pressed upon his rear. Blucher had no resource but to throw himself and his diminished and dispirited army into Lubeck. The pursuers soon came up, and found him like a stag at bay. A battle was fought on the 6th of November in the streets of Lubeck, with extreme fury on both sides, in which the Prussians were overpowered by numbers, and lost many slain, besides four thousand prisoners. Blucher fought his way out of the town, and reached Schwerta. But he had now retreated as far as he had Prussian ground to bear him, and to violate the neutrality of the Danish territory, would only have raised up new enemies to his unfortunate master. On the 7th of November, therefore, he gave up his good sword, to be resumed under happier auspices, and surrendered with the few thousand men which remained under his command. But the courage which he had manifested, like the lights of St. Elmo

amid the gloom of the tempest, showed that there was at least one pupil of the Great Frederick worthy of his master, and afforded hopes on which Prussia long dwelt in silence, till the moment of action arrived.

The total destruction, for such it might almost be termed, of the Prussian army, was scarcely so wonderful, as the facility with which the fortresses which defend that country, some of them ranking among the foremost in Europe, were surrendered by their commandants, without shame, and without resistance, to the victorious enemy. Strong towns, and fortified places, on which the engineer had exhausted his science, provided too, with large garrisons, and ample supplies, opened their gates at the sound of a French trumpet, or the explosion of a few bombs. Spandau, Stettin, Castrin and Hamelen, were each qualified to have arrested the march of invaders for months, yet were all surrendered on little more than a summons. In Magdeberg was a garrison of twenty-two thousand men, two thousand of them being artillerymen; and nevertheless, this celebrated city capitulated with Marshal Ney, at the first flight of shells.

While the French army made this uninterrupted progress, the new king of Holland, Louis Buonaparte, with an army, partly composed of Dutch and partly of Frenchmen, possessed himself with equal ease of Westphalia, great part of Hanover, Emden and East Friesland. To complete the picture of general disorder which Prussia now exhibited, it is only neccessary to add, that the unfortunate king, whose personal qualities deserved a better fate, had been obliged after the battle to fly into East Prussia, where he finally sought refuge in the city of Koningsberg. L'Estocq, a faithful and able general, was still able to assemble out of the wreck of the Prussian army, a few thousand men for the protection of his sovereign. Buonaparte took possession of Berlin on the 25th of October, eleven days after the battle of Jena.

The Duke of Brunswick received a mortal wound on the field of battle, and was immediately transported to his hereditary capital. But the approach of the French troops to Brunswick, compelled the dying prince to cause himself to be carried to Altona, where he expired. A vow of "eternal revenge" was made by his son-how he kept it we shall see hereafter.

CHAP. XIV

Napoleon welcomed with enthusiasm by the Poles. Enters Warsaw, and Bennigsen retreats before him. Character of the Russian soldiery.The Cossacks. BATTLE OF PULTUSK. French go into winter quarters. BATTLE OF PREUSS EYLAU. Surrender of Dantzic. Both armies recruited. Battle of Heilsberg. BATTLE OF FRIEDLAND, ON the 13th of June, 1807, and defeat of the Russians. Treaty of Tilsit THE ruin of Prussia seemed, in the eyes of astonished Europe, not only universal, but irremediable. The King, driven to the extremity of his dominions, could only be considered as a fugitive, whose precarious chance of restoration to the crown depended on the doubtful success of his ally of Russia, who now, as after the capture of Vienna, had upon his hands, strong as those hands were, not the task of aiding an ally, who was in the act of resistance to the common enemy, but the far more difficult one of raising from the ground a prince who was totally powerless and prostrate. French crossed the Oder-Glogau and Breslau were taken. Their defence was respectable; but it seemed not the less certain that their fall involved almost the last hopes of Prussia, and that a name, raised so high by the reign of one wise monarch, was like to be blotted out from the map of Europe, by the events of a single day..

The

The unfortunate king sent a messenger to Napoleon to learn on what terms he might be admitted to treat for peace with the victor, who now had possession of his capital and the greater part of his dominions. He had been accustomed to treat with France on the footing of equality, but these times were passed since the battle of Jena, and the only terms to which Prussia could now be admitted even to a temporary armistice, was the surrender of all her remaining fortresses. He refused to acquiesce in such severe terms, and determined to repose his fate in the chance of war, and in the support of the auxiliary army of Russia which was now hastily advancing to his assistance.

Napoleon was justified in these harsh terms, by having now brought his victorious armies to the neighborhood of Poland, in which he had a good right to conceive himself sure to find umerous followers and a friendly reception The partition of this fine kingdom by its powerful neighbors, Russia, Aus