A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 11

[French enter Hanover, May, 1803.]

[Oppression in Hanover, 1803-1805.]

Such a proposal marked the depth to which Prussian statemans.h.i.+p had sunk; it failed to affect the First Consul in the slightest degree. While negotiations were still proceeding, a French division, commanded by General Mortier, entered Hanover (May, 1803). The Hanoverian army was lost through the follies of the civil Government; the Duke of Cambridge, commander of one of its divisions, less ingenious than his brother the Duke of York in finding excuses for capitulation, resigned his commission, and fled to England, along with many brave soldiers, who subsequently found in the army of Great Britain the opportunity for honourable service which was denied to them at home. Hanover pa.s.sed into the possession of France, and for two years the miseries of French occupation were felt to the full. Extortion consumed the homely wealth of the country; the games and meetings of the people were prohibited; French spies violated the confidences of private life; law was administered by foreign soldiers; the press existed only for the purpose of French proselytism. It was in Hanover that the bitterness of that oppression was first felt which subsequently roused all North Germany against a foreign master, and forced upon the race the long-forgotten claims of patriotism and honour.

[French blockade the Elbe.]

[Vain remonstrance of Prussia.]

Bonaparte had justly calculated upon the inaction of the Prussian Government when he gave the order to General Mortier to enter Hanover; his next step proved the growth of his confidence in Prussia's impa.s.sivity. A French force was despatched to Cuxhaven, at the mouth of the Elbe, in order to stop the commerce of Great Britain with the interior of Germany. The British Government immediately informed the Court of Berlin that it should blockade the Elbe and the Weser against the s.h.i.+ps of all nations unless the French soldiers withdrew from the Elbe. As the linen trade of Silesia and other branches of Prussian industry depended upon the free navigation of the Elbe, the threatened reprisals of the British Government raised very serious questions for Prussia. It was France, not England, that had first violated the neutrality of the river highway; and the King of Prussia now felt himself compelled to demand a.s.surances Bonaparte that the interests of Germany should suffer no further injury at his hands. A letter was written by the King to the First Consul, and entrusted to the cabinet-secretary, Lombard, who carried it to Napoleon at Brussels (July, 1803). Lombard, the son of French parents who had settled at Berlin in the reign of Frederick the Great, had risen from a humble station through his skill in expression in the two languages that were native to him; and the accomplishments which would have made him a good clerk or a successful journalist made him in the eyes of Frederick William a counsellor for kings. The history of his mission to Brussels gives curious evidence both of the fascination exercised by Napoleon over common minds, and of the political helplessness which in Prussia could now be mistaken for the quality of a statesman.

Lombard failed to obtain from Napoleon any guarantee or security whatever; yet he wrote back in terms of the utmost delight upon the success of his mission. Napoleon had infatuated him by the mere exercise of his personal charm. "What I cannot describe," said Lombard, in his report to the King relating his interview with the First Consul, [103] "is the tone of goodness and n.o.ble frankness with which he expressed his reverence for your Majesty's rights, and asked for that confidence from your Majesty which he so well deserves." "I only wish," he cried at the close of Napoleon's address, "that I could convey to the King, my master, every one of your words and the tone in which they are uttered; he would then, I am sure, feel a double joy at the justice with which you have always been treated at his hands." Lombard's colleagues at Berlin were perhaps not stronger men than the envoy himself, but they were at least beyond the range of Napoleon's voice and glance, and they received this rhapsody with coldness.

They complained that no single concession had been made by the First Consul upon the points raised by the King. Cuxhaven continued in French hands; the British inexorably blockaded the Germans upon their own neutral waters; and the cautious statecraft of Prussia proved as valueless to Germany as the obstinate, speculating warfare of Austria.

[Alexander displeased.]

There was, however, a Power which watched the advance of French dominion into Northern Germany with less complaisance than the Germans themselves.

The Czar of Russia had gradually come to understand the part allotted to him by Bonaparte since the Peace of Luneville, and was no longer inclined to serve as the instrument of French ambition. Bonaparte's occupation of Hanover changed the att.i.tude of Alexander into one of coldness and distrust. Alexander saw and lamented the help which he himself had given to Bonaparte in Germany: events that now took place in France itself, as well as the progress of French intrigues in Turkey, [104] threw him into the arms of Bonaparte's enemies, and prepared the way for a new European coalition.

[Bonaparte about to become Emperor.]

[Murder of the Duke of Enghien, March 20, 1804.]

The First Bonaparte Consul had determined to a.s.sume the dignity of Emperor.

The renewal of war with England excited a new outburst of enthusiasm for his person; nothing was wanting to place the crown on his head but the discovery of a plot against his life. Such a plot had been long and carefully followed by the police. A Breton gentleman, Georges Cadoudal, had formed the design of attacking the First Consul in the streets of Paris in the midst of his guards. Cadoudal and his fellow-conspirators, including General Pichegru, were traced by the police from the coast of Normandy to Paris: an unsuccessful attempt was made to lure the Count of Artois, and other royal patrons of the conspiracy, from Great Britain. When all the conspirators who could be enticed to France were collected within the capital, the police, who had watched every stage of the movement, began to make arrests. Moreau, the last Republican soldier of France, was charged with complicity in the plot. Pichegru and Cadoudal were thrown into prison, there to await their doom; Moreau, who probably wished for the overthrow of the Consular Government, but had no part in the design against Bonaparte's life, [105] was kept under arrest and loaded with official calumny. One sacrifice more remained to be made, in place of the Bourbon d'Artois, who baffled the police of the First Consul beyond the seas. In the territory of Baden, twelve miles from the French frontier, there lived a prince of the exiled house, the Duke of Enghien, a soldier under the first Coalition against France, now a harmless dependent on the bounty of England. French spies surrounded him; his excursions into the mountains gave rise to a suspicion that he was concerned in Pichegru's plot. This was enough to mark him for destruction. Bonaparte gave orders that he should be seized, brought to Paris, and executed. On the 15th of March, 1804, a troop of French soldiers crossed the Rhine and arrested the Duke in his own house at Ettenheim. They arrived with him at Paris on the 20th. He was taken to the fort of Vincennes without entering the city. On that same night a commission of six colonels sat in judgment upon the prisoner, whose grave was already dug, and p.r.o.nounced sentence of death without hearing a word of evidence. At daybreak the Duke was led out and shot.

[Napoleon Emperor, May 18, 1804.]

If some barbaric instinct made the slaughter of his predecessor's kindred in Bonaparte's own eyes the omen of a successful usurpation, it was not so with Europe generally. One universal sense of horror pa.s.sed over the Continent. The Court of Russia put on mourning; even the Diet of Ratisbon showed signs of human pa.s.sion at the indignity done to Germany by the seizure of the Duke of Enghien on German soil. Austria kept silent, but watched the signs of coming war. France alone showed no pity. Before the Duke of Enghien had been dead a week, the Senate besought Napoleon to give to France the security of a hereditary throne. Prefects, bishops, mayors, and councils with one voice repeated the official prayer. A resolution in favour of imperial rule was brought forward in the Tribunate, and pa.s.sed, after a n.o.ble and solitary protest on the part of Carnot. A decree of the Senate embodied the terms of the new Const.i.tution; and on the 18th of May, without waiting for the sanction of a national vote, Napoleon a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Emperor of the French.

[t.i.tle of Emperor of Austria, Aug., 1804.]

In France itself the change was one more of the name than of the substance of power. Napoleon could not be vested with a more absolute authority than he already possessed; but the forms of republican equality vanished; and although the real social equality given to France by the Revolution was beyond reach of change, the nation had to put up with a b.a.s.t.a.r.d Court and a fict.i.tious aristocracy of Corsican princes, Terrorist excellencies, and Jacobin dukes. The new dynasty was recognised at Vienna and Berlin: on the part of Austria it received the compliment of an imitation. Three months after the a.s.sumption of the Imperial t.i.tle by Napoleon, the Emperor Francis (Emperor in Germany, but King in Hungary and Bohemia) a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of Emperor of all his Austrian dominions. The true reason for this act was the virtual dissolution of the Germanic system by the Peace of Luneville, and the probability that the old Imperial dignity, if preserved in name, would soon be transferred to some client of Napoleon or to Napoleon himself. Such an apprehension was, however, not one that could be confessed to Europe.

Instead of the ruin of Germany, the grandeur of Austria was made the ostensible ground of change. In language which seemed to be borrowed from the scriptural history of Nebuchadnezzar, the Emperor Francis declared that, although no possible addition could be made to his own personal dignity, as Roman Emperor, yet the ancient glory of the Austrian House, the grandeur of the princ.i.p.alities and kingdoms which were united under its dominion, required that the Sovereigns of Austria should hold a t.i.tle equal to that of the greatest European throne. A general war against Napoleon was already being proposed by the Court of St. Petersburg; but for the present the Corsican and the Hapsburg Caesar exchanged their hypocritical congratulations. [106]

[Pitt again Minister, May, 1804.]

[Coalition of 1805.]

Almost at the same time that Bonaparte ascended the throne, Pitt returned to power in Great Britain. He was summoned by the general distrust felt in Addington's Ministry, and by the belief that no statesman but himself could rally the Powers of Europe against the common enemy. Pitt was not long in framing with Russia the plan of a third Coalition. The Czar broke off diplomatic intercourse with Napoleon in September, 1804, and induced the Court of Vienna to pledge itself to resist any further extension of French power. Sweden entered into engagements with Great Britain. On the opening of Parliament at the beginning of 1805, King George III. announced that an understanding existed between Great Britain and Russia, and asked in general terms for a provision for Continental subsidies. In April, a treaty was signed at St. Petersburg by the representatives of Russia and Great Britain, far more comprehensive and more serious in its provisions than any which had yet united the Powers against France. [107] Russia and England bound themselves to direct their efforts to the formation of a European League capable of placing five hundred thousand men in the field. Great Britain undertook to furnish subsidies to every member of the League; no peace was to be concluded with France but by common consent; conquests made by any of the belligerents were to remain unappropriated until the general peace; and at the termination of the war a Congress was to fix certain disputed points of international right, and to establish a federative European system for their maintenance and enforcement. As the immediate objects of the League, the treaty specified the expulsion of the French from Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Northern Germany; the re-establishment of the King of Sardinia in Piedmont, with an increase of territory; and the creation of a solid barrier against any future usurpations of France. The last expression signified the union of Holland and part of Belgium under the House of Orange. In this respect, as in the provision for a common disposal of conquests and for the settlement of European affairs by a Congress, the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1805 defined the policy actually carried out in 1814. Other territorial changes now suggested by Pitt, including the annexation of the Rhenish Provinces to the Prussian Monarchy, were not embodied in the treaty, but became from this time understood possibilities.

[Policy of Prussia.]

[Prussia neutral.]

England and Russia had, however, some difficulty in securing allies.

Although in violation of his promises to Austria, Napoleon had accepted the t.i.tle of King of Italy from the Senate of the Italian Republic, and had crowned himself with the Iron Crown of Lombardy (March, 1805), the Ministers at Vienna would have preferred peace, if that had been possible; and their master reluctantly consented to a war against Napoleon when war in some form or other seemed inevitable. The policy of Prussia was doubtful. For two years past Napoleon had made every effort to induce Prussia to enter into alliance with himself. After the invasion of Hanover he had doubled his attentions to the Court of Berlin, and had spared nothing in the way of promises and a.s.surances of friends.h.i.+p to win the King over to his side. The neutrality of Prussia was of no great service to France: its support would have been of priceless value, rendering any attack upon France by Russia or Austria almost impossible, and thus enabling Napoleon to throw his whole strength into the combat with Great Britain. In the spring of 1804, the King of Prussia, uncertain of the friends.h.i.+p of the Czar, and still unconvinced of the vanity of Napoleon's professions, had inclined to a defensive alliance with France. The news of the murder of the Duke of Enghien, arriving almost simultaneously with a message of goodwill from St. Petersburg, led him to abandon this project of alliance, but caused no breach with Napoleon. Frederick William adhered to the temporising policy which Prussia had followed since 1795, and the Foreign Minister, Haugwitz, who had recommended bolder measures, withdrew for a time from the Court. [108] Baron Hardenberg, who had already acted as his deputy, stepped into his place. Hardenberg, the negotiator of the peace of Basle, had for the last ten years advocated a system of neutrality. A politician quick to grasp new social and political ideas, he was without that insight into the real forces at work in Europe which, in spite of errors in detail, made the political aims of Pitt, and of many far inferior men, substantially just and correct. So late as the end of the year 1804, Hardenberg not only failed to recognise the dangers to which Prussia was exposed from Napoleon's ambition, but conceived it to be still possible for Prussia to avert war between France and the Allied Powers by maintaining a good understanding with all parties alike. Hardenberg's neutrality excited the wrath of the Russian Cabinet. While Metternich, the Austrian amba.s.sador at Berlin, cautiously felt his way, the Czar proposed in the last resort to force Prussia to take up arms. A few months more pa.s.sed; and, when hostilities were on the point of breaking out, Hanover was definitely offered to Prussia by Napoleon as the price of an alliance. Hardenberg, still believing that it lay within the power of Prussia, by means of a French alliance, both to curb Napoleon and to prevent a European war, urged the King to close with the offer of the French Emperor. [109] But the King shrank from a decision which involved the possibility of immediate war. The offer of Hanover was rejected, and Prussia connected itself neither with Napoleon nor his enemies.

[State of Austria. The army.]

Pitt, the author of the Coalition of 1805, had formed the most sanguine estimate of the armaments of his allies. Austria was said to have entered upon a new era since the peace of Luneville, and to have turned to the best account all the disasters of its former campaigns. There had indeed been no want of fine professions from Vienna, but Pitt knew little of the real state of affairs. The Archduke Charles had been placed at the head of the military administration, and entrusted with extraordinary powers; but the whole force of routine and corruption was ranged against him. He was deceived by his subordinates; and after three years of reorganisation he resigned his post, confessing that he left the army no nearer efficiency than it was before. Charles was replaced at the War Office by General Mack.

Within six months this bustling charlatan imagined himself to have effected the reorganisation of which the Archduke despaired, [110] while he had in fact only introduced new confusion into an army already hampered beyond any in Europe by its variety of races and languages.

[Political condition of Austria.]

If the military reforms of Austria were delusive, its political reforms were still more so. The Emperor had indeed consented to unite the Ministers, who had hitherto worked independently, in a Council of State; but here reform stopped. Cobenzl, who was now First Minister, understood nothing but diplomacy. Men continued in office whose presence was an insuperable bar to any intelligent action: even in that mechanical routine which, in the eyes of the Emperor Francis, const.i.tuted the life of the State, everything was antiquated and self-contradictory. In all that affected the mental life of the people the years that followed the peace of Luneville were distinctly retrograde. Education was placed more than ever in the hands of the priests; the censors.h.i.+p of the press was given to the police; a commission was charged with the examination of all the books printed during the reign of the Emperor Joseph, and above two thousand works, which had come into being during that brief period of Austrian liberalism, were suppressed and destroyed. Trade regulations were issued which combined the extravagance of the French Reign of Terror with the ignorance of the Middle Ages. All the grain in the country was ordered to be sold before a certain date, and the Jews were prohibited from carrying on the corn-trade for a year. Such were the reforms described by Pitt in the English Parliament as having effected the regeneration of Austria.

Nearer home things were judged in a truer light. Mack's paper-regiments, the helplessness and unreality of the whole system of Austrian officialism, were correctly appreciated by the men who had been most in earnest during the last war. Even Thugut now thought a contest hopeless. The Archduke Charles argued to the end for peace, and entered upon the war with the presentiment of defeat and ruin.

[Plans of campaign, 1805.]

The plans of the Allies for the campaign of 1805 covered an immense field.

[111] It was intended that one Austrian army should operate in Lombardy under the Archduke Charles, while a second, under General Mack, entered Bavaria, and there awaited the arrival of the Russians, who were to unite with it in invading France: British and Russian contingents were to combine with the King of Sweden in Pomerania, and with the King of Naples in Southern Italy. At the head-quarters of the Allies an impression prevailed that Napoleon was unprepared for war. It was even believed that his character had lost something of its energy under the influence of an Imperial Court. Never was there a more fatal illusion. The forces of France had never been so overwhelming; the plans of Napoleon had never been worked out with greater minuteness and certainty. From Hanover to Strasburg ma.s.ses of troops had been collected upon the frontier in readiness for the order to march; and, before the campaign opened, the magnificent army of Boulogne, which had been collected for the invasion of England, was thrown into the scale against Austria.

[Failure of Napoleon's naval designs against England.]

[Nelson and Villeneuve, April-June, 1805.]

Events had occurred at sea which frustrated Napoleon's plan for an attack upon Great Britain. This attack, which in 1797 had been but lightly threatened, had, upon the renewal of war with England in 1803, become the object of Napoleon's most serious efforts. An army was concentrated at Boulogne sufficient to overwhelm the military forces of England, if once it could reach the opposite sh.o.r.e. Napoleon's thoughts were centred on a plan for obtaining the naval superiority in the Channel, if only for the few hours which it would take to transport the army from Boulogne to the English coast. It was his design to lure Nelson to the other side of the Atlantic by a feigned expedition against the West Indies, and, during the absence of the English admiral, to unite all the fleets at present lying blockaded in the French ports, as a cover for the invading armament.

Admiral Villeneuve was ordered to sail to Martinique, and, after there meeting with some other s.h.i.+ps, to re-cross the Atlantic with all possible speed, and liberate the fleets blockaded in Ferrol, Brest, and Rochefort.

The junction of the fleets would give Napoleon a force of fifty sail in the British Channel, a force more than sufficient to overpower all the squadrons which Great Britain could possibly collect for the defence of its sh.o.r.es. Such a design exhibited all the power of combination which marked Napoleon's greatest triumphs; but it required of an indifferent marine the precision and swiftness of movement which belonged to the land-forces of France; it a.s.sumed in the seamen of Great Britain the same absence of resource which Napoleon had found among the soldiers of the Continent. In the present instance, however, Napoleon had to deal with a man as far superior to all the admirals of France as Napoleon himself was to the generals of Austria and Prussia. Villeneuve set sail for the West Indies in the spring of 1805, and succeeded in drawing Nelson after him; but, before he could re-cross the Atlantic, Nelson, incessantly pursuing the French squadron in the West-Indian seas, and at length discovering its departure homewards at Antigua (June 13), had warned the English Government of Villeneuve's movement by a message sent in the swiftest of the English brigs. [112] The Government, within twenty-four hours of receiving Nelson's message, sent orders to Sir Robert Calder instantly to raise the blockades of Ferrol and Rochefort, and to wait for Villeneuve off Cape Finisterre.

Here Villeneuve met the English fleet (July 22). He was worsted in a partial engagement, and retired into the harbour of Ferrol. The pressing orders of Napoleon forced the French admiral, after some delay, to attempt that movement on Brest and Rochefort on which the whole plan of the invasion of England depended. But Villeneuve was no longer in a condition to meet the English force a.s.sembled against him. He put back without fighting, and retired to Cadiz. All hope of carrying out the attack upon England was lost.

[March of French armies on Bavaria, Sept.]

It only remained for Napoleon to avenge himself upon Austria through the army which was baulked of its English prey. On the 1st of September, when the Austrians were now on the point of crossing the Inn, the camp of Boulogne was broken up. The army turned eastwards, and distributed itself over all the roads leading from the Channel to the Rhine and the Upper Danube. Far on the north-east the army of Hanover, commanded by Bernadotte, moved as its left wing, and converged upon a point in Southern Germany half-way between the frontiers of France and Austria. In the fables that long disguised the true character of every action of Napoleon, the admirable order of march now given to the French armies appears as the inspiration of a moment, due to the rebound of Napoleon's genius after learning the frustration of all his naval plans. In reality, the employment of the "Army of England" against a Continental coalition had always been an alternative present to Napoleon's mind; and it was threateningly mentioned in his letters at a time when Villeneuve's failure was still unknown.

[Austrians invade Bavaria, Sept. 8.]

The only advantage which the Allies derived from the remoteness of the Channel army was that Austria was able to occupy Bavaria without resistance. General Mack, who was charged with this operation, crossed the Inn on the 8th of September. The Elector of Bavaria was known to be secretly hostile to the Coalition. The design of preventing his union with the French was a correct one; but in the actual situation of the allied armies it was one that could not be executed without great risk. The preparations of Russia required more time than was allowed for them; no Russian troops could reach the Inn before the end of October; and, in consequence, the entire force operating in Western Germany did not exceed seventy thousand men. Any doubts, however, as to the prudence of an advance through Bavaria were silenced by the a.s.surance that Napoleon had to bring the bulk of his army from the British Channel. [113] In ignorance of the real movements of the French, Mack pushed on to the western limit of Bavaria, and reached the river Iller, the border of Wurtemberg, where he intended to stand on the defensive until the arrival of the Russians.

[Mack at Ulm, October.]

[Capitulation of Ulm, Oct. 17.]

Here, in the first days of October, he became aware of the presence of French troops, not only in front but to the east of his own position.

With some misgiving as to the situation of the enemy, Mack nevertheless refused to fall back from Ulm. Another week revealed the true state of affairs. Before the Russians were anywhere near Bavaria, the vanguard of Napoleon's Army of the Channel and the Army of Hanover had crossed North-Western Germany, and seized the roads by which Mack had advanced from Vienna. Every hour that Mack remained in Ulm brought new divisions of the French into the Bavarian towns and villages behind him. Escape was only possible by a retreat into the Tyrol, or by breaking through the French line while it was yet incompletely formed. Resolute action might still have saved the Austrian army; but the only energy that was shown was shown in opposition to the general. The Archduke Ferdinand, who was the t.i.tular commander-in-chief, cut his way through the French with part of the cavalry; Mack remained in Ulm, and the iron circle closed around him. At the last moment, after the hopelessness of the situation had become clear even to himself, Mack was seized by an illusion that some great disaster had befallen the French in their rear, and that in the course of a few days Napoleon would be in full retreat. "Let no man utter the word 'Surrender'"--he proclaimed in an order of October 15th--"the enemy is in the most fearful straits; it is impossible that he can continue more than a few days in the neighbourhood. If provisions run short, we have three thousand horses to nourish us." "I myself," continued the general, "will be the first to eat horseflesh." Two days later the inevitable capitulation took place; and Mack with 25,000 men, fell into the hands of the enemy without striking a blow. A still greater number of the Austrians outside Ulm surrendered in detachments. [114]

[Trafalgar, Oct. 21.]

[Effects.]

All France read with wonder Napoleon's bulletins describing the capture of an entire army and the approaching presentation of forty Austrian standards to the Senate at Paris. No imperial rhetoric acquainted the nation with an event which, within four days of the capitulation of Ulm, inflicted a heavier blow on France than Napoleon himself had ever dealt to any adversary. On the 21st of October Nelson's crowning victory of Trafalgar, won over Villeneuve venturing out from Cadiz, annihilated the combined fleets of France and Spain. Nelson fell in the moment of his triumph; but the work which his last hours had achieved was one to which years prolonged in glory could have added nothing. He had made an end of the power of France upon the sea. Trafalgar was not only the greatest naval victory, it was the greatest and most momentous victory won either by land or by sea during the whole of the Revolutionary War. No victory, and no series of victories, of Napoleon produced the same effect upon Europe. Austria was in arms within five years of Marengo, and within four years of Austerlitz; Prussia was ready to retrieve the losses of Jena in 1813; a generation pa.s.sed after Trafalgar before France again seriously threatened England at sea. The prospect of crus.h.i.+ng the British navy, so long as England had the means to equip a navy, vanished: Napoleon henceforth set his hopes on exhausting England's resources by compelling every State on the Continent to exclude her commerce. Trafalgar forced him to impose his yoke upon all Europe, or to abandon the hope of conquering Great Britain. If national love and pride have idealised in our great sailor a character which, with its Homeric force and freshness, combined something of the violence and the self-love of the heroes of a rude age, the common estimate of Nelson's work in history is not beyond the truth. So long as France possessed a navy, Nelson sustained the spirit of England by his victories; his last triumph left England in such a position that no means remained to injure her but those which must result in the ultimate deliverance of the Continent.

[Treaty of Potsdam, Nov. 3.]

[Violation of Prussian territory.]

The consequences of Trafalgar lay in the future; the military situation in Germany after Mack's catastrophe was such that nothing could keep the army of Napoleon out of Vienna. In the sudden awakening of Europe to its danger, one solitary gleam of hope appeared in the att.i.tude of the Prussian Court.

Napoleon had not scrupled, in his anxiety for the arrival of the Army of Hanover, to order Bernadotte, its commander, to march through the Prussian territory of Ans.p.a.ch, which lay on his direct route towards Ulm. It was subsequently alleged by the Allies that Bernadotte's violation of Prussian neutrality had actually saved him from arriving too late to prevent Mack's escape; but, apart from all imaginary grounds of reproach, the insult offered to Prussia by Napoleon was sufficient to incline even Frederick William to decided action. Some weeks earlier the approach of Russian forces to his frontier had led Frederick William to arm; the French had now more than carried out what the Russians had only suggested. When the outrage was made known to the King of Prussia, that cold and reserved monarch displayed an emotion which those who surrounded him had seldom witnessed. [115] The Czar was forthwith offered a free pa.s.sage for his armies through Silesia; and, before the news of Mack's capitulation reached the Russian frontier, Alexander himself was on the way to Berlin. The result of the deliberations of the two monarchs was the Treaty of Potsdam, signed on November 3rd. By this treaty Prussia undertook to demand from Napoleon an indemnity for the King of Piedmont, and the evacuation of Germany, Switzerland, and Holland: failing Napoleon's acceptance of Prussia's mediation upon these terms, Prussia engaged to take the field with 180,000 men.