King of Prussia’s Proclamation

The united force of the Prussian army, with its auxiliaries, amounted to one hundred fifty thousand men, confident in their own courage, in the rigid discipline.

Continuing Napoleon Crushes Prussia,
our selection from Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by Sir Walter Scott published in 1839. The selection is presented in seven easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in Napoleon Crushes Prussia.

Time: 1806
Place: Jena and Auerstadt

With this manifesto was delivered a long explanatory letter containing severe remarks on the system of encroachment which France had acted upon. Such a text and commentary, considering their peremptory tone and the pride and power of him to whom they were addressed in such unqualified terms, must have been understood to amount to a declaration of war. And yet, although Prussia, in common with all Europe, had just reason to complain of the encroachments of France, and her rapid strides to universal empire, it would appear that the two first articles in the King’s declaration were subjects rather of negotiation than grounds of an absolute declaration of war, and that the fortress of Wesel, and the three abbeys, were scarce of importance enough to plunge the whole empire into blood for the sake of them.

Prussia, indeed, was less actually aggrieved than she was mortified and offended. She saw she had been outwitted by Bonaparte in the negotiation of Vienna; that he was juggling with her in the matter of Hanover; that she was in danger of beholding Saxony and Hesse withdrawn from her protection, to be placed under that of France: and under a general sense of these injuries, though rather apprehended than really sustained, she hurried to the field. If negotiations could have been protracted till the advance of the Russian armies, it might have given a different face to the war; but in the warlike ardor which possessed the Prussians, they were desirous to secure the advantages which, in military affairs, belong to the assailants, without weighing the circumstances which, in their situation, rendered such precipitation fatal.

Besides, such advantages were not easily to be obtained over Bonaparte, who was not a man to be amused by words when the moment of action arrived. Four days before the delivery of the Prussian note to his minister, Bonaparte had left Paris, and was personally in the field collecting his own immense forces and urging the contribution of those contingents which the confederate princes of the Rhine were bound to supply. His answer to the hostile note of the King of Prussia was addressed, not to that monarch, but to his own soldiers. “They have dared to demand,” he said, “that we should retreat at the first sight of their army. Fools! could they not reflect how impossible they found it to destroy Paris, a task incomparably easier than to tarnish the honor of the ‘Great Nation’? Let the Prussian army expect the same fate which they encountered fourteen years ago, since experience has not taught them that while it is easy to acquire additional dominions and increase of power by the friendship of France, her enmity, on the contrary, which will only be provoked by those who are totally destitute of sense and reason, is more terrible than the tempests of the ocean.”

The King of Prussia had again placed at the head of his armies the Duke of Brunswick. In his youth this general had gained renown under his uncle Prince Ferdinand; but it had been lost in the retreat from Champagne in 1792, where he had suffered himself to be outmaneuvered by Dumouriez and his army of conscripts. He was seventy-two years old and is said to have added the obstinacy of age to other of the infirmities which naturally attend it. He was not communicative nor accessible to any of the other generals, excepting Mollendorf; and this generated a disunion of councils in the Prussian camp, and the personal dislike of the army to him by whom it was commanded.

The plan of the campaign, formed by this ill-fated Prince, seems to have been singularly injudicious, and the more so as it is censurable on exactly the same grounds as that of Austria in the late war. Prussia could not expect to have the advantage of numbers in the contest. It was therefore her obvious policy to procrastinate and lengthen out negotiation until she could have the advantage of the Russian forces. Instead of this, it was determined to rush forward toward Franconia and oppose the Prussian army alone to the whole force of France, commanded by their renowned Emperor.

The motive, too, was similar to that which had determined Austria to advance as far as the banks of the Iller. Saxony was in the present campaign, as Bavaria in the former, desirous of remaining neuter; and the hasty advance of the Prussian armies was designed to compel the Elector, Augustus, to embrace their cause. It succeeded accordingly; and the sovereign of Saxony united his forces, though reluctantly, with the left wing of the Prussians, under Prince Hohenlohe. The conduct of the Prussians toward the Saxons bore the same ominous resemblance to that of the Austrians to the Bavarians. Their troops behaved in the country of Saxony more as if they were in the land of a tributary than an ally and while the assistance of the good and peaceable Prince was sternly exacted, no efforts were made to conciliate his good-will or soothe the pride of his subjects. In their behavior to the Saxons in general, the Prussians showed too much of the haughty spirit that goes before a fall.

The united force of the Prussian army, with its auxiliaries, amounted to one hundred fifty thousand men, confident in their own courage, in the rigid discipline which continued to distinguish their service, and in the animating recollections of the victorious career of the Great Frederick. There were many generals and soldiers in their ranks who had served under him; but, among that troop of veterans, Blucher alone was destined to do distinguished honor to the school.

Notwithstanding these practical errors, the address of the Prussian King to his army was in better taste than the vaunting proclamation of Bonaparte, and concluded with a passage which, though its accomplishment was long delayed, nevertheless proved at last prophetic. “We go,” said Frederick William, “to encounter an enemy, who has vanquished numerous armies, humiliated monarchs, destroyed constitutions, and deprived more than one state of its independence and even of its very name. He has threatened a similar fate to Prussia and proposes to reduce us to the dominion of a strange people, who would suppress the very name of Germans. The fate of armies and of nations is in the hands of the Almighty; but constant victory and durable prosperity are never granted save to the cause of justice.”

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