Of all Napoleon’s battles, Austerlitz was the one of which he was the proudest. It was here that he showed best the “divine side of war.” The familiar note in which Napoleon announced to his brother Joseph the result of the battle, is a curious contrast to the oratorical bulletins which for some days flowed to Paris. His letter is dated Austerlitz, December 3, 1805: “After manœuvring for a few days I fought a decisive battle yesterday. I defeated the combined armies commanded by the Emperors of Russia and Germany. Their force consisted of eighty thousand Russians and thirty thousand Austrians. I have made forty thousand prisoners, taken forty flags, one hundred guns, and all the standards of the Russian Imperial Guard.... Although I have bivouacked in the open air for a week, my health is good. This evening I am in bed in the beautiful castle of Monsieur de Kaunitz, and have changed my shirt for the first time in eight days.” The battle of Austerlitz obliged Austria to make peace (the treaty was signed at Presburg on December 26, 1805), compelled Russia to retire disabled from the field, transformed the haughty Prussian _ultimatim_ which had just been presented into humble submission, and changed the rejoicings of England over the magnificent naval victory of Trafalgar (October 21st) into despair. It even killed Pitt. Napoleon it enabled to make enormous strides in establishing a kingdom of the West. Naples was given to Joseph, the Bavarian Republic was made a kingdom for Louis, and the states between the Lahn, the Rhine, and the Upper Danube were formed into a league, called the Confederation of the Rhine, and Napoleon was made Protector. [Illustration: 1806. BATTLE OF JENA. After the picture by Meissonier in the collection of Monsieur Edmond Simon.] At the beginning of 1806 Napoleon was again in Paris. He had been absent but three months. Eight months of this year were spent in fruitless negotiations with England and in an irritating correspondence with Prussia. The latter country had many grievances against Napoleon, the sum of them all being that “French politics had been the scourge of humanity for the last fifteen years,” and that an “insatiable ambition was still the ruling passion of France.” By the end of September war was declared, and Napoleon, whose preparations had been conducted secretly, it being given out that he was going to Compiègne to hunt, suddenly joined his army.