On the contrary, by forcing him to go to war, should he gain the first victory, Belgium will be re-united to France, all the resources of that country brought into the scale against the Allies; Napoleon will be more popular than ever, the Republican party will be put to silence, the enthusiasm of the army will rise beyond all restraint, and, in a word, Napoleon will be himself again. The other Allies can do little without the assistance of England, and our finances are by no means in a state to bear such intolerable drains. As to the Prussians, on minute enquiry I do not find that they were so ill-treated by the French as is generally believed, and that, except the burden of having troops quartered on them (no small annoyance, I allow), they had not much reason to complain. The quartering of the troops on them and the payment of the war contributions was the necessary consequence of the occupation of their country by an enemy; but I have just been reading a German work, written by a native of Berlin, shortly after the entry of the French troops in that city after the battle of Jena in 1806. This work is entitled _Vertraute Briefe aus Berlin_, and in it the author distinctly declares that the discipline observed by the French troops during the occupation of Berlin was highly strict and praiseworthy, and that the few excesses that took place were committed by the troops of the Rhenish Confederation; and he adds that the inhabitants preferred having a French soldier quartered on them to a Westphalian, Bavarian or Würtembergher. Further, the troops that behaved with the greatest oppression and insolence towards the burghers were those belonging to a corps composed of native Prussians, raised for the service of Napoleon by the Prince of Isenburg.[12] In his recruiting address the prince invites the Prussian youth to enter into the service of the invincible Napoleon, and tells him that to the soldier of Napoleon everything is permitted. The regiment was soon fitted up and the soldiers began to put in practice in good earnest the theory of the _affiche_. They committed excesses of all sorts; and one officer in particular behaved so brutally and infamously to a poor tailor on whom he was quartered, and to whom, before he entered the French service, he was under the greatest obligations, that General Hulin, the commandant of the place at Berlin during the French occupation, was obliged to cashier him publicly on the parade and to cause his epaulettes to be torn from his coat in order to mark the disgust and indignation that he and all the French officers felt at the base ingratitude of this man.