Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4Menzel, Wolfgang
History
Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4
Menzel, Wolfgang
Germany -- History
The Prussian possessions on the left bank of the Elbe, Hanover,
Brunswick, and Hesse-Cassel,[11] were converted by Napoleon into the
new kingdom of Westphalia, which he bestowed upon his brother Jerome
and included in the Rhenish confederation. East Friesland was annexed
to Holland. Poland was not restored, but a petty grandduchy of Warsaw
was erected, which Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, received,
together with the royal dignity. Prussia, already greatly diminished
in extent, was to be still further encroached upon and watched by
these new states. The example of electoral Saxony was imitated by the
petty Saxon princes, and Anhalt, Lippe, Schwarzburg, Reuss,
Mecklenburg and Aldenburg joined the Rhenish confederation. Dantzig
became a nominal free town with a French garrison.[12]
The brave Hessians resisted this fresh act of despotism. The Hessian
troops revolted, but were put down by force, and their leader, a
sergeant, rushed frantically into the enemy's fire. The Hessian
peasantry also rose in several places. The Hanse towns, on the
contrary, meekly allowed themselves to be pillaged and to be robbed of
their stores of English goods.
Gustavus Adolphus IV. of Sweden, who had neglected to send troops at
an earlier period to the aid of Prussia, now offered the sturdiest
resistance and steadily refused to negotiate terms of peace or to
recognize Napoleon as emperor. His generals, Armfeldt[13] and Essen,
made some successful inroads from Stralsund, and, in unison with the
English, might have effected a strong diversion to Napoleon's rear,
had their movements been more rapid and combined. On the conclusion of
the peace of Tilsit, a French force under Mortier appeared, drove the
Swedes back upon Stralsund, and compelled the king, in the August of
1807, to abandon that city, which the new system of warfare rendered
no longer tenable.
[Footnote 1: On the 14th of October. On this unlucky day, Frederick
the Great had, in 1758, been surprised at Hochkirch, and Mack, in
1805, at Ulm. On this day, the peace of Westphalia was, A.D. 1648,
concluded at Osnabrück, and, in 1809, that of Vienna. It was, however,
on this day that the siege of Vienna was, in 1529, raised, and that,
in 1813, Napoleon was shut up at Leipzig.]
[Footnote 2: The whole of these disasters had been predicted by Henry
von Bülow, whose prophecies had brought him into a prison. On learning
the catastrophe of Jena, he exclaimed, "That is the consequence of
throwing generals into prison and of placing idiots at the head of the
army!"]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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