Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4Menzel, Wolfgang
History
Germany from the Earliest Period, Volume 4
Menzel, Wolfgang
Germany -- History
[Footnote 19: The following anecdote is related of the Hessians
commanded by Prince Emilius of Darmstadt. The prince had fallen asleep
in the snow, and four Hessian dragoons, in order to screen him from
the north wind, held their cloaks as a wall around him and were found
next morning in the same position--frozen to death. Dead bodies were
seen frozen into the most extraordinary positions, gnawing their own
hands, gnawing the torn corpses of their comrades. The dead were often
covered with snow, and the number of little heaps lying around alone
told that of the victims of a single night.]
[Footnote 20: Napoleon said, "There are two hundred millions lying in
the cellars of the Tuileries; how willingly would I give them to save
Ney!"]
[Footnote 21: He passed with extreme rapidity, incognito, through
Germany. In Dresden he had a short interview with the king of Saxony,
who, had he shut him up in Königstein, would have saved Europe a good
deal of trouble.--Napoleon no sooner reached Paris in safety than, in
his twenty-ninth bulletin, he, for the first time, acquainted the
astonished world, hitherto deceived by his false accounts of victory,
with the disastrous termination of the campaign. This bulletin was
also replete with falsehood and insolence. In his contempt of humanity
he even said, "Merely the cowards in the army were depressed in spirit
and dreamed of misfortune, the brave were ever cheerful." Thus wrote
the man who had both seen and caused all this immeasurable misery! The
bulletin concluded with, "His Imperial Majesty never enjoyed better
health."]
[Footnote 22: In the French despatches, General Hünerbein was accused
of not having pursued the Russians under General Lewis.]
[Footnote 23: The secret history of those days is still not
sufficiently brought to light. Bagnon speaks of fresh treaties between
Hardenberg and Napoleon, in which he is corroborated by Fain. These
two Frenchmen, the former of whom was a diplomatist, the other one of
Napoleon's private secretaries, admit that Prussia's object at that
time was to take advantage of Napoleon's embarrassment and to offer
him aid on certain important considerations. Prussian historians are
silent in this matter. In Von Rauschnik's biographical account of
Blücher, the great internal schism at that time caused in Prussia by
the Hardenberg party and that of the _Tugendbund_ is merely slightly
hinted at; the former still managed diplomatic affairs, while York, a
member of the latter, had already acted on his own responsibility.
Shortly afterward affairs took a different aspect, as if Hardenberg's
diplomacy had merely been a mask, and he placed himself at the head of
the movement against France. In a memorial of 1811, given by Hormayr
in the Sketches from the War of Liberation, Hardenberg declared
decisively in favor of the alliance with Russia against France.]
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