The language of the victor corresponded with his actions. His bulletins and proclamations abounded with the same bitter sarcasms against the King, the Queen, and those whom he called the war faction of Prussia. Ascribing the war to the unrepressed audacity of the young nobility, he said, in one of those proclamations, he would permit no more rioting in Berlin, no more breaking of windows; and, in addressing the Count Neale, he threatened, in plain terms, to reduce the nobles of Prussia to beg their bread.[249] These, and similar expressions of irritated spleen, used in the hour of conquest, level the character of the great victor with that of the vulgar Englishman in the farce, who cannot be satisfied with beating his enemy, but must scold him also. Napoleon's constant study of the poetry ascribed to Ossian, might have taught him that wrath should fly on eagles' wings from a conquered foe. The soldiers, and even the officers, caught the example of their Emperor, and conceived they met his wishes by behaving more imperiously in quarters, and producing more distress to their hosts, than had been their custom in the Austrian campaigns. Great aggressions, perhaps, were rarely perpetrated, and would have been punished, as contrary to military discipline; but a grinding, constant, and unremitting system of vexation and requisition, was bitterly felt by the Prussians at the time, and afterwards sternly revenged. [Sidenote: THE PRINCE OF HATZFELD.] It is but justice, however, to record an act of clemency of Napoleon amid these severities. He had intercepted a letter containing some private intelligence respecting the motions of the French, sent by Prince Hatzfeld, late the Prussian governor of Berlin, to Prince Hohenloe, then still at the head of an army. Napoleon appointed a military commission for the trial of Hatzfeld; and his doom, for continuing to serve his native prince after his capital had been occupied by the enemy, would have been not less certain than severe. His wife, however, threw herself at Napoleon's feet, who put into her hands the fatal document which contained evidence of what was called her husband's guilt, with permission to throw it into the fire.[250] The French Emperor is entitled to credit for the degree of mercy he showed on this occasion; but it must be granted at the same time, that to have proceeded to sentence and execution upon such a charge, would have been an act of great severity, if not of actual atrocity. If, as has been alleged, the correspondence of Prince Hatzfeld was dated before, not after the capitulation of Berlin, his death would have been an unqualified murder.[251] [Sidenote: HESSE-CASSEL.]