On the morning of October 14 the Queen left Weimar with the Countess Tauentzien. A company of cuirassiers formed their escort for several miles; thick mist enveloped the landscape and the travellers’ hearts were heavy with forebodings. As Louise listened to the distant thunder of cannon she trembled for the husband of her heart and the father of her children. She knew that he would shun no danger in this battle and it deeply affected her that she could not share it with him. The double battle at Jena and Auerstädt raged all day long. On the road the Queen received only uncertain news, sometimes good and sometimes bad. “I have suffered unutterably,” she declared, “between mountains of hope and abysses of despair, and have learned the meaning of ‘we know not what we should pray for as we ought; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.’” Not until the fourth day did a messenger sent by Colonel von Kleist, adjutant of the King, overtake her in the neighborhood of Brandenburg. The rider approached the carriage door and handed the Queen a letter. She opened it quickly, glanced at it, and appeared crushed. The letter contained only the words: “The King is alive; the battle is lost.” Tears streamed from her eyes at this terrible news. The handkerchief, wet with her tears in this hour of distress, which she gave as a remembrance to the Prince of Anhalt, her protector, at his request, is still preserved among the treasures of the royal family, and is certainly not one of the least valuable. “The King is alive”—but where and how? Truly the King considered himself fortunate to have barely escaped being taken prisoner. Napoleon wrote triumphantly to his consort, the Empress Josephine, that he had very nearly taken the King. Although Louise did not know this, she knew that the battle was lost. Dark pictures of the present and future haunted her. She knew what it meant to be vanquished by Napoleon; knew with what boundless arrogance the heartless conqueror treated princes and people, and what terms of peace he was likely to dictate. The carriage passed rapidly through Potsdam on its way to Berlin, where the Queen arrived late on the evening of October 17. Her children were not there. That morning, Lieutenant von Dorville, adjutant of Field-marshal von Möllendorf, whom the King had despatched to Berlin with the bad news from the battlefield, had arrived, and the Governor, Count Von der Schulenburg, had at once ordered the removal of the royal children to Schwedt-on-the-Oder. Scarcely had the Queen entered her home, when, hearing of the arrival of the Lieutenant, she had him summoned to her presence. “Where is the King?” she asked. “I do not know, Your Majesty,” answered Dorville. “But is the King not with the army?” she asked again. “With the army!” answered Dorville. “The army no longer exists!”