giving the Emperor of the French until October 8 to save himself by submission. The Prussian army, one hundred and thirty thousand strong, concentrated near Jena; the French seemed at their mercy, the chief dispute among the Prussian commanders being whether they should wait till after the date fixed by the ultimatum to pass the Thuringian Forest and attack the enemy. When the ultimatum reached Paris, Napoleon was gone, was on the Rhine, was ready to launch two hundred thousand men upon the now amazed and bewildered Prussians. The great Emperor had not for a moment been deceived. All the time that he had been listening with placid face to the lies of the Prussian diplomat, he had been massing troops where they were needed. When the courier caught up with him and delivered the ultimatum, he laughed at it. With masterly speed he threw himself upon the Prussian flank and rear. Prussia had repeated the mistake of Austria; her losses were even more ruinous. Prince Louis, attacking Lannes at Saalfeld (October 10), was routed and killed. When Napoleon reached Jena with his main army of ninety thousand men, he supposed that the bulk of the Prussians were before him. Cautious as ever, he sought the advantage of position, and secured it. A Saxon parson showed him a secret path to the heights commanding the Prussian position, and during the night this path was made practicable for artillery. When day dawned (October 14, 1806), the unequal battle commenced, the French outnumbering the enemy two to one. Hohenlohe, the Prussian commander, was almost annihilated, the remnants of his army fleeing in wild disorder. At the same time Davoust with twenty-seven thousand French fought the main Prussian force, about double his own, at Auerstädt. Badly commanded by the Duke of Brunswick and the King of Prussia, the Germans fought with desperate valor, but were utterly beaten. Broken and driven, they fled from the field, making for Weimar, and ran into the masses of fugitives who were flying from the field of Jena. Murat’s dreaded cavalry were in hot pursuit, and a scene of the wildest confusion followed. To the beaten army all hope was lost. There was no fixed line of retreat, no rallying-point, no master-mind in control. In hopeless fragments the fugitive host fell apart, and the relentless pursuit was never slackened until the last one of these bands had been captured. With incredible ease and rapidity the Prussian monarchy had been brought to the dust. CHAPTER XXVIII