Very soon after the battle of Austerlitz the Prussian minister, Haugwitz, waited upon Napoleon and renewed negotiations with him. Napoleon offered Prussia the choice between immediate war, or alliance and the possession of Hanover. A treaty was drawn up accepting the latter alternative; Haugwitz agreed to it, and carried it back to his master for ratification. When the terms of the treaty became known in Berlin, the anger of the patriotic party was unbounded. They felt they were bound by ties of blood and kindred to espouse the cause of their German brethren. They looked upon the proffered bribe of Hanover as hush-money, which was to close their lips from protesting against the oppression of Germany by Napoleon. When Haugwitz returned to Berlin he was treated with marked coldness by the Queen. On receiving the disastrous news of the defeat of Austerlitz, she had called to her side her two elder boys, the younger of whom became the late aged Emperor of Germany, and adjured them to think, from that time forth, only of avenging their unhappy brethren. The King’s brothers sympathised with the Queen’s views, as did also the patriotic statesmen Stein and Hardenburg, and a brave young prince, Louis Ferdinand, the King’s cousin. Miss Hudson, who has written a life of Queen Louisa, says in reference to her position at this crisis, “The Queen did not desire or endeavour to take a leading part, but she did not dissemble her feelings and aspirations, and her name was put foremost by popular report, on account of her superior rank. The Queen did not play any conspicuous part, but she was a constant incentive to the best of the nation to work for their country’s deliverance. It was what she was, not what she did, that made her name a watchword for the enemies of Napoleon.” Haugwitz had never dreamed that his master would refuse to ratify the treaty; but the outburst of popular anger against it had been so marked, and the advantages it offered to Prussia were in fact so small, that the King declined to sign, and demanded modifications. His vacillation had placed him in a cleft stick. If he refused Napoleon’s terms, he would have to fight with the victorious French army; if he accepted them, and Hanover with them, he would have to fight with England; for it was not probable that the latter country would calmly allow Hanover to be appropriated by another Power without a struggle. While this was the situation of affairs, the King of Prussia, having sent back the treaty to Napoleon to ask for modifications, one of which was to obtain the consent of England to the cession of Hanover, the news came to all the world that Pitt, the most powerful and the most pertinacious of Napoleon’s enemies, was dead. England had lost Nelson and Pitt within a few months. It seemed as if they had been removed to make the pathway of ambition smooth for Napoleon.