[52] No one who is not familiar with the correspondence of the Allied commanders in 1815 can form an adequate idea of the ferocity which then characterized the Prussian officers. On the 27th of June General von Gneisenau, writing for Bluecher, declared that Napoleon must be delivered over to the Prussians, "with a view to his execution." That, he argued, was what eternal justice demanded, and what the Declaration of March 13th decided,--alluding to the Declaration against Napoleon published by the Congress of Vienna, which, he said, and fairly enough too, put him under outlawry by the Allied powers. Doing the Duke of Wellington the justice to suppose he would be averse to hangman's work, Gneisenau, who stood next to Bluecher in the Prussian service as well as in Prussian estimation, expressed his leader's readiness to free him from all responsibility in the matter by taking possession of Napoleon's person himself, and detailing the intended assassins from his own army. Wellington was astonished at such language from gentlemen, and so exerted himself that Bluecher changed his mind; whereupon Gneisenau wrote that it had been Bluecher's "intention to execute [murder?] Bonaparte on the spot where the Duc d'Enghien was shot; that out of deference, however, to the Duke's wishes, he will abstain from this measure; but that the Duke must take on himself the responsibility of its non-enforcement." In another letter he wrote: "When the Duke of Wellington declares himself against the execution of Bonaparte, he thinks and acts in the matter as a Briton. Great Britain is under weightier obligations to no mortal man than to this very villain; for, by the occurrences whereof he is the author, her greatness, prosperity, and wealth have attained their present elevation. The English are the masters of the seas, and have no longer to fear any rivalry, either in this dominion or the commerce of the world. It is quite otherwise with us Prussians. We have been impoverished by him. Our nobility will never be able to right itself again." There is much of the _perfide Albion_ nonsense in this. In a letter which Gneisenau, in 1817, wrote to Sir Hudson Lowe, then Governor of St. Helena, he said: "Mille et mille fois j'ai porte mes souvenirs dans cette vaste solitude de l'ocean, et sur ce rocher interessant sur lequel vous etes le gardien du repos public de l'Europe. De votre vigilance et de votre force de caractere depend notre salut; des que vous vous relachez de vos mesures de rigueur contre _le plus ruse scelerat du monde_, des que vous permettriez a vos subalternes de lui accorder par une pitie mal entendue des faveurs, notre repos serait compromis, et les honnetes gens en Europe s'abandonneraient a leurs anciennes inquietudes." An amusing instance of his prejudice occurs in another part of the same letter, where he says: "Le fameux manuscrit de Ste. Helene a fait une sensation scandaleuse et dangereuse