Napoleon was not modest in his triumph. He pursued with sarcasms the nobility of Prussia and Queen Louise who had warmly counselled war. This fair sovereign, the mother of the late Emperor William, was then thirty years old; she was the daughter of a Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and of a Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt. She was a most thorough German, hated France, and especially the French Revolution. She was a fearless horsewoman, and had been seen facing great dangers at the battle of Jena. When she rode before her troops in her helmet of polished steel, shaded by a plume, in her glittering golden cuirass, her tunic of silver stuff, her red boots with gold spurs, she resembled Tasso's heroines. The soldiers burst into cries of enthusiasm, as they saw their warlike Queen; before her were bowed the flags she had embroidered with her own hands, and the old, torn, and battle-stained standards of Frederick the Great. After the battle she was obliged to take flight, at full gallop, to avoid being captured by the French hussars. In his bulletins the Emperor had made the serious blunder of speaking of Queen Louise in a manner wanting in proper respect for a woman, and especially for a woman in misfortune. Josephine, who was full of tact, was much pained by this lack of generosity, and reproached her husband for it. Napoleon sought to excuse himself, writing, November 6: "I have received your letter in which you seem pained by the evil I say of women. It is true that I hate, more than anything, intriguing women. I am used to kindly, gentle, conciliating women; those are the ones I love. If they have spoiled me, it is not my fault, but yours. Now I will show you that I have been very good for one who has shown herself sensible and kind, Madame Hatzfeld. When I showed her her husband's letter, bursting into tears, she said to me with, great emotion, and simplicity: 'It is certainly his hand-writing!' As she read it, her accent touched my heart and gave me real distress, I said to her: 'Well, Madame, throw that letter into the fire, I shall not be strong enough to punish your husband,' She burned the letter and seemed to be very happy, Her husband has ever since been very calm; two hours more, and he would have been a ruined man. You see then that I love kind, simple, gentle women; but it's because they are like you. Good by, my dear, I am well."