LXXXVI. CHAP. over to the allies. On the 13th Soult suddenly moved his whole force through Bayonne, and fell 1812. upon the British right under sir Rowland Hill. Lord Wellington expected this attack, and sent reinforcements to resist it; but general Hill's troops alone defeated the enemy with immense loss, and drove them into their intrenchments. The loss on both sides was considerable; but the allies were completely successful, and they established themselves firmly between the Nive and the Adour. After the discomfiture of Soult, there was no hope for Suchet in Catalonia; and thus by the genius, activity, and perseverance of lord Wellington, and the indefatigable exertions of the allied troops, who shrunk from no obstacle under such a leader, the liberation of the peninsula was accomplished. CHAP. LXXXVII. The Prussians under general York separate from the French. -Truce between the Austrians and Russians. The king of Prussia declares war against France. - Military preparations of Bonaparte. - Positions of the allies.- Movements of the French. - Battle of Lutzen-of Bautzen.Armistice.-Austria joins the alliance.- Blucher defeats Bonaparte on the Katzbach. - Battle before Dresden.Bernadotte's victory at Dennevitz.- Bavaria joins the alliance.- Battle of Leipsic. - Bonaparte retreats, and returns to Paris. - Liberation of Hanover. -Revolution in Holland, and restoration of the prince of Orange.Denmark joins the allies. — Declaration of the allied sovereigns. Basis of the treaty proposed by them. They cross the Rhine. - Bonaparte's reproof to the legislative body. Caulaincourt sent to Chatillon. Meeting of parliament, and measures for the prosecution of the war. LXXXVII. 1812. distrusts his THE coalition which Bonaparte had formed CHAP. against Russia, gave him much anxiety after his ruinous expedition to Moscow. He was apprehensive that Austria, Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Bonaparte and the smaller states of the Rhenish confederation, allies. would abandon a cause for which they had been compelled to make so many sacrifices, and would espouse that of his victorious adversary. He could not hope to overawe them, except by levying another powerful army in France, and marching it into Germany. However disunited among themselves, they were bound to him by no tie of mutual interest; they could not applaud his vile usurpation of Spain, or justify his iniquitous and ill-timed invasion of Russia; still less could they excuse that perverse obstinacy in error, with which, by procrastinating his retreat, he exposed his own сс 3 forces CHAP. forces and theirs to the triple scourge of war, LXXXVII. pestilence, and famine, amidst the horrors of a 1812. The Prus sians under general rate from northern winter. PRUSSIA was the first to shake off the yoke. When prince Kutusoff arrived on the frontier, he York sepa- issued a proclamation, explaining the moderate the French. views of his government, and promising support, on the part of his imperial master, to every people, who, being then obliged to oppose him, should abandon the cause of Napoleon, and pursue their real interests. It was to Prussia that this invitation was particularly addressed. At this time, 15,000 Prussians, commanded by general Von York, were united with the 10th corps of the French army, under Macdonald, in the blockade of Riga. Macdonald, retreating with great expedition, succeeded in extricating himself; but York concluded a convention with the Russians, by which, his troops were to remain neutral in eastern Prussia. This defection alarmed Bonaparte so much, that he issued a senatus consultum for calling out 350,000 men. There was a time when the mere promulgation of such a decree would have rallied his troops; but that time was past, and the scattered bands of his grand army continued their flight to the Vistula. Witgenstein, pursuing Macdonald, entered Königsberg on the 7th of January. On the 12th, admiral Tchichagoff, and count Platoff, took possession of Marienwerder, Marienberg, and Elbing; and on the following days, having crossed the Vistula, and its tributary stream, the Nogat, they pursued the French in different directions, on the roads to Dantzic and Graudenz. On the side of Warsaw, the Austrians and Saxons were driven back by the Russians under Sacken and Vasilchikoff. The emperor of Russia crossed the Niemen on the 18th, amidst the acclamations of his troops, and pursued his march in a westerly direction, while the columns under Miloradovich and Dochtoroff, 1813. T moved in a parallel line on the left. The Prussians every where hailed them as deliverers. The capital was in the hands of a French garrison; but the populace rose against these troops, and obliged them to remain in their barracks. At Königsberg, where a regency had been established, general York was declared commander-in-chief of the patriotic army, and numbers daily flocked to his standard. The king suddenly withdrew from Potsdam, and went to Breslau, where, on the 3d of February, he issued proclamations, calling on his subjects to arm in support of their king and country. Volunteers from all parts of the kingdom presented themselves for enrolment in such multitudes, that the new commander of the French forces prohibited the recruiting enjoined by the royal decree. This new commander was Eugene Beauharnois, who, on the retirement of Murat, through indisposition or disgust, was nominated to succeed him, as "possessing the entire confidence of the emperor.' CHA P. LXXXVII. 1813. Austrians offers to THE Austrians, in the month of February, con- Truce becluded an unlimited truce with the Russians, in tween the virtue of which they withdrew into Gallicia. The and Rus Saxons under Regnier, availing themselves of this sians. opportunity, retired towards their own country, pursued by Winzingerode, who made 2000 prisoners, and took seven pieces of cannon. On the 15th, The king the king of Prussia offered himself as mediator of Prussia between the belligerents; he proposed that the mediate beRussians should retire behind the Vistula, and the tween the French behind the Elbe, leaving Prussia and its ents. fortresses free from foreign usurpation. On the rejection of these terms by Bonaparte, he concluded Joins a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive, with Russia. the emperor of Russia. The king of Saxony, unhappily for himself, took a different course, and at a time when the approach of the allied armies obliged him to quit Dresden, issued a proclamation, belliger 1813. CHAP. in which he told his subjects, that the political LXXXVII. system to which he had for the last six years attached himself, was that to which the state had been indebted for its preservation amidst the most imminent dangers. General Blucher, who commanded the Prussian army of Silesia, published an address to the Saxons, stating that he entered their territory to offer them his powerful assistance, and calling on them to raise the standard of insurrection against their oppressors. He made the following energetic allusion to the events of the late campaign; "In the north of Europe, the Lord of Hosts has held a dreadful court of justice, and the angel of death has cut off 300,000 of those strangers, by the sword, famine, and cold, from that earth which they, in the insolence of their prosperity, would have brought under their yoke." Prussia now became one great camp; the militia and the levy en masse were called out, volunteers enrolled themselves on all sides, and the national enthusiasm rose to a height which it had never attained in the most prosperous days of the monarchy. Berlin was evacuated by the French on the third of March, and the Russian general, Czernicheff, entered it on the following day, amidst a great concourse of people. The small force under Morand, which occupied Swedish Pomerania, followed the main French army; but it was intercepted and beaten, its leader killed, and his remaining troops made prisoners. Hamburg was entered on the 18th by the Russian general Tettenborn; a Swedish force advanced to Stralsund, and in the following month, the strong fortress of Thorn surrendered to the Russians. On the 20th, the king of Prussia published an edict, abolishing the continental system, and regulating the importation of merchandize into his dominions, from which all French goods were prohibited. MEANWHILE Bonaparte was actively employed. |