REMARKS ON M. GENTZ'S NARRATIVE OF WHAT PASSED AT THE PRUSSIAN HEAD-QUARTERS IN OCTOBER, 1806,

PREVIOUSLY TO THE BATTLE OF JENA.

It will be observed by the reader of the despatches which form the ground-work of the preceding historical memoir, that a fuller exposition of the condition of Prussia, and particularly of the system of its government under the administration of Count Haugwitz, is necessary for a full knowledge of the state of Europe at the time they were written; and of the reason why no general confederacy could then be formed against Napoleon. He may collect, indeed, the nature of the obstacles to such a confederacy by the measures suggested for their removal; but it will require a more extended detail of facts, with many of which the writer was then unacquainted, to establish in his mind the conviction of its utter impossibility. Evidence decisive of this fact has been produced recently to the world in a posthumous publication of memoirs by the well-known Chevalier Gentz. It was printed at Stutgard, in 1841.

This gentleman had been invited to the Prussian head-quarters to write proclamations and manifestoes. He arrived at Erfurt on the 3d of October, a few days before the great battle, and during his stay there drew up a narrative in the form of a journal, of his daily conversations with Messrs. Haugwitz, Lucchesini, and Lombard - the three great directors of the Prussian councils.

His narrative, therefore, becomes an important historical document. M. Gentz was a man steadily attached to the old governments, an acute observer of public transactions, and a writer, as we all know,

of

very considerable eloquence and ability. His journal was drawn up with a regard to truth which seems evident, under the clearest conviction of his judgment, and in the full bitterness also of his despair for the public cause. To that cause he certainly was devoted; and although I shall have to remark not very favourably on some passages in another paper contained in this posthumous collection, consisting of comments and criticisms on the negociations for peace in 1806, between England and France, of which he could know nothing, I will not refuse my testimony to his patriotism and his zeal, of which he gave me many proofs in his letters while I was at Vienna.

The document is further valuable as exhibiting, by actual experiment of its working, the faults of the system adopted by the Prussian government in the early days of the French Revolution; that is to say, by persisting in their French connection after the nature and the reason of their original alliance with that Power, and consequently of all that was German in its objects, had become fundamentally altered: I speak of the time when on the failure of the Duke of Brunswick's expedition in 1792, Prussia separated herself from Austria, and concluded shortly afterwards the peace of Basle. From the web of that treaty she never could extricate herself. In fact, the breaking up of the German union began with that act, and prepared the way consequently for the dissolution of the empire. It brought Prussia into a vicious system of relation towards the smaller states, whose union, grounded originally on resistance to the too great pretensions and preponderance of Austria, was nevertheless German in purpose, and German in its means. At the head of this national league, Prussia had long taken her place, and she had no right to desert it, or to change its character into that of an armed protectorship, grounded on a neutrality too necessary to France

to be fair towards Austria and its other members. By so doing Prussia became substantially the ally of France from 1795 forwards.

The practical evils of this state of things, and the point which they had reached, are brought out into full day in the conferences here recorded by M. Gentz. They disclose a series of the most disreputable transactions: but upon these it will be needless to enter further than as they affect the question of re-uniting in 1806 the Powers of Europe against France. To this point they are conclusive; and on many other matters of deep interest they open a mine of gold to the historian.

What we are first led to remark on reading these papers is the singular temerity of Prussia in making war, which, as to the time of beginning it, was purely a voluntary act on her part, not only without the knowledge of Austria, but when by no moral possibility she could obtain the co-operation of that Power; and when in the false calculations of her diplomacy, and, as it would seem, in the hope of making her arrangements without him, she had kept back part of her secret from her best friend, the Emperor of Russia. But the great folly of all was the entering upon a war against England and France at the same time:-against the King of England, to retain possession of his hereditary dominions, of which at the instigation of Napoleon she had deprived him; and against Napoleon, who, for his own convenience, now wanted to get them back for their right owner. By what mischievous ingenuity she contrived to get herself into this predicament, puzzled at the time all the old politicians of Europe. It is brought to light in the present publication, which exhibits a picture full of instruction of the consequences of that scheming policy to which Prussia had in a manner delivered