The Year of Liberation: a journal of the defence of Hamburgh against the French army under Marshal Davoust, in 1813, etc

Preface

. These volumes contain a brief narrative, an episode, of the final year of the most eventful, brilliant, and influential period of modern Europe, — the great patriotic war of Germany. The changes which have since passed over the European system, have all been the product of this extraordinary period. It is even difficult to look upon it but as the source of still greater changes to come. The work ing of the mine for good or evil is evidently far from being exhausted. The depth of oppression to which the greatest nations may be sunk, the buoyancy and invincible a

PREFACE.

. vigour that may lie hid in national resources, the facility with which the heaviest yoke of mere military domination may be thrown off, and the confusion, discontent, and spirit of misrule which may be summoned up in the midst of national victory, are lessons which have received an ampler develop ment in this war, than in any equal period of the history of nations. From this war eminently rose the fearful supremacy of Russia, which now threatens all independence ; and the not less fearful sense of popular power, which threatens all government ; the embodying of tbe principles of despotism and democracy, at this hour arming for a conflict, which, whenever it arrives, may cover the world with dust and ashes. The rising of the people of Hamburgh against the French, was one of the most in teresting incidents of the war. The present

PREFACE.

. V writer has described it as he saw it , with the opportunities of one on the spot, and the fresh impressions of the moment ; impres sions heightened rather than diminished by the twenty, years which have been since in terposed. He has found no record of the transaction from the native pen ; and he has long felt an allowable anxiety that some me morial should exist of a public effort, which exhibited all the essential features of public virtue. The general aspect of German affairs at the time, will be found occasionally observed. The memorable men who gave a character to the war have now past away from the scene ; Napoleon, and the conquerors of Napoleon, the multitude of warriors and statesmen whom the continent poured out from its bosom in this vivid and eager time, are gone, — ' ' these our actors are but spirits ; " the pageant which dazzled the eyes of all

PREFACE.

. VI our generation, the most magnificent piece of witchcraft that the world ever saw, the French Empire, is now vanished into thin air ; in treading back upon those events, we tread every where upon the grave ! But no date can be too remote for the attempt to do honour to the lustre of genius even in an enemy ; and to the still higher claims of wise patriotism, manly labour of liberty, and the noblest qualities of human nature, exerted in its noblest cause. CONTENTS. VOL. I. Chap. page I. The Packet 1 II. Heligoland 20 III. The Elbe 35 IV. Hamburgh 50 V. General Morand 64 VI. The Hanseatic Legion 77 VII. Diplomacy 88 VIII. The Collier 101 IX. The Hamburgher Berg 113 X. The Battle of Jena 125 XI. The Battle of Lutzen 1 46 The Night of Klagenfurth CONTENTS. Chap. page XII. Prussia 156 XIII.

The Litterateur 176 XIV. The Battle of the Islands 193 XV. Hamburgh 210 XVI. The Battle 227 XVII. The Environs 249 XVIII. The Spanish Skirmish 264 XIX. The Berlin Decree 281 XX. The Insurrection

Chapter I. The Packet

The general exclusion of the EngUsh from France, and aU belonging to France, during the long inter val from 1793 to 1813, had, Uke aU other prohi bitions, only sharpened pubUc curiosity ; and every one who had an idle week, or an idle guinea, was eager to expend them both on the continent. With some, of course, the feeling was the mere love of novelty ; but, with others, the objects were of a higher nature ; and a rational interest might be fairly conceived, in seeing face to face, the men who had made themselves eminent in the memor able times of Europe, or in ascertaining on the spot the changes which the greatest of aU wars had made, and which promised to be the parents VOL. I. n of changes that would outlast many a generation to come. They were to traverse a continent, to them not much diiFering from a new world, with all the elements of creation or confusion still struggUng in every quarter ; monarchy rising out of the embers of revolution.

The peace of Amiens had done nothing to satisfy this universal appetite. It was so brief, that it could scarcely be caUed an interruption of the war. Not one in a thousand of those who were on the alert to penetrate aU the secrets of the continent, could avaU himself of it. It had even rather whetted pubUc curiosity ; for the few who crossed the Channel could seldom go further than Paris, where every thing was calculated, and calculated on design, to give an exaggerated conception of the power and briUiancy of France, and the French empire. Napoleon's charlatanism, and from the beginning to the end of his career, what was he but the most dazzUng of charlatans? was employed to strike the senses of mankind. The stories which reached England, of the pomp of his court, the gUtter of Paris, and the imperial exhibitions in Paris, resembled nothing but the .Arabian Nights.

To astonish the English, was an object of his espe cial policy at the time ; and his levees and reviews, his balls and dinners, his pubUc improvements, which undoubtedly formed a remarkable contrast with the old deformities of the streets of the capital ; and his picture and statue gaUeries, which com bined aU the finest specimens of modern and ancient genius, made Paris, beyond question, of aU cities of Europe, the best worth the eye of traveUer, soldier, artist, or phdosopher. Napoleon himself, it would have been worth travelUng round the world to see, merely as a living figure of war; but by the extraordinary rigour of his political course, and his surprising per sonal influence on European affairs, he had thrown a sort of prestige, a something little short of preternatural impression, over aU belonging to him ; his power had risen with the rapidity of magic, was sustained with the true mixture of splendour, subtlety and mystery, which estabUshed romance ascribes to the magician ; and, however the feeUng may be inexpUcable to after times, and his en chantments may have since dissolved into thin air, nothing is more certain, than that, for his period, he b2 singularly overwhelmed the understandings of mankind.

To see the great necromancer, was an achievement ; and it was, from the circumstances of the peace, accomplished by so few, that they formed a privileged class, in whose presence their less fortu nate brethren shone with diminished beams. At last, however, the day for aU was at hand. Napoleon played the desperate game of imperial vanity. The Scythian repaid the cropped laurels of the Austrian and the Prussian. The Cossacks hunted down the showy squadrons that had set off to hunt down every crowned head, from the Rhine to the Sea of Japan. The legions were left in the snow of Moscow. Napoleon was driven home, to make a second trial, at the expense of more French blood; the Russians and Germans were coming, full speed after him ; Europe was struggling for deliverance in every quarter ; and at length, Germany, to the great joy of aU tourists, was declared to be open.

Merchants, soldiers, scholars, men of science, artists, the mere loungers of Bath and Cheltenham, the infinite multitude who had any thing or nothing to do, crowded to the coast, gaUantly dared the dangers of a summer navigation in a government packet, and migrated for the Elbe. In whatever file the present writer is to be placed, he foUowed the general impulse, and early in 1813 embarked for Germany. The transit has since lost all the honours of adventure, and the cabin of a packet is at all times the least romantic of romantic things. But let due credit be given to heroism. The passage from England to the north was not then quite the unchivafrous affair that it has since become, by the help of steam and a general peace. Independently of the common sea-chances of being starved, or sent off by the shifting gales of the season to Spitzbergen, natural casualties, of which the steam-engine will soon wipe away the me mory for aU future ages; we might be picked up by a French lugger, and robbed, shot, or sent to prison, where the imprisonment lasted for bfe ; and the dan ger was by no means LmaginaTry.

French privateering had been considerably restrained by our fleet on the Dutch station, yet the snake was but half killed, and no coast on earth could give finer opportunities for privateering than the coast from Dunkirk to bS Cuxhaven, covered as it was with shoals, and run rung up into Uttle creeks and rivers. The temptation was probably too much for even our Dutch friends ; many a merchantman, " calmly slum bering on the ocean," in full security of British mastership of the waves, had been spirited away from under the bows of our showy frigates; and whether the exploit was to be performed by French man or Dutchman, the difference to the plundered was not much a matter of importance. .Another and stiU stronger recoUection was, that the French were yet in force, and that their aban doning the line of the Elbe to-day was no security against their retaking possession of it to-morrow.

Some intelligence to the purport had been actuaUy received, and it was well known that their troops, who, if they take a panic as soon as any other troops under heaven, yet often recover from it with extraordinary rapidity, and even grow more daring as they have been more frightened, were gathering in considerable numbers along the coast. Fiery proclamations, too, were flung out from Paris in quick succession, and Napoleon, the pasha of pashas, recovering his spirits and his style together, was orientaUy threatening the insurgent cities with the vengeance of heaven, and his recreant generals with the loss of their heads. It was again beginning to be treason to doubt of the eternity of the French empire ; and from the awe with which the continental powers looked on their habitual conqueror, there was sufficient probability that the first turn of fortune in his favour would close the ports of our " most faith ful aUies-' against us, or catch our hasty travellers, as of old, in a French snare.

Our ship was lucidly a different spot from that usual receptacle of misery. The sea happened to be remarkably serene, and we were thus not only spared the scenes of the dead and dying, that make aU the recoUections of packets intolerable ; but the passengers were enabled to know more of each other ; and the curious complexion of the times had made ours a very varied and character istic group. Every man on board seemed to have some direct and stirring object in his excursion. Some were foreigners, who had broken away from trade in London or Liverpool, to take up arms and join the patriots in " Uberated Germany." Some were b EngUsh military, or persons connected with diplomacy, and reappointed to the courts from which they had been driven by the French armies; we had among us merchants, couriers, Jews, dealers in contraband, eager to have the first-fruits of the opening mart ; and, of course, ladies, who are, as they ought to be, every where.

The passage was tardy, and the waves through which the steam-boat now dashes in thirty-six hours, kept us daUying and dancing on them for a week ; a time long enough to have cemented and broken again the most soUd travelUng friendships. But which, in return, gave us sufficient opportunity to study human nature, as it is at sea. The Germans were soon exhausted, and after the first harangues on " freedom, hatred of Napoleon," &c. &c.,grew common place, and sank into smokers. One of our feUow voyagers was a complete character, a young EngUshman, handsome and weU mannered, but wUd as a roebuck. He had served for a year as cornet in a yeomanry corps, and, notwithstanding the severity of the service, " the marches and countermarches," as Major Sturgeon has it, "from EaUng to Acton, and from Acton to Ealing," the fatigue of the tavern feasts, and the ha rassing Sunday exhibitions of his epaulette, found himself so enamoured of war, that he had "determined to make the army his profession," and as the preliminary to a British ensigncy, was come to see campaigning on the scale of emperors and field-marshals.

He was a fine lad, fuU of the reckless animation that makes the Scipios and Alexanders ; a quaUty which, Uke the Uon's or the tiger's taste for man, has, we may presume, its use in the scale of human things, however difficult it may be to discover that use, or inconvenient to come in its way. Here was a creature, with aU the appur tenances, habits, and appetites, of one made to kiU and be killed ; gay, bold, active, and with no fear under the stars, but the fear of a general peace. He was now hurrying, loaded with letters, to the head quarters of the Prussian army, in the sole hope of reaching them before the next battle, of which he seemed to have no other idea than as an operation which, in one way or other, might put a too rapid close to the campaign. Yet aU this was said and done in the simplest style imaginable.

There was not a feature of the Thraso about him. Never was a b5 being more palpably made to be shot, with less idea of his Uving for it in the mouths of men. Another of our passengers, and a very inteUigent and singular one, was the reappointed charge d'affaires to one of the Uttle German courts, a rough-visaged and fierce-eyed old man, with a strong Northumbrian accent, but with the original ferocity of his manners curiously flourished and tesselated with diplomatic suavity. He conversed freely, and with every one, and nothing could be more amusing than the perpetual struggle of the native acid with the official oil. Of England, and its councils and cabinet, for the time being, his opinions were screwed up to the highest point of official homage. Of the court to which he was accredited, no cross-examination of our's could extract from him a careless word.

But, of the continent en masse, kings, courtiers, ministers, and people, his opinions were steeped in the very spirit of scorn. Of Vienna in particular, where he had spent some years, and probably had his me mory sharpened by some of the sUghts that beset the beginnings of office, his descriptions were of the most unequivocal nature. " Its pubUc men were all either rogues, who sold the state for French money; or fools, who did tbe business of France without the trouble of bribing. Its generals were, at best, but driU-serjeants ; but the more frequent case was, that they were not even drill-serjeants, and then, they were but the fitter for the troops which they had to command." Some of the party on deck protested against this sweeping sentence, and mentioned the great name of the Archduke Charles.

But the gallant archduke went the way of the rest, and was pronounced to be the " one-eyed among the blind." Unfortunately the Austrian arms were not at that moment in high odour with Europe. They have since nobly redeemed themselves; but, for the time, we were driven to make our stand on the proverbial hospitaUty and good manners of the higher circles. " Nothing can be better in a fete than both sexes," said the diplomatist, "they dance almost as well as the French, and dress better; they have brave men among them, and beautiful women, and if you neither play with the one, nor pay attentions to the other, you may pass the ordeal tolerably safe. But if you have either time on your hands, or money in b6 your pockets, your wisest plan would be to apply for your passports within the first twenty-four hours."

His wife was on board, a strong-featured per sonage, of whom the diplomatist seemed to stand in considerable awe, for those explosions of opinion were always delivered at a due distance from her ears. In her immediate neighbourhood he was silent and submissive. He acknowledged to us, that he carried her "with him on aU occasions ; though whether as a protection to his portfoUo or his purse, he left us to conjecture ; his sagacity had probably discovered her use in his professional pursuits. It is remark able how close a connexion exists on the continent between diplomacy and matrimony. " As dry as the despatch of a bachelor ambassador," is a proverb. On the continent, gossip is intelligence, as in the multitude of instances, continental intelUgence is gossip. A dry despatch is the unpardonable crime.

" Anecdote," as the Frenchman says, " is the de- Ught of aU mankind, and women are the proper officers for its coUection." Another of our passengers, and as peculiar as any of them, was a Uttle German countess, of whose French figure and fantastic step, we caught but the single glimpse that could be caught in her transit from the side of the packet to the cabin, into which she darted at once. Of her we saw nothing more during the voyage : for, though the sea was as smooth as a mirror, she remained continually below. It must be, however reluctantly, acknowledged, that the little countess's chief reason for keeping her cabin, seemed to be the opportunity which it gave of exert ing matrimonial authority over her husband. The husband was a handsome, good-humoured Irish man, a captain in the Prussian service.

They had been married a twelvemonth, and were now re turning from a visit to the captain's friends. But formidable as the period may be to passion in general, the Uttle countess's love was still so merciless, that she insisted on her husband's never being out of her sight for five minutes together. From dewy morn to dusky eve, she woidd take nothing but from his hands. The weather was beautiful, and the company on deck were Uvely and con versible; while the cabin was, what aU cabins are, half-dungeon, half-hospital; yet there lay the countess, and between eating, crying, and complaining, she contrived to fiU up the twenty-four hours very tolerably. The husband was certainly a model of married submission. He now and then, when summoned away by a scream from below, to leave the fresh air and talking circle round him, for a plunge into the cabin, gave symptoms of the chain; but in general he dragged it along with all the good hu mour that could remain unground out of any man, by a twelvemonth of this ultra Algerine servitude.

The men alternately laughed at and pitied him ; but the ladies universaUy exclaimed against the barbarity of the Uttle tyrant; for the Irishman had made great way by his showy figure and good man ners ; if not stiU more by his misfortunes, for compassion does much, and he certainly had occasion for aU his philosophy. We had soon drained the commercial men dry; Germans returning to begin their speculations anew, and English hurrying to take advantage of the opening of trade. But, beyond aU comparison, the most characteristic of our crew was an Austrian courier, with a Vienna despatch box buckled to his back. It was not to be expected that the courier would be very prominent in the conversation; but his faculty of holding his tongue was scarcely less than miraculous ; during the six days . of our voyage, he did not utter as many words.

When he wanted any thing, which was but seldom, for his pipe seemed to supply aU his wants, mental and bodily, a sign accomplished his purpose. From morning tiU night he sat on the same spot of the deck, with his large blue eyes fixed on the same spot of the horizon, and his meerschaum in his mouth, pouring out perpetual fumes. Some of the passengers at tempted to question him on the state of Germany, through which he had but just passed ; but he was faithful to his meerschaum ; dumbly shook his huge head, fumigated away with the same tran quilUty, and completely baffled aU curiosity by the mere force of smoke. At length they gave him up ; naturaUy looking upon him as a well-contrived piece of mechanism, a chefd'œuvre of some modern Vaucanson, a. human smoke-jack, a despatch carrying automaton, of which tobacco was the moving power.

We had now been nearly a week at sea, and notwithstanding a civil captain, tolerable dinners, good society, and the marveUous absence of the landsman's misery, sea sickness, we longed to find ourselves on solid earth again. Every eye and every glass on board was turned to the point from which HeUgoland seemed determined never to emerge. This anxiety, at length, grew ridiculously feverish. Columbus himseU" never watched the signs of sea or sky more nervously. The truth was, we were all intolerably idle ; every soul weary of having nothing to do ; aU conversation flagged ; all character flat tened, and the Austrian courier was the only philosopher among us, for his smoke and his smde alone never failed. Every weed that floated by, gathered a concourse of spectators, who foUowed its career from stem to stern, and then hung over the ship's side looking out for a new arrival of seaweed and stimulus.

An unhappy canary bird that had been blown out of some Dutch cage, and ventured to rest its weary wing upon our rigging, was a grand topic, and suppUed us with conjectures for a whole evening. The Castle of Indolence lost the finest feature of aU its descriptions, by forgetting the penalties of afarniente on board of a packet in an interminable calm. But a less sentimental calamity now began to threaten us. Our passage had been so much longer than the captain's calculation, that we were in danger of being without provisions. We recommended the despatch of a boat to the shore, which was occasionally within sight. But the captain's official answer was, that " we might expect a wind every moment, which, from the length of the calm, would, in aU probabiUty, come in the shape of a gale ; that the boat, in that case, must be left behind, and the mission, of course, be only so much thrown away ; or that we must anchor, which might lose the ship, besides losing the gale, which could not now fad of carrying us to HeUgoland in half a dozen hours, provided it blew fair."

The voyager even from Dover to Calais knows, by experience, that the captain, land-locked as he is, is sovereign ; but on the actual ocean, with the eternal ice for his boundary, the sovereignty, as it spreads, becomes only the more inflexible. The czar or the sultan is tame to the despot of the helm. We had nothing for it, but submission ; stiU we were fixed, tiding it on and off the shores of Oldenberg, and still more embittering our situ ation by the knowledge that aU the world were at that moment dancing, singing, or feasting; for, though we were starring, the sunsets were lovely; and if we were to perish, we should have had the consolation of finishing our mortal career in the finest weather imaginable. Another of our vexations was, that though we were chained in the centre of a calm, there seemed to be wind enough in every other quarter.

We frequently saw vessels threading the web of colours that covered the sea from the horizon to the spot where our shadow lay steaddy asleep; then came the old inquiry of aU the passengers at once, whether the saU was " not suspicious," and whether its ports, &c. had not very much the privateer look. However, in aU instances, we were "quit for the fear." The privateer turned out to be some British merchantman, dragging its heavy load home ; or one of our look-out frigates, sweeping down within a mUe or two of us, Uke a colossal hawk, then suddenly checking its speed on making out our signal, and wheeUng back to its station, with the ease of the hawk ; commanding the breeze, while we could not wave a feather on the deck, and our pennant hung dead down the sail.

Chapter II. Heligoland

But aU things have an end. The sudden roU of the vessel one midnight, and the immediate burst of agony that rose from every corner of the cabin, sufficiently told us that we had got a breeze at last; which, as the captain had surmised, before morning took the shape of a regular north-sea gale. AU bienseance was over for the time ; and aU who could leave the place of suffering, hurried upon deck. We had now wind enough, and on we rushed, dashing and driving, bow-sprit under, and ploughing up the billows, until the dawn showed us the brown top of Heligoland in the horizon. The North Sea was angry, and a whole wilderness of immense waves, topped with yeUow, bilious-looking foam, roUed furiously towards the Uttle half-drowned island, which con- HELIGOLAND tinuaUy escaped from us, and seemed as if it were swimming away for its life.

But rough as the gale was, it was lucidly in our favour, we were hurled along like the foam itself, and, in the course of a few hours, we were abreast of the beach. The scene there was a very curious and pecuUar one. AU seemed on the smaUest scale, and might have been sketched for Gulliver's first view of LilUput. HeUgoland is pro bably the smaUest spot to which human Use, adhesive as it is, ever thought of clinging. But, while we gazed, we were gazed at in turn ; if we had been the Argonauts themselves, we could have scarcely excited a more marked public curiosity. We had our indulgence too ; for instead of the aboriginal, half fish, half human, population of a Uttle wUd rock in the ocean, all before us was metropoUtan ! The elite of the London counting-houses were drawn out for our reception, and we looked upon a melange of morning gowns, white hats, Bath slippers, and gentlemen breatliing the essence of " the latest newspapers from town."

HeUgoland, like every other nook of this over travelled world, has long since lost its ancient speU, HELIGOLAND. but it was then a novelty, and an extremely characteristic one. Paley should have put it into his chapter of " Contrivances." It was impossible to look upon it without recognising the original design of nature for the intercourse of nations ; the Plymouth Breakwater, ortheEddystone Ughthouse, is not a clearer evidence of intention. Though it had stood from the creation or the deluge, a solitary point in the deep, the playground of the seamew and the porpoise, for some thousand years, it was yet as obviously placed for the uses of humankind, when the low shores of Holstein and Hanover should be peopled, as if it had been pued by a Telford or a Rennie before our eyes. Standing about twenty-five miles from the mouth of the Elbe, it is seen at the exact distance sufficient for ships to make the land, without being entangled in the shoals which Une the whole shore of Germany; its very form is that of the pedestal of a Ughthouse, and many a storm-tost blaze must have flared from it to the squadrons with which Denmark and Swe den once paid such formidable visits to their more opulent neighbours of Germany and England.

Its population, time out of mind, have been HELIGOLAND. 23 pilots, and even in its name of " Holy Island," there may be found some reference to the sailor's gratitude for his preservation. But things had now, in the American phrase, prodigiously pro gressed ; for the pedestal was not merely topped with a huge lighthouse, gUttering with reflectors and aU the improvements of modern art, but it was enjoying that peculiar prosperity which, according to the proverb, in the worst of times, falls somewhere; and being the first mark of aU vessels bound for the Elbe, and just out of the reach of Napoleon's talons besides, it had become a grand depot of commerce ; or to use a less dignified, but truer appeUation, of smuggUng of the most barefaced kind. Every spot was crowded with clerks and agents from England and Germany; many of them not improbably agents of more important concerns than the barter of sugar and coffee; for those were times when every feeUng of right, seconded by every dexterity of man, was concerting the faU of the great enemy ; and Heli goland was, perhaps, more nearly connected with Vienna, and even with Paris, than half the cabinets alive.

HELIGOLAND. But aU before us, was the merchant and his mer chandize, bales of Manchester manufactures and bags of West India produce, and among them the busy Englishman stalking about, and the spectacled German foUowing him, and each apparently too weU employed to think of the fates of empires. From our deck, the beach, which looked scarcely more than a hundred yards wide; and the rock itself, which did not seem half the number of feet high, gave the thickest picture of human swarming, that I had ever seen ; the whole was black, restless, and buz zing with Use, it had the look of an immense beehive. The island originally belonged to Denmark ; and, during the first years of the war, it had been quietly left to its employment of keeping up a Ughthouse, and a supply of pUots, for the Elbe. But Napoleon's seizure of Hanover, and stiU more his war on British commerce, at length induced our statesmen to search for some point, from which, if the great Leviathan could not be completely hooked, he might be, at least, occasionally har pooned.