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The whole of that winter the indignation was spreading in the town at the sight of so many brave officers, the heroes of Marengo, Austerlitz, and Wagram, wandering forlornly about, starving on half-pay, and deprived of their posts. The old hussar broke down at this, and though his comrade, Colonel Falconette, tried to restrain him, he poured forth thanks and bitter words against the government.
The brief detail I have given in the two or three preceding chapters of the events which occurred previously to and during the campaign of Austerlitz, with the letters of Duroc and Bernadotte, may afford the reader some idea of my situation during the early part of my residence in Hamburg. Events succeeded each other with such incredible rapidity as to render my labour excessive.
Such snow, such ice; so cold, so cold! It was then I lost my eye. My leg I left at Austerlitz, my arm at Jena; my eye I dropped somewhere in the Beresina, so much the better. I could not see that freeze-out. Then they sent me here. And since that I do not know what has happened. They tell me you tell me much. But to believe such foolish stories! Bah! I am not a baby.
Such is the spectacle offered to us by the history of the Emperor Napoleon, and of France, after the battle of Austerlitz and the Peace of Presburg. For the moment a stupor seemed to oppress the whole of Europe.
Under the circumstances, the conduct of the Hapsburgs was pardonable: but the seeming break-up of the coalition furnished the Court of Berlin with a good reason for declining to bear the burden alone. It was not Austerlitz that daunted Frederick William; for, after hearing of that disaster, he wrote that he would be true to his pledge given on November 3rd.
We heard them rise and open their windows. It was five o'clock. We redoubled our precautions, and they went to sleep again. "At last the clock struck six. Never before did the sound of a clock vibrate so violently in my heart. But a moment after the bugle from the quarter of Austerlitz came to accelerate its throbbings. The great moment was approaching.
Doubtless his glory was unrivalled, but he had won the best part of it through Austrian defeats. Arcola and Marengo, Austerlitz and Wagram, were names that wounded Austrian ears. Had she been free to choose, she would perhaps have preferred to this all-powerful Emperor any petty German prince, who possessed neither great wealth nor vast territories, but who shared her memories, ideas, and hopes.
Not long after the battle of Austerlitz, the Elector of Bavaria, while out shooting, received from a French courier a letter directed to "Sa Majesté le Roi de Bavière et de Suabe." This letter was despatched six days after a formal request was sent through Duroc, that the Elector would give his daughter Augusta in marriage to Eugène Beauharnais.
But Napoleon was already in person on the German side of the Rhine; and his answer to the Prussian note was a general order to his own troops, in which he called on them to observe in what manner a German sovereign still dared to insult the soldiers of Austerlitz.
We do not think so; and, to be frank, was what had just happened likely to give her a favorable idea of the country she was leaving? Could she have much love for the people who were fastening a rope to pull down the statue of the hero of Austerlitz from its pedestal, the Vendome column?
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