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At the beginning of October 1806, the armies of Napoleon were moving towards the Saale, and ere the middle of the month the battles of Auerstadt and Jena were fought and lost. Duke Charles Ferdinand was mortally wounded, and taken back to Braunschweig. A deputation waited on the offended Emperor at Halle, and begged him to allow the aged duke to die in his own house.
In the opening months of the campaign the movements were merely a sequel to those of the previous year. The French retreat was continued from the Niemen to the Vistula, the Elbe, and finally the Saale. The Russians entered Prussia proper a few days after Yorck's capitulation, and the French retired before them.
They had their active foe now in their clutches, they deemed. With his handful of men he could not possibly stand before their onset. He had escaped them more than once before; this time they had him, as they believed. His camp was on a height, near the Saale. Towards it the French advanced, with flying colors and sounding trumpets, as if with purpose to strike terror into the ranks of their foes.
This confusion of ideas is transferred to real life, and if we would see a memorable instance of it we have only to call to mind that Prussia in 1806 left a reserve of 20,000 men cantoned in the Mark, under Prince Eugene of Wurtemberg, which could not possibly reach the Saale in time to be of any use, and that another force Of 25,000 men belonging to this power remained in East and South Prussia, destined only to be put on a war-footing afterwards as a reserve.
After the losses occasioned by the destruction of the bridge at Lindenau, it was impossible to think of stopping what remained of the army at the Saale, so Napoleon crossed the river.
That Dauphiness would play the prank she did next morning, Friedrich had not ventured to calculate. Meandering Saale is on one of his big turns, as he passes Weissenfels; turning, pretty rapidly here, from southeastward, which he was a dozen miles ago, round to northeastward again or northward altogether, which he gets to be at Merseburg, a dozen farther down.
Friedrich's march has gone by Dobeln, Grimma, to Pegau and Rotha, Leipzig way, but, with Leipzig well to right: it just brushes Weissenfels to rightward, next day after Rotha; crosses Saale River near Naumburg, whence straight through Weimar Country, Weimar City on your left, to Erfurt on the northern side; and,
But in the broader outlines the aim of all is the same, and what we have seen at Naples is typical of what is best in all the others. THE train crept on its tortuous way down the picturesque valley of the little Saale. At last we saw, high above us, on a jutting crag, three quaint old castles, in one of which, as we knew from our Baedeker; Goethe at one time lived.
On the evening of the 8th of July Napoleon reached Fouras, receiving everywhere testimonies of attachment. He proceeded on board the Saale, one of the two frigates appointed by the Provisional Government to convey him to the United States, and slept on board that night. Very early on the following morning he visited the fortifications of that place, and returned to the frigate for dinner.
The fine, wide road was covered by troops of all arms, which showed that the army would still be of considerable strength on arriving at the Saale.
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