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Updated: July 11, 2025
The officers of the Berlin garrison serenaded the patriotic statesman, while Haugwitz twice had his windows smashed. Public opinion, it is true, counted for little in Prussia.
This comedy having been played out, The Emperor, to be rid of a dangerous onlooker who could give an account of the disposition of his forces, suggested to Count Haugwitz that it was not very safe for him to remain between two armies which were about to come to blows, and persuaded him to go to Vienna to M. Tallyrand, his minister for foreign affairs, which he did that same evening.
I have already mentioned in a former letter that it was Count von Haugwitz who, in 1792, as Prussian Ambassador at Vienna, arranged the treaty which then united the Austrian and Prussian Eagles against the Jacobin Cap of Liberty.
Before I noticed the singular mission of M. Haugwitz to the Emperor Napoleon, and the result of that mission, which circumstances rendered diametrically the reverse of its object, I will relate what came to my knowledge respecting some other negotiations on the part of Austria, the evident intent of which was to retard Napoleon's progress, and thereby to dupe him.
Shortly before the return of Haugwitz to Berlin, the Russian troops campaigning in Hanover had been placed under the protection of Prussia; and the King himself had offered to our Minister, Lord Harrowby, to protect Cathcart's Anglo-Hanoverian corps which, with the aid of Prussian troops, was restoring the authority of George III. in that Electorate.
For some time past the Court of Vienna had been offering its services for mediation: they were well received at London, with open disappointment by Prussia, and with ill-concealed annoyance by Napoleon. As at the time when Haugwitz came to him to dictate Prussia's terms, so now the Emperor kept the Austrian envoy waiting without an answer, until the blow of Friedland was dealt.
"I am unable to refute all these reasons," said the king, sighing, "but an inward voice tells me that I ought not to break my word, and commence hostilities. Vide "Memoiren zur Geschichte des Preuss. Staats." By Col. Massenbach. Go, Count Haugwitz, and resume your negotiations with the ambassadors of Russia and Great Britain.
As to his acceptance of these changes in the Schönbrunn Treaty, Haugwitz felt no doubt whatever, at least so his foe, Hardenberg, states. But the Prussian Ministers were now proposing, not the offensive and defensive treaty of alliance that Napoleon required, but rather a mediation for peace between France and England.
Had the Count von Haugwitz of 1795 been the same as the Count von Haugwitz of 1792, it is probable we should no longer have heard of either a French Republic or a French Empire; but a legitimate Monarch of the kingdom of France would have ensured that security to all other legitimate Sovereigns, the want of which they themselves, or their children, will feel and mourn in vain, as long as unlimited usurpations tyrannize over my wretched country.
"Sire," exclaimed Haugwitz, joyfully, "this was the desirable aggrandizement which I took the liberty of hinting at before, and I believe it is the only one which the king's conscience would allow him to accept."
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