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Updated: June 16, 2025
After long deliberation the selfish policy was adopted of using them, not to cripple Napoleon, but for England's immediate advantage. They were not sent to reinforce Wellesley and insure the conquest of Spain, nor to save Schill, nor to strengthen Austria. By any one of these courses the European uprising against the French emperor would have been inaugurated that very year.
At the same time I sent to Schill a clever spy, who gave him a most alarming account of the means of defence which Hamburg possessed. Schill accordingly gave up his designs on that city, and leaving it on his left, entered Lubeck, which was undefended.
Dornberg, an officer of Jerome's guard, revolted simultaneously in Hesse, but was betrayed by a false friend at the moment in which Jerome's person was to have been seized, and was compelled to fly for his life. Schill merely advanced as far as Wittenberg and Halberstadt, was again driven northward to Wismar, and finally to Stralsund, by the superior forces of Westphalia and Holland.
Yet the English Government sent Schill a colonel's commission, and the full uniform of his new rank, with the assurance that all his troops should thenceforth be paid by England. Schill soon had an imitator of exalted rank. In August 1809 the Duke of Brunswick-OEls sought the dangerous honour of succeeding that famous partisan.
The reform, however, but slowly progressed. Ferdinand von Schill, a Prussian lieutenant, who had been wounded at Jena, formed, in Pomerania, a guerilla troop of disbanded soldiery and young men, who, although indifferently provided with arms, stopped the French convoys and couriers.
Schill met a warrior's death: most of the survivors were sent to the galleys in France. Had the British expedition, which in the ensuing autumn rotted away on Walcheren, been landed at Stralsund, or in Hanover during the spring, it is certain that Germany would have risen in Napoleon's rear; and in that case, the doubtful struggle which closed at Wagram might have ended very differently.
Space forbids me to dwell in detail on these noble poems, on the well-known sonnets to Venice, to Milton, &c.; on the generous tributes to the heroes of the contest, Schill, Hoffer, Toussaint, Palafox; or on the series which contrast the instinctive greatness of the Spanish people at bay, with Napoleon's lying promises and inhuman pride.
At the head of 600 well-mounted hussars and between 1500 and 2000 infantry badly armed, he took possession of the little fort of Domitz, in Mecklenburg, on the 15th of May, from whence he despatched parties who levied contributions on both banks of the Elbe. Schill inspired terror wherever he went. On the 19th of May a detachment of 30 men belonging to Schill's corps entered Wismar.
This society, whose object was more real and positive than that of the first, soon swallowed up the other; and from these two was formed that of the Tugendbund, or Friends of Virtue. About the end of May, 1809, three enterprises those of Katt, Dörnberg, and Schill had already given proofs of its existence. That of Duke William began on the 14th of May. He was at first supported by the Austrians.
The agent of the Vice-Consul, alarmed at the threat of the place being given up to pillage, capitulated with the officer, and with considerable difficulty got rid of him at the sacrifice of 80 Louis, for which a receipt was presented to him in the name of the Duke. The Duke, who now went by the name of "the new Schill," did not remain long in Bremen.
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