Читать книгу Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Various - Страница 17

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Whoever visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park, New York, is likely to pause before a great historical painting by Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier. The picture is entitled "Friedland—1807." There goes a critical opinion that, though common fame would have Austerlitz to be the greatest battle of the Napoleonic wars, the palm ought really to be given to Friedland. At any rate, the martial splendor of that day has been caught by the vision and brush of Meissonier, and delivered, in what is probably the most splendid painting in America, to the immortality of art.

Let us note the great movements that preceded the climax of Friedland. In the summer of 1806, the historical conditions in Europe favored a general peace. Pitt was dead, and Fox agreed with Napoleon that a peace might now be secured by the restoration of Hanover to England. Suddenly, however, on the thirteenth of September, 1806, Fox died, and by the incoming of Lauderdale the whole complexion was changed. Toryism again ran rampant. The Anglo-Russo-Prussian intrigue was renewed, and the rash Frederick William sent a peremptory challenge to Napoleon to get himself out of Germany.

The Emperor had in truth agreed to withdraw his forces, but the Czar Alexander had also agreed to relinquish certain vantage grounds which he held—and had not done it. Therefore Napoleon's army corps would remain in Germany. Frederick William suddenly declared war, and in a month after the death of Fox, Napoleon concentrated in Saxe-Weimar an army of a hundred thousand men. Then, on the fourteenth of October, 1806, was fought the dreadful battle of Jena, in which the Prussians lost 12,000 in killed and wounded, and 15,000 prisoners. On the same day, Davout fell upon a division of 50,000 under the Duke of Brunswick and Frederick William in person, and won another signal victory which cost the Germans about ten thousand men.

Prussia was utterly overwhelmed by the disaster. Her fortresses were surrendered without resistance, and Napoleon, in less than a fortnight, occupied Berlin. On the twenty-first of November, he issued from that city his celebrated Berlin decree, declaring the British Islands in a state of blockade, and interdicting all correspondence and trade with England! The property of British subjects, under a wide schedule of liabilities, was declared contraband of war.

Meanwhile the aid promised to Prussia by the Czar had been too slow for the lightning that struck at Jena. The oncoming Russians reached the Vistula, but were forced back by the victorious French, who took possession of Warsaw. There the Emperor established his winter quarters, and remained for nearly three months, engaged in the preparation of new plans of conquest and new schemes for the pacification of Europe.

After Jena, Prussia, though crushed, remained belligerent. Her shattered forces drew off to the borders, and were joined by the Russians in East Prussia. The campaign of 1807 opened here. On the eighth of February, the French army, about 70,000 strong, advanced against the allies, commanded by Benningsen and Lestocq. At the town of Eylau, about twenty miles from Königsberg, a great but indecisive battle was fought, in which each army suffered a loss of nearly eighteen thousand men. The Russians and Prussians fell back about four miles to Friedland, and both armies were reinforced, the French to about eighty thousand, and the allies to approximately the same number.

Here for a season the two great camps were pitched against each other. The shock of Eylau and the inclemency of the spring, no less than the political complications that thickened on every horizon, held back the military movements until the beginning of summer. But at length the crisis came. On the fourteenth of June was fought the great battle of Friedland and the allied army was virtually destroyed. The loss of the Russians and Prussians was more than twenty-five thousand men, while the French loss was not quite eight thousand. Napoleon commanded in person, and his triumph was prodigious.

Let not the visitor to the Metropolitan Museum fail to look long and attentively on the picture of the scene which represents the beginning of the battle on the side of the French. There on a slight elevation, in the wheatfield of June, sitting on his white horse, with his triangular hat lifted in silent salutation, surrounded by the princes and marshals of his Empire, sits the sardonic somnambulist, while before him on the left the Cuirassiers of the Guard, on their tremendous horses gathered out of Normandy, plunging at full gallop, bearing down through the broken wheat, with buglers in the van and sabers flashing high and bearded mouths wide open with yellings that resound through the world till now, charge wildly, irresistibly onward against the unseen enemy, reckless alike of life and death, but choosing rather death if only the marble face but smile!