onate letter, of June 10th, he begged Alexander not to accept
peace: "To accept a peace dictated by Napoleon is to rear a sepulchre
for Europe: and if this misfortune happens, only England and Sweden
can remain intact."

This was the real Bernadotte. Those who called him a disguised friend
of Napoleon little knew the depth of his hatred for the Emperor, a
hatred which was even then compassing the earth for means of
overthrowing him, and saw in the person of a lonely French exile
beyond the Atlantic an instrument of vengeance. Already he had bidden
his old comrade in arms, Moreau, to come over and direct the people's
war against the tyrant who had exiled him; and the victor of
Hohenlinden was soon to land at Stralsund and spend his last days in
serving against the tricolour.

For the present the prospects of the allies seemed gloomy indeed. In
the south-east they had lost all the land up to Breslau and Glogau;
and in North Germany Davoust began to turn Hamburg into a great
fortress. This was in obedience to Napoleon's orders. "I shall never
feel assured," the Emperor wrote to his Marshal, "until Hamburg can be
looked on as a stronghold provisioned for several months and prepared
in every way for a long defence."--The ruin of commercial interests
was nought to him; and when Savary ventured to hint at the discontent
caused in French mercantile circles by these steps, he received a
sharp rebuke: "... The cackling of the Paris bankers matters very
little to me. I am having Hamburg fortified. I am having a naval
arsenal formed there. Within a few months it will be one of my
strongest fortresses. I intend to keep a standing army of 15,000 men
there."[305] His plan was ruthlessly carried out. The wealth of
Hamburg was systematically extorted in order to furnish means for a
completer subjection. Boundless exactions, robbery of the bank, odious
oppression of all classes, these were the first steps. Twenty thousand
persons were thereafter driven out, first the young and strong as
being dangerous, then the old and weak as being useless; and a once
prosperous emporium of trade became Napoleon's chief northern
stronghold, a centre of hope for French and Danes, and a stimulus to
revenge for every patriotic Teuton.[306]

Yet the patriots were not cast down by recent events. Their one desire
was for the renewal of war: their one fear was that the diplomatists
would once more barter away German independence. "Our people," cried
Karl