man possessions of
the house of Brandenburg were in the hands of the conqueror. Louis
Buonaparte, King of Holland, meanwhile, had advanced into Westphalia,
and occupied that territory also, with great part of Hanover, East
Friesland, Embden, and the dominions of Hesse-Cassel.

Thus in the course of a few short weeks, was the proud fabric of the
Prussian monarchy levelled with the ground. The government being of a
strictly military character, when the army, the pride and strength of
the nation, disappeared, every bond of union among the various provinces
of the crown seemed to be at once dissolved. To account for the
unexampled rapidity of such a downfall, it must be remembered, first,
that the Prussian states, many of them the fruits of recent military
conquest, were held together by little but the name of the great
Frederick, and the terror of the highly disciplined force, which he had
bequeathed to his successors; that, in a word, they had not yet had time
to be blended and melted thoroughly into a national whole: secondly,
that Prussia had rushed into this war not only with imprudent rashness,
but with the stain of dishonour on her hands. The acceptance of Hanover,
as a bribe, from the French despot, and the hard and brazen reluctance
to part with that ill-gotten spoil, even when the preservation of peace
with France seemed hopeless--these circumstances, together with the mean
desertion of Austria during the preceding campaign of Austerlitz--had,
in effect, injured the government deeply and degradingly in the opinion
of its own subjects, as well as of other nations: but, thirdly, the
imbecile conduct of the chief Prussian officers, in the campaign of
Jena, was as little likely to have been foreseen or expected, as the
pusillanimous, if not treacherous, baseness of those who, after the army
was defeated, abandoned so easily a chain of the best fortresses in
Europe.

The personal character of King Frederick William was never calumniated,
even when the measures of his government were most generally and most
justly exposed to suspicion and scorn. On the contrary, the misfortunes
of this virtuous sovereign and his family were heard of with unmixed
regret and compassion.

These sentiments, and all sentiments likely in their consequences to be
injurious to the cause of Napoleon, the conduct of the Conqueror in
Prussia, at this time of national humiliation and sorrow, was well
calculated to strengthen and confirm. The Duk