the Archduke
would have had a great superiority, and in the second, all was prepared
in Hesse and in Hanover to rise on the approach of the Austrian and
English armies.

At the commencement of July the English advanced upon Cuxhaven with a
dozen small ships of war. They landed 400 or 600 sailors and about 50
marines, and planted a standard on one of the outworks. The day after
this landing at Cuxhaven the English, who were in Denmark evacuated
Copenhagen, after destroying a battery which they had erected there.
All the schemes of England were fruitless on the Continent, for with the
Emperor's new system of war, which consisted in making a push on the
capitals, he soon obtained negotiations for peace. He was master of
Vienna before England had even organised the expedition to which I have
just alluded. He left Paris on the 11th of April, was at Donauwerth on
the 17th, and on the 23d he was master of Ratisbon. In the engagement
which preceded his entrance into that town Napoleon received a slight
wound in the heel. He nevertheless remained on the field of battle. It
was also between Donauwerth and Ratisbon that Davoust, by a bold
manoeuvre, gained and merited the title of Prince of Eckmuhl.

--[The great battle of Eckmuhl, where 100,000 Austrians were driven
from all their positions, was fought on the 22d of April.-Editor of
1836 edition.]--

At this period fortune was not only bent on favouring Napoleon's arms,
but she seemed to take pleasure in realising even his boasting
predictions; for the French troops entered Vienna within a month after a
proclamation issued by Napoleon at Ratisbon, in which he said he would be
master of the Austrian capital in that time.

But while he was thus marching from triumph to triumph the people of
Hamburg and the neighbouring countries had a neighbour who did not leave
them altogether without inquietude. The famous Prussian partisan, Major
Schill, after pursuing his system of plunder in Westphalia, came and
threw himself into Mecklenburg, whence, I understood, it was his
intention to surprise Hamburg. 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 Wis