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of Saxony, the fortress of Torgau was given up to the French, and when they were thereby obliged to abandon even the line of the Elbe.

The battle of Bautzen exhausted the strength of both armies; both required an armistice of ten weeks. It was necessary to the Allies, because they waited for the declaration of Austria, and were anxious to strengthen themselves by the arrival of Russian reinforcements and a Swedish army, besides the numerous levies which were going on in the Prussian states. On the other hand, Napoleon was collecting numerous masses at Dresden, partly summoned from Spain, and partly composed of new raised troops.

Notwithstanding all the assistance which Saxony had given to Napoleon, the king was still regarded by the Allies in every respect as a neutral; and his personal property was protected at Prague. At length, when every preparation was completed, when he saw that a decisive battle could no longer be avoided, and when he was still at full liberty to choose between both parties, he proceeded hastily towards Dresden, and threw himself into the arms of Napoleon.

From this moment it became a matter of absolute necessity with the Allies to conquer Saxony. This was speedily effected step by step; and Saxony was purchased with the precious blood which was shed at Dresden, Kulm, Nollendorff, Dennewitz, Wartburg, Mockern, and Leipzig. Not one of the vanquished Saxons was asked to join the allied armies, such was the respect paid to their opinions and besides, their number was by far too small to effect any thing decisive. Still the great mass of the Saxon population and armies raised not an arm for the Allies: the mandate of their king chained them to Napoleon.

For the first time, towards the conclusion of the battle of Leipzig, a part of the Saxon army went over to the Allies, and merely made more striking the accomplishment of a victory which had been long since decided. At that moment, when nearly two hundred and fifty thousand men fought on each side, a few thousands could have little weight in deciding the fortune of the day. The Allies, nevertheless, acknowledged with becoming respect, this resolution of the Saxon army; in virtue of which they were allowed to remain in their own country, instead of being compelled to make a precipitate and disorderly retreat towards France.

Leipzig was taken by storm next morning. The king of Saxony was found in the place, abandoned even by Napoleon; and the remains of his troops were still under arms. There never was a conquest if this was not a fair one; and there are no laws of war worthy of being respected among civilized natious, if they do not declare that this was a fair and legitimate capture,

The author of the painphlet entitled "Saxony and Prussia,"

passes over altogether in silence what happened between March and October, and draws from thence the extraordinary conclusion, that, as the Allies were unwilling to treat the king of Saxony as an enemy in March; and even gave him time, in August, to declare himself for them, it followed, that they had no right to treat him as an enemy, when he turned a deaf ear to their pressing solicitations, united himself still more closely to Napoleon, and, in concert with him, carried on the war in earnest against them!

The steady attachment of the king of Saxony to the cause of Napoleon can only be justified on the ground, that his conscience did not permit him to renounce the alliance which he had contracted with the latter at Posen.

But the Saxon court had been allied with that of Prussia since the year 1778; and on that occasion, by the intervention of Prussia, in the treaty of Teschen, the former recovered payment of the immense sums owing to her for the Bavarian Allodii. Thus in pursuance of this alliance, in the year 1806, a conventionary Saxon army marched with the forces of Prussia to the battle of Jena. But when it was evident that the Prussians had lost the day, the court of Saxony did not adhere an instant longer to their alliance. Silesia, in the rear of Saxony, was the only resource which Prussia then had; and even eight months after the battle of Jena it was not wholly overrun. If the conscience of the king of Saxony had then, prompted him to serve the cause of Prussia as fervently as that of Napoleon, the Saxon troops might have retired behind the Elbe as a covering point for the arming which was going on in Silesia, thereby furnishing a most excellent defence for that province; while Napoleon could not have pushed forward so rapidly and securely into south and west Prussia. On that occasion every thing ought to have been sacrificed to gain time. The doubtful issue of the battle of Pultusk, on the 22d of December, and of Eylau, on the 8th of February, forcibly shows how precarious the situation of Napoleon was from December to May, and how little also was requisite to give a more fortunate termination to the war.

The Saxon court, however, not only hastened to place her troops immediately after the battle of Jena in a state of inactivity, but united them speedily afterwards with the army of Napoleon, and became extremely active in the very same war, to beat down unfortunate Prussia still lower on the ground.

The king of Saxony was rewarded for services so cheerfully performed with the Duchy of Warsaw, then consisting (without including the subsequent addition of a part of Gallicia,) of one thousand eight hundred square miles, and containing two millious and a half of subjects, which were formerly Prussian: his new acquisition was, in fact, far more extensive, and much more populous than the kingdom of Saxony.

The plans of Napoleon against Russia rendered it necessary that he should occupy a strong position on the Vistula itself, and this object could not be attained, unless Saxony lent her assistance by taking upon her the government of the Duchy of Warsaw. This could not be effected by appointing a French prince to that office, without Russia and Austria being provoked to attack the French army before the arrangements of their leader were fully completed. Far less could he trust a Polish Magnat, who might suddenly, in the most critical moment, declare for Russia.

Two years afterwards, the King of Saxony served Napoleon as zealously against Austria as he had against Prussia; and was again rewarded with upwards of nine hundred square miles of territory, and another half million of subjects, which were wrested from Austrian Gallicia, and added to the Duchy of Warsaw.

The occupation of Warsaw by Saxony may be justified upon the ground that the Polish provinces belonging to Prussia were new acquisitions, and that the Poles themselves were in arms against her; but it must not be forgotten that Saxony was not ashamed to accept of the Kotbus Circle at the hands of Napoleon, which appertained to the oldest and most faithful of the provinces of the Prussian House. Brandenburgh was in possession of Kotbus and Peis long before Saxony, by the treaty of Prague in 1635, obtained the Lausitz as a reward for her apostacy towards Sweden and the Protestant cause, after the unfortunate battle of Nordlingen.

Finally, should the conduct of the King of Saxony towards Prussia be ascribed not to his selfish policy, or his unnatural attachment to Napoleon, but to his inflexible integrity, may we not be permitted to ask why he should be allowed to display his policy towards Prussia, and to reserve his integrity for Napoleon? And if the determination to share every danger with his people, and to live and die in the midst of them, drew him from Prague towards Dresden, then the head-quarters of Napoleon, wherefore did not the same determination induce him to return to his states in March, in order to defend them against the allies, who had then entered them?

Prussia never took a single village from Saxony. Under the most favorable circumstances, it never entered into her contemplation to occupy the most trifling of the Saxon possessions which extend within a few miles of Potsdam, or to deprive her of the Fustenberg toll, which commands the whole trade of the Oder, the principal river of Prussia.

The village of Schidlo, near Frankfort, the only place which Saxony retained on the right bank of the Oder, an infamous nest of smugglers, and highly injurious to the revenues of Prussia, waş

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transferred to Prussia by a stipulation in the treaty of Hubertsburg. Saxony eluded this stipulation by the demand of an equivalent, far exceeding the value of the village. Prussia allowed the matter to rest, and Schidlo belongs to Saxony at this moment.

The treaty of Teschen, in which Saxony was a contracting party, entitled Prussia to exchange Bareuth and Anspach, when they should fall to be added to her possessions, for the Lausitz. The instant this exchange should have been effected, the Prussian frontiers would have approached much nearer to Dresden than the Saxon to Berlin; but Prussia has made no use whatever of her title to this exchange.

The Saxon Court cannot even complain that Prussia, in the years 1745 and 1756, was backward in resigning the provinces which Saxony eagerly desired at these epochs; but this system of perpetual cession at length brought into competition with Prussia so great a power, that she was twice compelled to conquer Saxony at Kesselsdorf and at Pirna, merely to restore it twice by the treaties of Dresden and Hubertsburg, without keeping even a single village to herself.

It would undoubtedly be true that Prussia had evinced too much avidity for her own interests, if it could be nade to appear, that on the above occasions she was anxious to aggrandize herself at the expense of Saxony; but it is certain, on the contrary, that the greater powers who then interested themselves on behalf of Saxony, would not have renewed the war on her account, if Prussia had barely demanded an amelioration of her most disadvantageous boundaries on the side of Saxony. But the generous moderation of Prussia prevented all misunderstanding even on this head.

The author of "Saxony and Prussia" next proceeds to remark, as an instance of the moderation of the King of Saxony, that along with South and East, New Prussia, he accepted no part of Silesia and the marche of Brandenburgh at the hands of Napoleon: we are not told, however, that the magnanimous Napoleon ever put it in his power to refuse such a present.

The world cannot decide from hidden motives, but only by manifest actions. The King of Saxony had two examples before his eyes, that in the war against Prussia, even in the worst event, he did not run the risk of losing a single village, and twenty examples, that in the league with Napoleon, he had the chance of gaining many. Which of these two motives guided his conduct, the public does not know; but it cannot fail to be remarked, that he acted as if his policy was founded upon selfish considerations.

The law of nations knows of no criminal justice against princes and nations, of no earthly tribunal of mercy for their forgiveness, and of no specific punishment for the crimes which are alleged

against them. The King of Saxony is no way accountable for his attachment to Napoleon, but to God and his conscience. The foregoing remarks have not for their object, to lay the foundation of an impeachment: but they were rendered unavoidable by the zeal displayed by the hired defender of the Court of Saxony, to place, in a striking point of view, the morality of the conduct of his employers at the expense of the Allied Powers, and of Prussia in particular.

But princes and people, nevertheless, must equally abide by the natural consequences of their conduct. A ruler who makes war, thereby subjects himself to all the chances of war. His states are liable to be conquered, and himself to be made prisoner. Conquered territories may be given back, and princes, who have been prisoners of war, may be restored to the thrones which they had lost. But the law of nations imposes no obligation on the conqueror to do all this.

Almost all the larger States are in possession of conquered territories; from Algarva, which Portugal wrested from the Moors, to Schonen, Halland, and Blekingen, which Sweden took from Denmark.

At all events, no State has the privilege which is now claimed for Saxony, namely, that she may undertake a most unjustifiable war; and if, fortunately for her opponents, she fails, her population is to be increased two, nay, threefold, while her neighbours, even in the most just and necessary defensive war, dare not infringe upon the integrity of the invader's States, but must faithfully restore to her all their conquests, even to the most trifling village. The rights which the conqueror acquires over the whole of the conquered states and the person of the ruler, when he is made a prisoner, are nevertheless pretty generally admitted these rights do not permit the vanquished to recover his possessions and liberty, but prescribe a supplication for peace, and intimate that he must await the decision of his conqueror.

The King of Saxony, while at Prague, saw the whole of Europe united against Napoleon: the state of the public mind in Germany, and that of his own subjects, was not unknown to him; even the intelligence of the battle of Vittoria, which more immediately threatened the heart of France itself, was then communicated to him in short, he had ample means of judging accurately of the extent of his risk, when at length he proceeded from Prague towards Dresden.

History contains not a few examples of a princely house having lost all their possessions, as the result of the misfortunes of war. A calamity of this description befel the House of Saxony itself, when the unfortunate John Frederick, in the year 1517, transferred

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