Holstein with the small remains of his army; but less able than ever to hazard an engagement with the French, and not daring to violate the neutrality of the Danish terri. tory, he was there forced to surrender. The dismal affair of Lubeck took place on the 6th of November, and on the following day Blucher surrendered at Swartau with his army, which was now reduced to less than 10,000 men. A body of 1,600 Swedes, on their way home from Lauenburg, who had been detained by contrary winds at the mouth of the Trave, were also compelled to lay down their arms.

The surrender of the army under general Blucher left no corps of Prussians in the field upon the German side of the Oder; and his obstinate and skilful resistance, as it was the most glorions, so it was the last of their exertions to avert the total ruin and downfal of their monarchy. Their fortified places seemed emulous which should first open its gates to the enemy, and those, which were best supplied with the means of defence, were commonly the first to surrender. When Spandau capitulated,* the French observed, that, well defended, it might have sustained a siege of two months after the trenches had been opened. Stettin surrendered on capitulation to the first column of French troops, which appeared before it,

who found to their surprise, that it contained a garrison of 6000 fine looking troops, 160 pieces of cannon, and abundant magazines of all sorts. Custrin, a place of considerable strength, and of great importance on account of its situation upon the

* Oct. 21. † Oct. 29.

Oder, surrendered to marshal Da voust as soon as it was invested and summoned, though its garrison consisted of 4000 men amply provided with magazines. Magdeburg, the bulwark of the Prussian monarchy on its western frontier, capitulated to marshal Ney§ after a few bombs had been thrown into the city; and Hameln, the chief fortress of the electorate of Hanover, had not even that excuse for its surrender. In Magdeburg were found 22,000 troops, including 2000 artillery men and in Hameln there was a Prussian garrison of 9000 men, with six months provisions and stores and ammunition of every kind.' The French general, to whom the place was given up, had no forces with him, except two Dutch regiments and a single regiment of French light infautry. Never were the effects of panic terror more visible or more fatal than in these occurrences. The battle of Auerstadt had deprived the Prussians of all courage and confidence, and seemed even to have bereft them of understanding.

While the grand French army was proceeding in this uninterrupted course of victory and success, an inferior army, assembled at Wesel under the command of Louis Bonaparte, the newly created king of Holland, overran the Prussian provinces of Westphalia, and penetrated into the electorate of Hanover; and a still smaller corps under general Dandaels took possession of Emden and East Friezeland. At Munster and other places, valuable magazines fell into the hands of the invaders; and no resistance was any where made to them.

Hameln

Hameln was given up to general Savory in the manner already related, and Nienberg, the last place of the electorate held by the Prussians, capitulated a few days afterwards. The surrender of Plassenberg, a small fortress in the territory of Bayreuth, completed the conquest of the Prussian fortresses in Germany to the west of the Oder.

In the mean time marshal Mortier, who had formerly commanded in in Hanover, after taking possession of Fulda in the name of his sovereign, made a sudden irruption into Hesse, and expelled the elector from his capital and dominions. The pretences for this violence, were the ancient treaties of subsidy and alliance between Hesse and England, and certain acts of the present elector and of the hereditary prince before the battle of Auerstadt, inconsistent with the neutrality which they professed. The fortresses of Ilanau and Marburg were ordered to be destroyed; the magazines and arsenals to be removed; the Hessian troops to be disarmed and disbanded; and the sovereign arms of Hesse Cassel to be every where taken down. Resistance to these orders, which must have been fruitless, was not attempted by the elector. The Hessian troops suffered themselves to be disarmed, and part of them engaged in the service of France. But, though possession was thus peaceably obtained of Hesse, such was the severity of the contributions and other vexations imposed on the inhabitants, and such their dread of the French conscription being introduced among them, that to

* Nov. 25.

on the 34-to October.

wards the close of the present year, the country people flew to arms against their oppressors, and joined by the disbanded Hessian soldiers, surprised and defeated some French detachments quartered in the vil lages. Similar insurrections broke, out at Lingen in Westphalia, and at Bayreuth and other places. But, these disturbances, though harassing and alarming to the French, then engaged in carrying on war in the heart of Poland, were suppressed without difficulty, and the authors of them punished and disarmed.

While the elector of Hesse was thus expelled from his dominions, because he had sold the blood of his subjects to England, and because his existence on the frontiers of the French empire was incompatible with its safety; the duke of Mecklenburg Schwerin was exposed to the same fate, + because he was related to the emperor of Russia, and because the Russians had taken unjust possession of Moldavia and Wallachia. As in these instances the princes, thus despoiled of their territories, had observed the strict. est neutrality in the late hostilities, it was natural that the houses of Brunswick Lunenburg and Brunswick Wolfenbuttel, which had taken an active part in the war, should be deprived of their states by the same authority. Within ten days after the battle of Auerstadt the house of Brunswick was declared to have lost the sovereignty of its ancestors; and soon after the occupation of Hesse, Mortier marched into Hanover, and took formal possession of the electorate. Of all the princes of

Prussia in the war, none were treated with clemency or indulgence by the French emperor, except the elector of Saxony and the princes of the house of Saxe. By a treaty signed at Posen on the 11th of December the elector was de clared king of Saxony, and he and the other princes of the house of Saxe were admitted into the confederation of the Rhine, and received under that denomination among the new vassals of the French empire. The dukes of Saxe Weimar and Saxe Goth were in the number of princes, who consented to hold their dominions upon these terms.

From Hesse and Hanover Mor tier proceeded to Hamburgh, which he entered without opposition on the 19th of November, and next day he issued an order for the sequestration of all English produce and manufactures found in the city, whether belonging to English sub. facts or to other persons. Statements were demanded from the merchants and bankers, of the English manufactures or funds arising from the sale of English manufactures in their possession; domiciliary visits were threatened to enforce compliance; and those who gave false returns, were menaced with summary punishment by martial law. To strike greater terror, the English merchants at Hamburgh were put under arrest, and though afterwards released on their parole, they were placed under a guard of soldiers, and threatened to be sent to Verdun. These acts of violence brought less profit to the French, than they did harm to the Hamburghers. The trade of Hamburgh was annihilated, while

manufactures confiscated was inconsiderable. Before the armed force sent to Cuxhaven to stop the English vessels at the mouth of the river, arrived at that place, the merchantmen apprised of their danger had made their escape The seizure of Hamburgh had been long foreseen, and though the French minister in that city persisted to the last in his declarations that its neutrality would be respected, little credit had been given to his assurances. The fate of Leipzig had been a warning to the merchants of Hamburgh. No exertions had been spared by the factors and commercial agents of the English, in disposing of their goods and winding up their concerus before the arrival of Mortier and his army; so that, after all, the most valuable prize from this expedition proved to be the corn found in the magazines of Hamburgh, great quantities of which were sent to Berlin, where apprehensions of famine began to be entertained.

But the order for confiscating English property at Hamburgh, and the rigorous though ineffectual measures taken to enforce it, were not insulated acts of violence and rapacity, but parts of an extensive plan for excluding the produce of English industry from the conti nent, which the French emperor, in his present intoxication of suc cess, vainly imagined he had power to accomplish. This new system of warfare he promulgated at Berlin on the 20th of November, in a decree interdicting all commerce and correspondence, direct or indi rect, between the British dominions and the countries subject to his controul. By this decree the Bri

tish islands were declared to be in a state of blockade ; all subjects of England found in countries occupied by French troops were declared prisoners of war, and all English property was declared lawfal prize; all letters addressed to Englishmen or written in the English language were ordered to be stopped; all commerce in English produce and manufactures was prohibited; and all vessels touching at England or any English colony, were excluded from every harbour under the controul of France. The pretext for these infringements of the law and practice of civilized nations was founded, partly, on the extension given by England to the right of blockade, and partly on the difference in the laws of war by sea and by land. By land the property of an enemy is not considered lawful prize, unless it belongs to the hostile state. By sea the property of unarmed, peaceable merchants is liable to capture and confiscation. By land no one is considered a prisoner of war who is not taken with arms in his hands. By sea the crews of merchantmen are considered prisoners of war equally with the crews of armed vessels. For these reasons the French emperor declared, that the regulations of the decrce, which he now promulgated, "should be regarded as a fundamental law of the French empire, till England recognized the law of war to be one and the same by sea and by land, and in no case applicable to private property or to individuals not bearing arms; and till she consented to restrict the right of blockade to fortified places actually invested by a sufficient force."

On these reasons we shall merely

observe, that the superiority of England by sea being at that time. as great and undisputed as the superiority of France was by land, the difference between the laws of war by sea and by land was entirely to the advantage of England and to the disadvantage of France; and in these circumstances it was not unnatural for the French emperor to attempt either to confine hostilities at sea within the same limits to which they were restricted by land, or to extend to a war by land all the rights claimed and exercised by belligerents at sea. But, though it was the interest of France to attempt such an innovation in public law, the decree was not less an innovation of the most pernicious kind, on account of its tendency to revive the ancient laws of war, which the progress of civilization had gradually softened. Nor was the assertion in the preamble of the decree less a falsehood, that the conduct of England is not conformable to the law followed by other civilized states, and laid down and approved of as the law of nations; for the law of England with respect to blockade and capture at sea is the same, which all writers on public law have held, and all nations, France not exceptcd, have followed. That part of the decree, which declared the British islands to be in a state of blockade, at a time when the fleets of France and her allies were confined within their ports by the naval forces of England, was an empty menace, which the French government had no power to enforce, nor as it afterwards appeared, any intention to act upon. But those parts of the decree which prohibited all commerce in English produce or manufactures,