a war party led by the formidable Qu een Louise gained the upper hand in
Berlin and forced the reluctant king to a declaration of war; the fiasco
over Hanover had been an insult too far. Mobilization began on 9 August
and on 26 August came the Prussian ultimatum: Napoleon was to take his
troops back across the Rhine by 8 October or the two nations would be at
war. Yet the decision for war was a disastrous one. Prussia was now
fighting alone when a year ago she would have been in well-nigh
invincible combination with Austria and Russia. Prussia, with an army
ossified in the methods of Frederick the Great, was something of a
museum piece, bedevilled by old and useless generals, excessive
factionalism and negligible staffwork. And this was the force that would
be taking on Napoleon's Grand Army, now at the very peak of its power
in terms of numbers, equipment, efficiency and morale.
There was something comical too about the way the Prussian
leadership dithered about their intentions, unable to decide between three
different strategies. They compounded their error by not waiting for the
Russians, who resumed hostilities with France once they heard of the
Prussian ultimatum. So spectacular was Prussian incompetence that
Napoleon spent nearly a month devising counter-strategies on the
assumption Berlin must have some masterplan up its sleeve. Finally
convinced that he confronted merely bumbledom and that Austria would
not intervene, Napoleon set out for Mainz on 24 September, accompa
nied by Josephine and Talleyrand.
His aim was to destroy the Prussians before the Russians could arrive.
To bring the enemy to battle he decided on a drive for Berlin, first
concentrating the army in the Bamberg-Bayreuth area, then swinging
north through the Franconia forest towards Leipzig and Dresden, with
the Prussian capital always in his sights. He whipped up battle frenzy in
his troops by telling them that they had already been recalled to victory
festivities in Paris when Prussian treachery caused a change of plan.
Adopting his usual principles, Napoleon tried to foresee the unforesee
able and anticipate the unexpected. He put Brune on fu ll alert at
Boulogne against a possible British descent on the Channel coast and put
Eugene de Beauharnais's Army of Italy on a war footing just in case
Austria was tempted to enter the war. The final Prussian ultimatum,
delivered on 2 October, reached the French just twenty-four hours before
the deadline expired and allowed Bonaparte to present the Prussians to
French public opinion as warmongers. Then he made final preparations.
The Prussians seemed to be offending every canon of warfare by
menacing Bavaria with three separate armies that could be caught and
destroyed piecemeal. The Duke of Brunswick and Frederick William
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