Popular feeling was deeply moved by this craven compliance with French behests.  The officers of the Berlin garrison serenaded the patriotic statesman, while Haugwitz twice had his windows smashed.  Public opinion, it is true, counted for little in Prussia.  The rigorous separation of classes, the absence of popular education, the complete subjection of the journals to Government, and the mutual jealousy of soldiers and civilians, prevented any general expression of opinion in that almost feudal society.

But when the people of Ansbach piteously begged not to be handed over to Bavaria, and forthwith saw their land occupied by the French before Prussia had ratified the cession of that principality; when the North Germans found that the gain of Hanover by Prussia was at the price of war with England and the ruin of their commerce; when it was seen that Frederick William and Haugwitz had clipped the wings of the Prussian eagle till it shunned a fight with the Gallic cock, a feeling of shame and indignation arose which proved that the limits of endurance had been reached.  Observers saw that, after all, the old German feeling was not dead; it was only torpid; and forces were beginning to work which threatened ruin to the Hohenzollerns if they again tarnished the national honour.[77]

Meanwhile the first overtures for peace were exchanged between Paris, London, and St. Petersburg.  In the spring of 1806 there seemed some ground for hope that Europe might find repose, at least on land, after fourteen years of almost constant war.  France was no longer Jacobinical.  Under Napoleon she had quickly fallen into line with the monarchical States, and the questions now at stake merely related to boundaries and the balance of power.  The bellicose ardour of the Czar had melted away at Austerlitz.  The seizure of Hanover by Prussia moved him but little, and he sought to compose the resulting strife.  As for the other Powers, they were either helpless or torpid.  The King of Sweden was venting his spleen upon Prussia.  Italy, South Germany, Holland, and Spain were at Napoleon’s beck; and the policy of England under the new Grenville-Fox Ministry inclined strongly towards peace.  There seemed, then, every chance of founding the supremacy of France upon lasting foundations, if the claims of Britain and Austria received reasonable satisfaction.  Napoleon also seems to have wanted peace for the consolidation of his power in Europe and the extension of his colonies and commerce.  As at the close of all his land campaigns, his thoughts turned to the East, and on January 31st, 1806, he issued orders to Decres which, far from showing any despair as to the French navy, foreshadowed a vigorous naval and colonial policy; while his moves on the Dalmatian coast, and the despatch of Sebastiani on a mission to the Porte, revealed the magnetic attraction which the Levant still had for him.