would have wished the Austrian troops to advance a little farther.  The English agent made some representations on this subject to Stadion, the Austrian Minister; but the Archduke preferred making a diversion to committing the safety of the monarchy by departing from his present inactivity and risking the passage of the Danube, in the face of an enemy who never suffered himself to be surprised, and who had calculated every possible event:  In concerting his plan the Archduke expected that the Czar would either detach a strong force to assist his allies, or that he would abandon them to their own defence.  In the first case 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 Wismar.  It was commanded by Count Moleke, who had formerly been in the Prussian service, and who had retired to his estate in Mecklenburg, where the Duke had kindly given him an appointment.  Forgetting his duty to his benefactor, he sent to summon the Duke to surrender Stralsund.