Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt:...he refused to yield an inch of the territory he had seized, and so the war was renewed in the summer of 1813. As before, the brunt of the war fell upon the Prussians. Bernadotte, the general of the Swedish army, was placed in command of all the troops to the northward. He had been a marshal of Napoleon, and was slow to attack his old commander. Napoleon was determined to capture Berlin, and sent an army of eighty thousand men against it. Bernadotte, retreating as the French advanced, would have yielded the city; but the Prussian general Bulow, after fierce remonstrance with Bernadotte, deliberately defied him, and with his own division attacked the French at Gross-beeren, ten miles from Berlin (August 22, 1813). The Prussian infantry finding their guns too wet with rain to fire used them as clubs, and charged their foes with such fury that, unaided, they drove the French to flight. Three days later a second French force, coming to join their comrades, were assailed by the maddened Prussians in the same manner at Hagelberg with bayonets and clubbed muskets, and almost annihilated. The allied sovereigns gave all the credit for these victories to Bernadotte, and conferred upon him the highest dignities and orders of merit. Napoleon sent a third army, seventy thousand strong, and commanded by his bravest marshal, Ney, against these "poor militia." On September 6, a portion of the Prussians were attacked at Dennewitz. Again Bernadotte held back until one Prussian corps after another, in flat defiance of his orders, marched to the help of their comrades. General Bulow commanded on the field and, with an increasing force of Prussians that at last reached their full strength of fifty thousand, completely defeated Ney's entire army. At the same...