their armies were
sent flying in utter rout and panic from the field. Thirty thousand
Russians and Austrians were killed, wounded and taken. Alexander
barely escaped capture. Before sunset the Third Coalition was broken
into fragments and blown away. At the conference between Napoleon and
Francis, two days afterward, at the Mill of Sar-Uschitz, some of the
French officers overheard the father of Maria Louisa lie to her future
husband, thus: "I promise not to fight you any more."

"FRIEDLAND--1807."

Whoever visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park, New
York, is likely to pause before a great historical painting by Jean
Louis Ernest Meissonier. The picture is entitled "Friedland--1807."
There goes a critical opinion that, though common fame would have
Austerlitz to be the greatest battle of the Napoleonic wars, the palm
ought really to be given to Friedland. At any rate, the martial
splendor of that day has been caught by the vision and brush of
Meissonier, and delivered, in what is probably the most splendid
painting in America, to the immortality of art.

Let us note the great movements that preceded the climax of Friedland.
In the summer of 1806, the historical conditions in Europe favored a
general peace. Pitt was dead, and Fox agreed with Napoleon that a
peace might now be secured by the restoration of Hanover to England.
Suddenly, however, on the thirteenth of September, 1806, Fox died, and
by the incoming of Lauderdale the whole complexion was changed.
Toryism again ran rampant. The Anglo-Russo-Prussian intrigue was
renewed, and the rash Frederick William sent a peremptory challenge to
Napoleon to get himself out of Germany.

The Emperor had in truth agreed to withdraw his forces, but the Czar
Alexander had also agreed to relinquish certain vantage grounds which
he held--and had not done it. Therefore Napoleon's army corps would
remain in Germany. Frederick William suddenly declared war, and in a
month after the death of Fox, Napoleon concentrated in Saxe-Weimar an
army of a hundred thousand men. Then, on the fourteenth of October,
1806, was fought the dreadful battle of Jena, in which the Prussians
lost 12,000 in killed and wounded, and 15,000 prisoners. On the same
day, Davout fell upon a division of 50,000 under the Duke of Brunswick
and Frederick William in person, and won another signal victory which
cost the Germans about ten thousand men.

Prussia was utterly overwhelmed by the disaste