r. Her fortresses were
surrendered without resistance, and Napoleon, in less than a
fortnight, occupied Berlin. On the twenty-first of November, he issued
from that city his celebrated Berlin decree, declaring the British
Islands in a state of blockade, and interdicting all correspondence
and trade with England! The property of British subjects, under a wide
schedule of liabilities, was declared contraband of war.

Meanwhile the aid promised to Prussia by the Czar had been too slow
for the lightning that struck at Jena. The oncoming Russians reached
the Vistula, but were forced back by the victorious French, who took
possession of Warsaw. There the Emperor established his winter
quarters, and remained for nearly three months, engaged in the
preparation of new plans of conquest and new schemes for the
pacification of Europe.

After Jena, Prussia, though crushed, remained belligerent. Her
shattered forces drew off to the borders, and were joined by the
Russians in East Prussia. The campaign of 1807 opened here. On the
eighth of February, the French army, about 70,000 strong, advanced
against the allies, commanded by Benningsen and Lestocq. At the town
of Eylau, about twenty miles from Koenigsberg, a great but indecisive
battle was fought, in which each army suffered a loss of nearly
eighteen thousand men. The Russians and Prussians fell back about four
miles to Friedland, and both armies were reinforced, the French to
about eighty thousand, and the allies to approximately the same
number.

Here for a season the two great camps were pitched against each other.
The shock of Eylau and the inclemency of the spring, no less than the
political complications that thickened on every horizon, held back the
military movements until the beginning of summer. But at length the
crisis came. On the fourteenth of June was fought the great battle of
Friedland and the allied army was virtually destroyed. The loss of the
Russians and Prussians was more than twenty-five thousand men, while
the French loss was not quite eight thousand. Napoleon commanded in
person, and his triumph was prodigious.

Let not the visitor to the Metropolitan Museum fail to look long and
attentively on the picture of the scene which represents the beginning
of the battle on the side of the French. There on a slight elevation,
in the wheatfield of June, sitting on his white horse, with his
triangular hat lifted in silent salutation, surrounded by the princes
a