ts could not be attained without some friction." In this hope
they were encouraged by the French ambassador, the man who had enticed
Prussia to her demobilization. He was charged by Talleyrand to report
at Berlin that "peace with England would be made, as well as with
Russia, if France had consented to the restitution of Hanover.--I have
renewed," added Laforest, "the assurance that the Emperor [Napoleon]
would never yield on this point."

And yet at that very time the French Foreign Office was at work upon a
Project of a Treaty in which the restitution of Hanover to George III.
was expressly named and received the assent of Napoleon.[93] The
Prussian ambassador, Lucchesini, had some inkling of this from French
sources,[94] as well as from Lord Yarmouth, and on July 28th penned a
despatch which fell like a thunderbolt on the optimists of Berlin. It
crossed on the way--such is the irony of diplomacy--a despatch from
Berlin that required him to show unlimited confidence in Napoleon.
From confidence the King now rushed to the opposite extreme, and saw
Napoleon's hand in all the friction of the last few weeks.

Here again he was wrong; for the French Emperor had held back Murat
and the other hot-bloods of the army who were longing to measure
swords with Prussia.[95] His correspondence proves that his first
thoughts were always in the Mediterranean. For one page that he wrote
about German affairs he wrote twenty to Joseph or Eugene on the need
of keeping a firm hand and punishing Calabrian rebels--"shoot three
men in every village"--above all, on the plans for conquering Sicily.
It was therefore with real surprise that on August 16th-18th he learnt
from a purloined despatch of Lucchesini that the latter suspected him
of planning with the Czar the partition of Prussian Poland. He treated
the matter with contempt, and seems to have thought that Prussia would
meekly accept the morsels which he proposed to throw to her in place
of Hanover. But he misread the character of Frederick William, if he
thought so grievous an insult would be passed over, and he knew not
the power of the Prussian Queen to kindle the fire of patriotism.

Queen Louisa was at this time thirty years of age and in the flower of
that noble matronly beauty which bespoke a pure and exalted being. As
daughter of a poverty-stricken prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, her
youth had been spent in the homeliest fashion, until her charms won
the heart of the Crown Princ