the
unhappy capital to terms; Maximilian marched out at midnight on the
eleventh, and on the twelfth Napoleon returned to the neighboring
palace of Schoenbrunn, where he had already established his
headquarters. The news which arrived from day to day was most
encouraging. Poniatowski was again in possession of Warsaw, which the
Archduke Ferdinand had evacuated in order to rejoin his brother
Charles. The Archduke John, flying before Macdonald, had passed the
Carinthian mountains into Hungary, where the liberal movement
threatened Austrian rule. The Bavarians, after desperate fighting
under Lefebvre, had driven the Tyrolese rebels from Innsbruck. It
seemed a proper time to complete, if possible, the demoralization of
the whole Austrian empire before crossing the Danube to annihilate its
military force. Francis had sown the wind in his declaration of war:
he must reap the whirlwind.

From the beginning Napoleon had made the most of his enemy's being the
aggressor. There were no terms too harsh for the "Moniteur" to apply
when speaking of the hostile court and the resisting populations. The
Emperor's proclamations reveled in abuse of the Tyrolese and of
Schill. The latter was a Prussian partizan who, having distinguished
himself after Jena, was now striving to use the Austrian war in order
to arouse the North Germans. He had already gathered a few desperate
patriots, and in open hostility was defying constituted authority with
the intention of calling his country to arms. The news of Eckmuehl had
destroyed his chances of success, and he was soon to end his gallant
but ill-starred career in a final stand at Stralsund, whither he had
retreated. He was stigmatized by Napoleon as a "sort of robber, who
had covered himself with crimes in the last Prussian campaign." In
repeated public utterances the Emperor of Austria was characterized as
cowardly, thankless, and perjured, while the Viennese were addressed
as "good people, abandoned and widowed." The last acts of their flying
rulers had been murder and arson; "like Medea, they had with their own
hands strangled their own children."

This policy of wooing the people while abusing their rulers had been
successfully undertaken in Italy, and continued with varying results
from that day. No more effective revolutionary engine could have been
devised for Europe in Napoleon's age. The specious statements of the
Emperor were based on truth, and while the idea they expressed was
dist