by establishing a formidable
power. However, to the first communication only an evasive answer was
returned. M. Van Sienen, the Syndic of Hamburg, was commissioned by the
Senate to inform the Prussian Minister that the affair required the
concurrence of the burghers, and that hefore he could submit it to them
it would be necessary to know its basis and conditions. Meanwhile the
Syndic Doormann proceeded to Lubeck, where there was also a deputy from
Bremen. The project of the Confederation, however, never came to
anything.

I scrupulously discharged the duties of my functions, but I confess I
often found it difficult to execute the orders I received, and more than
once I took it upon myself to modify their severity. I loved the frank
and generous character of the Hamburgers, and I could not help pity the
fate of the Hanse Towns, heretofore so happy, and from which Bonaparte
had exacted such immense sacrifices.

On the principal gate of the Hanse Towns is inscribed the following
motto, well expressing the pacific spirit of the people: 'Da nobis pacem,
Domine, in diebus nostris'. The paternal and elected government, which
did everything to secure the happiness of these towns, was led to believe
that the sacrifices imposed on them would be recompensed by the
preservation of their neutrality. No distrust was entertained, and hope
was kept alive by the assurances given by Napoleon. He published in the
Moniteur that the Hanse Towns could not be included in any particular
Confederation. He thus strangled in its birth the Confederation of the
North, to which those feeble States would otherwise have been obliged to
consent. When in 1806 Napoleon marched against Prussia, he detached
Marshal Mortier from the Grand Army when it had passed the Rhine, and
directed him to invade the Electorate of Hesse, and march on Hamburg. On
the 19th of November the latter town was occupied by the French army in
the name of the Emperor, amidst the utmost order and tranquillity.

I must acknowledge that I was under much apprehension as to this event.
At the intelligence of the approach of the French army consternation was
great and universal in Hamburg, which was anxious to maintain its
neutrality unimpaired. At the urgent request of the magistrates of the
city I assumed functions more than diplomatic, and became, in some
respects, the first magistrate of the town. I went to meet Marshal
Mortier to endeavour to dissuade him from entering. I thought