master.[47] After thus disconcerting the envoy and upbraiding him with the Treaty of Potsdam, Napoleon unmasked his battery by offering Prussia the Electorate of Hanover in return for the comparatively petty sacrifices of Ansbach to Bavaria, and Cleves and Neufchatel to France.  For the loss of these outlying districts Prussia could buy that long-coveted land.[48] The envoy was dazzled by this glittering offer, and by others that followed.  The conqueror proposed an offensive and defensive alliance, whereby France and Prussia mutually guaranteed their lands along with prospective additions in Germany and Italy; and the Court of Berlin was also to uphold the independence of Turkey.

Such were the terms that Napoleon peremptorily required Haugwitz to sign within a few hours:  and the bearer of Prussia’s ultimatum on December 15th signed this Treaty of Schoenbrunn, which degraded the would-be arbitress of Europe to her former position of well-fed follower of France.  This was the news which Haugwitz brought back to his astonished King.  His reception was of the coolest; for Frederick William was an honest man, who sought peace, prosperity, and the welfare of his people, and now saw himself confronted by the alternative of war or national humiliation.  In truth, every turn and double of his course was now leading him deeper into the discredit and ruin which will be described in the next chapter.

Leaving for the present that unhappy King amidst his increasing perplexities, we return to the affairs of Austria.  Mack’s disaster alone had cast that Government into the depths of despair, and we learn from Lord Gower, our ambassador at St. Petersburg, that he had seen copies of letters written by the Emperor Francis to Napoleon “couched in terms of humility and submission unworthy of a great monarch,” to which the latter replied in a tone of superiority and affected commiseration, and with a demand for the Hapsburg lands in Venetia and Swabia.[49]

The same tone of whining dejection was kept up by Cobenzl and other Austrian Ministers, even before Austerlitz, when Prussia was on the point of drawing the sword; and they sent offers of peace, when it was rather for their foe to sue for it.  After that battle, and, still more so, after signing the armistice of December 6th, they were at the conqueror’s mercy; and Napoleon knew it.  After probing the inner weakness of the Berlin Court, he now pressed with merciless severity on the Hapsburgs.  He proposed to tear away their Swabian and Tyrolese lands and their share of the spoils of Venice.  In vain did the Austrian plenipotentiaries struggle against these harsh terms, pleading for Tyrol and Dalmatia, and pointing out the impossibility of raising 100,000,000 francs from territories ravaged by war.  In vain did they proffer a claim to Hanover for one of their Archdukes:  though Talleyrand urged the advantage of this step as dissolving the Anglo-Austrian alliance, yet Napoleon refused to hear of it; for at that time he was offering that Electorate to Haugwitz.[50] Still less would he hear a word in favour of the Court of Naples, whose conduct had aroused his resentment.  The utmost that the Austrian envoys could wring from him was the reduction of the war contribution to 40,000,000 francs.