If Sicily was the rock of stumbling between us and Napoleon, Hanover was the chief cause of the war between France and Prussia.  During the negotiations at Paris, Lord Yarmouth privately informed Lucchesini, the Prussian ambassador, that Talleyrand made no difficulty about the restitution of Hanover to George III.  The news, when forwarded to Berlin at the close of July, caused a nervous flutter in ministerial circles, where every effort was being made to keep on good terms with France.

Even before this news arrived, the task was far from easy.  Murat, when occupying his new Duchy of Berg, pushed on his troops into the old Church lands of Essen and Werden.  Prussia looked on these districts as her own, and the sturdy patriot Bluecher at once marched in his soldiers, tore down Murat’s proclamations, and restored the Prussian eagle with blare of trumpet and beat of drum.[91] A collision was with difficulty averted by the complaisance of Frederick William, who called back his troops and referred the question to lawyers; but even the King was piqued when the Grand-Duke of Berg sent him a letter of remonstrance on Bluecher’s conduct, commencing with the familiar address, Mon frere.

Bluecher meanwhile and the soldiery were eating out their hearts with rage, as they saw the French pouring across the Rhine, and constructing a bridge of boats at Wesel; and had they known that that important stronghold, the key of North Germany, was quietly declared to be a French garrison town, they would probably have forced the hands of the King.[92] For at this time Frederick William and Haugwitz were alarmed by the formation of the Rhenish Confederation, and were not wholly reassured by Napoleon’s suggestion that the abolition of the old Empire must be an advantage to Prussia.  They clutched eagerly, however, at his proposal that Prussia should form a league of the North German States, and made overtures to the two most important States, Saxony and Hesse-Cassel.  During a few halcyon days the King even proposed to assume the title Emperor of Prussia, from which, however, the Elector of Saxony ironically dissuaded him.  This castle in the air faded away when news reached Berlin at the beginning of August that Napoleon was seeking to bring the Elector of Hesse-Cassel into the Rhenish Confederation, and was offering as a bait the domains of some Imperial Knights and the principality of Fulda, now held by the Prince of Orange, a relative of Frederick William.  Moreover, the moves of the French troops in Thuringia were so threatening to Saxony that the Court of Dresden began to scout the project of a North German Confederation.

Still, the King and Haugwitz tried to persuade themselves that Napoleon meant well for Prussia, that England had been doing her utmost to make bad blood between the two allies, and that “great results 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.”