responsibility of every important act.  And yet there were able generals who could have acted with effect, even if they fell short of the opinion hopefully bruited by General Ruechel, that “several were equal to M. de Bonaparte.”  Events were to prove that Gneisenau, Scharnhorst, and Bluecher rivalled the best of the French Marshals; but in this war their lights were placed under bushels and only shone forth when the official covers had been shattered.  Scharnhorst, already renowned for his strategic and administrative genius, took part in some of the many councils of war where everything was discussed and little was decided; but his opinion had no weight, for on October 7th he wrote:  “What we ought to do I know right well, what we shall do only the gods know."[103] He evidently referred to the need of concentration.  At that time the thin Prussian lines were spread out over a front of eighty-five miles, the Saxons being near Gera, the chief army, under Brunswick, at Erfurth, while Ruechel was so far distant on the west that he could only come up at Jena just one hour too late to avert disaster.

And yet with these weak and scattered forces, Prince Hohenlohe proposed a bold move forward to the Main.  Brunswick, on the other hand, counselled a prudent defensive; but he could not, or would not, enforce his plan; and the result was an oscillation between the two extremes.  Had he massed all his forces so as to command the valleys of the Saale and Elster near Jena and Gera, the campaign might possibly have been prolonged until the Russians came up.  As it was, the allies dulled the ardour of their troops by marches, counter-marches, and interminable councils-of-war, while Napoleon’s columns were threading their way along those valleys at the average rate of fifteen miles a day, in order to turn the allied left and cut the connection between Prussia and Saxony.[104]

The first serious fighting was on October the 10th at Saalfeld, where Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia with a small force sought to protect Hohenlohe’s flank march westwards on Jena.  The task was beyond the strength even of this flower of Prussian chivalry.  He was overpowered by the weight and vigour of Lannes’ attack, and when already wounded in a cavalry melee was pierced through the body by an officer to whom he proudly refused to surrender.  The death of this hero, the “Alcibiades” of Prussia, cast a gloom over the whole army, and mournful faces at headquarters seemed to presage yet worse disasters.  Perhaps it was some inkling of this discouragement, or a laudable desire to stop “an impolitic war,” that urged Napoleon two days later to pen a letter to the King of Prussia urging him to make peace before he was crushed, as he assuredly would be.  In itself the letter seems admirable—­until one remembers the circumstances of the case.  The King had pledged his word to the Czar to make war; if, therefore, he now made peace and sent the Russians back, he would once more stand condemned of preferring dishonourable ease to the noble hazards of an affair of honour.  As Napoleon was aware of the union of the King and Czar, this letter must be regarded as an attempt to dissolve the alliance and tarnish Frederick William’s reputation.  It was viewed in that light by that monarch; and there is not a hint in Napoleon’s other letters that he really expected peace.