Thirteen days after the great battle, Napoleon himself entered Berlin in triumph.  It was the first time that he allowed himself a victor’s privilege, and no pains were spared to impress the imagination of mankind by a parade of his choicest troops.  First came the foot grenadiers and chasseurs of the Imperial Guard:  behind the central group marched other squadrons and battalions of these veterans, already famed as the doughtiest fighters of their age.  In their midst came the mind of this military machine—­Napoleon, accompanied by three Marshals and a brilliant staff.  Among them men noted the plain, soldierlike Berthier, the ever trusty and methodical chief of the staff.  At his side rode Davoust, whose round and placid face gave little promise of his rapid rush to the front rank among the French paladins.  There too was the tall, handsome, threatening form of Augereau, whose services at Jena, meritorious as they were, scarcely maintained his fame at the high level to which it soared at Castiglione.  Then came Napoleon’s favourite aide-de-camp, Duroc, a short, stern, war-hardened man, well known in Berlin, where twice he had sought to rivet close the bonds of the French alliance.

Above all, the gaze of the awe-struck crowd was fixed on the figure of the chief, now grown to the roundness of robust health amidst toils that would have worn most men to a shadow; and on the face, no longer thin with the unsatisfied longings of youth, but square and full with toil requited and ambition wellnigh sated—­a visage redeemed from the coarseness of the epicure’s only by the knitted brows that bespoke ceaseless thought, and by the keen, melancholy, unfathomable eyes.

NOTE ADDED TO THE FOURTH EDITION

Several facts of considerable interest and importance respecting the Anglo-French negotiations of 1806 have been brought to light by M. Coquelle in his recently published work “Napoleon and England, 1803-1813,” chapters xi.-xvii. (George Bell and Sons, 1904).

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CHAPTER XXVI

THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM:  FRIEDLAND

    “I know full well that London is a corner of the world, and that
    Paris is its centre.”—­Letter of Napoleon, August 18th, 1806.

On the 21st of November, 1806, Napoleon issued at Berlin the decree which proclaimed open and unrelenting war on English industry and commerce, a war that was to embroil the whole civilized world and cease only with his overthrow.  After reciting his complaints against the English maritime code, he declared the British Isles to be in a state of blockade, interdicted all commerce with them, threatened seizure and imprisonment to English goods and subjects wherever found by French or allied troops, forbade all trade in English and colonial wares, and excluded from French and allied