With the morning of the second, Napoleon could scarcely restrain his ardor.  The enthusiasm of the army knew no bounds.  On the night before, the Emperor, in his gray coat, had gone the circle of the camps, and the soldiers, extemporizing straw torches to light the way, ran before him.  Looking eagerly through the gray dawn, he saw the enemy badly arranged, or moving dangerously in broken masses under the cover of a Moravian fog.  Presently the fog lifted, and the sun burst out in splendor.  The onset of the French was irresistible.  The allied centre was pierced.  The Austrian and Russian emperors with their armies were sent flying in utter rout and panic from the field.  Thirty thousand Russians and Austrians were killed, wounded and taken.  Alexander barely escaped capture.  Before sunset the Third Coalition was broken into fragments and blown away.  At the conference between Napoleon and Francis, two days afterward, at the Mill of Sar-Uschitz, some of the French officers overheard the father of Maria Louisa lie to her future husband, thus:  “I promise not to fight you any more.”

“FRIEDLAND—­1807.”

Whoever visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Central Park, New York, is likely to pause before a great historical painting by Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier.  The picture is entitled “Friedland—­1807.”  There goes a critical opinion that, though common fame would have Austerlitz to be the greatest battle of the Napoleonic wars, the palm ought really to be given to Friedland.  At any rate, the martial splendor of that day has been caught by the vision and brush of Meissonier, and delivered, in what is probably the most splendid painting in America, to the immortality of art.

Let us note the great movements that preceded the climax of Friedland.  In the summer of 1806, the historical conditions in Europe favored a general peace.  Pitt was dead, and Fox agreed with Napoleon that a peace might now be secured by the restoration of Hanover to England.  Suddenly, however, on the thirteenth of September, 1806, Fox died, and by the incoming of Lauderdale the whole complexion was changed.  Toryism again ran rampant.  The Anglo-Russo-Prussian intrigue was renewed, and the rash Frederick William sent a peremptory challenge to Napoleon to get himself out of Germany.

The Emperor had in truth agreed to withdraw his forces, but the Czar Alexander had also agreed to relinquish certain vantage grounds which he held—­and had not done it.  Therefore Napoleon’s army corps would remain in Germany.  Frederick William suddenly declared war, and in a month after the death of Fox, Napoleon concentrated in Saxe-Weimar an army of a hundred thousand men.  Then, on the fourteenth of October, 1806, was fought the dreadful battle of Jena, in which the Prussians lost 12,000 in killed and wounded, and 15,000 prisoners.  On the same day, Davout fell upon a division of 50,000 under the Duke of Brunswick and Frederick William in person, and won another signal victory which cost the Germans about ten thousand men.