The junction of the corps commanded by Bernadotte with the army of the Emperor was very important, and Napoleon therefore directed the Marshal to come up with him as speedily as possible, and by the shortest road.  It was necessary he should arrive in time for the battle of Austerlitz.  Gustavus, King of Sweden, who was always engaged in some enterprise, wished to raise an army composed of Swedes, Prussians, and English; and certainly a vigorous attack in the north would have prevented Bernadotte from quitting the banks of the Elbe and the Weser, and reinforcing the Grand Army which was marching on Vienna.  But the King of Sweden’s coalition produced no other result than the siege of the little fortress of Hameln.

Prussia would not come to a rupture with France, the King of Sweden was abandoned, and Bonaparte’s resentment against him increased.  This abortive project of Gustavus contributed not a little to alienate the affections of his subjects, who feared that they might be the victims of the revenge excited by the extravagant plans of their King, and the insults he had heaped upon Napoleon, particularly since the death of the Due d’Enghien.

On the 13th of September 1805 I received a letter from the Minister of Police soliciting information about Swedish Pomerania.

Astonished at not obtaining from the commercial Consuls at Lubeck and Stettin any accounts of the movements of the Russians, I had sent to those ports, four days before the receipt of the Police Minister’s letter, a confidential agent, to observe the Baltic:  though we were only 64 leagues from Stralsund the most uncertain and contradictory accounts came to hand.  It was, however, certain that a landing of the Russians was expected at Stralsund, or at Travemtinde, the port of Lubeck, at the mouth of the little river Trave.  I was positively informed that Russia had freighted a considerable number of vessels for those ports.

The hatred of the French continued to increase in the north of Europe.  About the end of September there appeared at Kiel, in Denmark, a libellous pamphlet, which was bought and read with inconceivable avidity.  This pamphlet, which was very ably written, was the production of some fanatic who openly preached a crusade against France.  The author regarded the blood of millions of men as a trifling sacrifice for the great object of humiliating France and bringing her back to the limits of the old monarchy.  This pamphlet was circulated extensively in the German departments united to France, in Holland, and in Switzerland.  The number of incendiary publications which everywhere abounded indicated but too plainly that if the nations of the north should be driven back towards the Arctic regions they would in their turn repulse their conquerors towards the south; and no man of common sense could doubt that if the French eagles were planted in foreign capitals, foreign standards would one day wave over Paris.

On the 30th of September 1805 I received, by an ‘estafette’, intelligence of the landing at Stralsund of 6000 Swedes, who had arrived from Stockholm in two ships of war.