The intelligence of the march of the Russian and Prussian troops; who were descending the Elbe, increased the prevailing agitation in Westphalia, Hanover, Mecklenburg, and Pomerania, and all the French troops cantoned between Berlin and Hamburg, including those who occupied the coast of the Baltic, fell back upon Hamburg.  General Carra St. Cyr and Baron Konning, the Prefect of Hamburg, used to go every evening to Altona.  The latter, worn out by anxiety and his unsettled state of life, lost his reason; and on his way to Hamburg, on the 5th of May, he attempted to cut his throat with a razor.  His ‘valet de chambre’ saved his life by rushing upon him before he had time to execute his design.  It was given out that he had broken a blood-vessel, and he was conveyed to Altona, where his wound was cured, and he subsequently recovered from his derangement.  M. Konning, who was a native of Holland, was a worthy man, but possessed no decision of character, and but little ability.

At this juncture exaggerated reports were circulated respecting the approach of a Russian corps.  A retreat was immediately ordered, and it was executed on the 12th of March.  General Carra St. Cyr having no money for the troops, helped himself to 100,000 francs out of the municipal treasury.  He left Hamburg at the head of the troops and the enrolled men of the custom-house service.  He was escorted by the Burgher Guard, which protected him from the insults of the populace; and the good people of Hamburg never had any visitors of whom they were more happy to be rid.

This sudden retreat excited Napoleon’s indignation.  He accused General St. Cyr of pusillanimity, in an article inserted in the ‘Moniteur’, and afterwards copied by his order into all the journals.  In fact, had General St. Cyr been better informed, or less easily alarmed, he might have kept Hamburg, and prevented its temporary occupation by the enemy, to dislodge whom it was necessary to besiege the city two months afterwards.  St. Cyr had 3000 regular troops, and a considerable body of men in the custom-house service.  General Morand could have furnished him with 5000 men from Mecklenburg.  He might, therefore, not only have kept possession of Hamburg two months longer, but even to the end of the war, as General Lexnarrois retained possession of Magdeburg.  Had not General St. Cyr so hastily evacuated the Elbe he would have been promptly aided by the corps which General Vandamme soon brought from the Wesel, and afterwards by the very, corps with which Marshal Davoust recaptured Hamburg.

The events just described occurred before Napoleon quitted Paris.  In the month of August all negotiation was broken off with Austria, though that power, still adhering to her time-serving policy, continued to protest fidelity to the cause of the Emperor Napoleon until the moment when her preparations were completed and her resolution formed.  But if there was duplicity at Vienna was there not folly, nay, blindness, in the