About the end of September the Hamburg exchange on Paris fell alarmingly.  The loss was twenty per cent.  The fall stopped at seventeen below par.  The speculation for this fall of the exchange had been made with equal imprudence and animosity by the house of Osy and Company.

The head of that house, a Dutch emigrant, who had been settled at Hamburg about six years, seized every opportunity of manifesting his hatred of France.  An agent of that rich house at Rotterdam was also very hostile to us, a circumstance which shows that if many persons sacrifice their political opinions to their interests there are others who endanger their interests for the triumph of their opinions.

On the 23d of October 1805 I received official intelligence of the total destruction of the first Austrian army:  General Barbou, who was in Hanover, also informed me of that event in the following terms:  “The first Austrian army has ceased to exist.”  He alluded to the brilliant affair of Ulm.  I immediately despatched twelve estafettes to different parts; among other places to Stralsund and Husum.  I thought that these prodigies, which must have been almost incredible to those who were unacquainted with Napoleon’s military genius, might arrest the progress of the Russian troops, and produces some change in the movements of the enemy’s forces.  A second edition of the ‘Correspondent’ was published with this intelligence, and 6000 copies were sold at four times the usual price.

I need not detain the reader with the details of the capitulation of Ulm, which have already been published, but I may relate the following anecdote, which is not generally known.  A French general passing before the ranks of his men said to them, “Well, comrades, we have prisoners enough here.”—­“yes indeed,” replied one of the soldiers, “we never saw so many . . . collected together before.”  It was stated at the time, and I believe it, that the Emperor was much displeased when he heard of this, and remarked that it was “atrocious to insult brave men to whom the fate of arms had proved unfavourable.”

In reading the history of this period we find that in whatever place Napoleon happened to be, there was the central point of action.  The affairs of Europe were arranged at his headquarters in the same manner as if he had been in Paris.  Everything depended on his good or bad fortune.  Espionage, seduction, false promises, exactions,—­all were put in force to promote the success of his projects; but his despotism, which excited dissatisfaction in France, and his continual aggressions, which threatened the independence of foreign States, rendered him more and more unpopular everywhere.

The battle of Trafalgar took place while Napoleon was marching on Vienna, and on the day after the capitulation of Ulm.  The southern coast of Spain then witnessed an engagement between thirty-one French and about an equal number of English ships, and in spite of this equality of force the French fleet was destroyed.—­[The actual forces present were 27 English ships of the line and 38 Franco-Spanish ships of the line; see James’ Naval History, vol. iii. p. 459.]