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 Cabinet
of the Tuileries? Could we reasonably rely upon Austria? She had seen
the Russian army pass the Vistula and advance as far as the Saale without
offering any remonstrance. At that moment a single movement of her
troops, a word of declaration, would have prevented everything. As,
therefore, she would not avert the evil when she might have done so with
certainty and safety, there must have been singular folly and blindness
in the Cabinet who saw this conduct and did not understand it.

I now proceed to mention the further misfortunes which occurred in the
north of Germany, and particularly at Hamburg. At fifteen leagues east
of Hamburg, but within its territory, is a village named Bergdorf.