Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/281

MADAME DE STAfiL AND NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 273 cellars, public and private, for the supply of his various armies, assigning a half bottle of wine a day for each soldier of the two corps who had particularly distin- guished themselves at the battle of Jena. The nobility had abandoned their houses at his approach. He ordered all the mattresses and furniture to be taken from their houses which might be required for the comfort of his officers. He ordered also, that the city should furnish, at once, the cloth for a hundred thousand uniforms, a hun- dred thousand pairs of shoes, and a hundred thousand caps. " My intention is," this order concluded, " that Berlin should furnish me abundantly all that my army needs, and that nothing is to be considered except that my soldiers should have an abundance of everything they require." At the same time he assigned the abandoned houses of the nobility to his principal officers. It is indeed difficult. in the space to which I am restricted, to convey to the reader an adequate idea of the relentless vigilance with which this conqueror despoiled the German States of all that they possessed which could be useful to him. To one General he writes : " They tell me that there is a great deal of wine at Stettin. Take all of it, though there should be twenty millions' worth." Another, he orders to raise a German corps for service in Italy, because, as he explains, he wants " to get rid of those soldiers." To Marshal Ney he writes, in November : " Try your best to prevent the treasures in Magdeburg from being carried off. Have every baggage wagon and powder cart examined. The treasure chests of the regi- ments are in Magdeburg ; so are the army chests, and the large treasures belonging to the Prince. Lay hands upon everything." A hundred such sentences as these could be gleaned 17