His reception was of the coolest; for Frederick William was an honest man, who sought peace, prosperity, and the welfare of his people, and now saw himself confronted by the alternative of war or national humiliation.

In truth, every turn and double of his course was now leading him deeper into the discredit and ruin which will be described in the next chapter.
Leaving for the present that unhappy King amidst his increasing perplexities, we return to the affairs of Austria.

Mack's disaster alone had cast that Government into the depths of despair, and we learn from Lord Gower, our ambassador at St.Petersburg, that he had seen copies of letters written by the Emperor Francis to Napoleon "couched in terms of humility and submission unworthy of a great monarch," to which the latter replied in a tone of superiority and affected commiseration, and with a demand for the Hapsburg lands in Venetia and Swabia.[49] The same tone of whining dejection was kept up by Cobenzl and other Austrian Ministers, even before Austerlitz, when Prussia was on the point of drawing the sword; and they sent offers of peace, when it was rather for their foe to sue for it.

After that battle, and, still more so, after signing the armistice of December 6th, they were at the conqueror's mercy; and Napoleon knew it.

After probing the inner weakness of the Berlin Court, he now pressed with merciless severity on the Hapsburgs.