Escape to England

1806–1811

Lindau begins his account in November 1806, when he was a teenager living in the town of Hamelin, in the north German state of Hanover.

Ever since 1714, when the Elector of Hanover had become King George I of Britain, the two countries had shared the same ruler, while remaining separate states. But Hanover, unlike Britain, was exposed on the mainland, and sandwiched between the stronger powers of France and Prussia. When the short-lived Peace of Amiens between Britain and France collapsed in May 1803, Napoleon ordered General Edouard Mortier to occupy Hanover with a French army. Two years later, in 1805, he offered the territory to Prussia, to induce her to remain neutral while he crushed the Austrian and Russian armies during the Austerlitz campaign.

Prussia duly acquired Hanover, but grew increasingly alarmed at Napoleon's growing power. The threat was starkly underlined in July 1806, when he grouped his German satellite states into a powerful bloc known as the Confederation of the Rhine, and thereby replaced Austria as the dominant power in central Europe. On 1 October, the Prussian King, Friedrich Wilhelm III, issued an ultimatum for all French forces to withdraw over the Rhine, and war immediately followed.

The result was a disaster for Prussia. Thrusting northeastwards from southern Germany towards Berlin, Napoleon smashed the Prussian armies at the twin battles of Jena and Auerstädt. He then exploited his victory with one of the most relentless and successful pursuits in military history, completing the destruction of the Prussian army and causing a whole series of fortresses to capitulate with minimal resistance.

One of these strongholds was Hamelin, whose commandant, Major-General von Schöler, was seventy-five years old. The town was occupied not by the Grande Armée under Napoleon's direct command, but by a detached corps of French and Dutch troops under Mortier, which advanced to take control of Hanover from the south-west. Hamelin was protected by such strong fortifications that it was known as the 'Gibraltar of the North', and its Prussian garrison actually outnumbered the forces brought against it, yet it surrendered without a fight on 20 November. As Lindau describes, the news of the capitulation destroyed the discipline of the Prussian troops, and caused widespread drunkenness and disorder.

The fortifications of Hamelin were subsequently demolished. Much of Hanover was incorporated into one of Napoleon's newly created satellite states, the Kingdom of Westphalia, while the northern part was directly annexed by the French Empire. Only in 1813 would Hanover be liberated, as Napoleon's power collapsed.

'A Terrible Night'

The night that preceded the day on which the town was surrendered to the French was terrible for the inhabitants of Hamelin. As the rumour spread that the commanding officer had capitulated and that the soldiers, separated from their officers, would be taken to France as prisoners of war, so they met full of bitterness and, without the orders of their superiors to obey, broke open the magazine on 20 November 1806 when it was dark. Soon after, masses of soldiers drunk on rum and wine marched with their weapons through the streets, shot into the windows and wounded each other. Others brought powder barrels on to the streets to blow the town into the air. The crowd, brought to desperation, uttering curses, surged towards the residence of the commandant, Major-General von Schöler, and certainly would have taken dreadful revenge on him for the betrayal had not the cavalry protected his house from the frenzied people.

While in this manner the storm of a liberated warlike horde raged on the streets of my home town, it was impossible for me to stay in the quiet little room of my parents, where my anxious father trembled before the terrible call of 'Fire!' and my mother with clasped hands called on heaven for help. I wanted to see what was happening outside; the desire for loot also attracted me. My parents begged me to stay with them and not to risk my life so carelessly; but in vain. I slunk up to the door, through the uproar on the streets and came to the Osterthor, where in the casemate I found a drunken Prussian soldier who didn't stop me from scooping up a bucketful of rum with which, I, protected by the dark, fortunately arrived back in front of our house. Meanwhile, in front of the house of our neighbours, where a captain had his quarters, his company assembled and was now just on the point of storming our house, from which some shots had fallen on the ranks. Someone shot through the closed shutters, wounded an old woman in the shoulder and killed a Prussian soldier who was in the lower room. The door of the house was broken; I came with a crowd into the house; someone stormed up the stairs and dragged my father out of the room since he was taken to be the originator of the shot. However, he succeeded in diverting the anger of the soldiers by protesting his innocence. They broke into another room that was barricaded; here they found some soldiers with rifles that had just been discharged. In his anger, the captain wanted to bayonet one of them, but the wife of the threatened man fell down, grasped the knee of the furious man and saved the life of her husband. However, she could not prevent the suspicious men striking him with a rifle butt and dragging the man to the guardhouse.

When it was quiet again in the house, I carried on; I wandered around the streets and watched the activity of the soldiers; here some of them who were no longer able to roll a barrel of rum swore; there a soldier fumed at a closed door and demanded that the householder buy a cask of rice; others smashed their weapons so that they did not fall intact into the hands of the hated French. Meanwhile I managed to collect eight undamaged rifles, fine polished weapons, for which I was heartily glad. I hurried home with them and hid them under a pile of roof tiles that lay in the yard. Then I ventured out again, it might have been about four o'clock in the morning, and I reached Bäckerstrasse, where my brother-in-law lived. All at once a crowd of Prussian soldiers stormed his house and demanded that he should buy what they offered for sale. I came soon enough to be able to help him. As he had made up his mind to refuse to comply with the soldiers' demands, one of them hit him with his bayonet. That was too much for us; we seized a pitchfork and forced the soldiers out of the house.

Meanwhile we met a peaceable man opposite. The householder bought from a Prussian soldier a large cask of raisins for a thaler. Next I hurried to the Münsterkirchhof to see what was developing, only in Kirchstrasse there...