The fall of Berlin came so quickly that shopkeepers didn’t have time to take down the numerous satirical caricatures of Napoleon from their windows.4 As in Venice, the Emperor had the city’s Quadriga and winged Victory chariot removed from the Brandenburg Gate and taken back to Paris, while prisoners from the Prussian Guard were marched past the same French embassy on whose steps they had so hubristically sharpened their swords the previous month.
