the general rising of the nation, and signed the alliance proposed by Alexander. The fate of the war between the allied powers and Napoleon, who strained his military resources to the utmost and had still at his disposal the contingents of the Confederation of the Rhine, remained wavering for a considerable time; but the celebrated interview at Dresden between him and Metternich, in which his blinded pride refused any concession, decided the accession of Austria to the league. Even after the most decisive defeats he might have retained his throne as a powerful monarch, for Metternich, being afraid that the re-establishment of the Bourbons might give a dangerous ally to Russia, offered him as frontiers "la mer, le Rhin, et les Alpes; it was only his stubborn refusal of the concessions offered at the Congress of Châtillon by the allies which led to his overthrow, and only after Waterloo France was reduced to the territorial status quo of 1789.

dared not use force, because that would | Von York, took the memorable resolution have been a violation of the treaty of of concluding without any full power of Tilsit, tantamount to a rupture with Rus- his sovereign a convention with the Russia, which was in his plans, but for which sian general Paulucci at Tauroggen, Dehe was not yet ready. A new outrage of cember 30, 1812, according to which the the conqueror during the deepest peace Prussian troops separated themselves was the message to the Senate (roth of from the French, and Alexander promised December, 1810) that he had felt himself that if the king would make common cause obliged to embody in his empire the with him he would not lay down arms bemouths of the Ems, the Weser, and the fore re-establishing Prussia in the territoElbe, observing besides that these re- rial status quo of 1806. After much hesiunions were not the last, but the first and tation the king, while disavowing York at most important. Oldenburg, Bremen, Paris in order to gain time, ratified this Hamburg, Lübeck, had thus become convention; he left for Breslau, issued French without the slightest international the celebrated proclamation to his army pretext, simply because the emperor and his people, which was answered by wished to have the whole coast in his power in order to prevent an English landing, to keep Prussia in a still tighter grasp, and to enforce the continental system on a larger scale. Stein's successor, Baron Hardenberg, had no other choice than the policy of the weak towards the strong; he did his best to develop by a bold reform policy the resources of the country and to maintain peace; convinced that Napoleon could only be beaten by a European coalition, he saw that the time had not yet come, Austria being exhausted and allied to the great parvenu by giving him an archduchess as spouse, and Alexander not having made up his mind to risk the decisive struggle, although he had declared at Paris that the annexation of Oldenburg by a friendly power had been " un soufflet que l'on me donne devant les yeux de l'Europe." It was Na poleon who decided to begin the war destined to crush the last continental power which still maintained a certain independence. The Prussian patriots wished for an alliance with Russia, but the French held the reduced little kingdom in their hands, and nothing was to be hoped from Austria, which had been deprived of Galicia by Russia and was dissatisfied at the latter power's refusal to terminate its war with the Porte. Neutrality was impossible for Prussia in the coming war, because it would only have turned the country into a battle-ground; the great army of invasion was in full formation, so the king was compelled to accept at last the alliance with France, which obliged him to assist Napoleon in his attack on Russia by an army of fortyeight thousand men and to place at his disposal the whole resources of the country. We have not to follow here the famous Russian campaign. After the retreat of the French army, the commander Dumas, Précis, 19, 459, 463, segg.; Œuvres du of the Prussian auxiliary troops, General | Comte Roederer, i. 544.

III.

LET us now try to realize summarily what this period of French oppression and the shaking off of its intolerable yoke have cost Germany, and especially Prussia. One of the most ardent admirers of Napoleon, Bignon, avows that never a foreign occupation has weighed so cruelly on a State as that of Napoleon on Prussia. When in 1806 he began the war, he had not a hundred thousand francs in his chest. On the 1st of January, 1808, the intendant of the French army, Daru, calculated that the occupation had yielded 604,227,922 francs, and the emperor himself, on the 9th of March, 1809, told Count Roederer that he had drawn a milliard from Prussia.* But this was not all;

even after the evacuation the country had | The French sold all the goods of the

to pay a heavy contribution; it was royal manufacture of china; all the works obliged to maintain the French garrisons of art in the royal castles were carried off at Kuestrin, Stettin, and Glogau; it had to Paris,* or appropriated by the French to furnish enormous requisitions for the marshals. In order to mitigate somewhat French army, and the continental system this oppression, the king sent his brother oppressed Prussia's economical condition William to Paris, and even offered a demore heavily than any other country. fensive and offensive alliance. Napoleon These sacrifices had to be borne by a State refused it; he told the prince he knew which, after the peace of Tilsit, was re- that he could never rely upon Prussia; duced to a territory of 2,856 German all the Prussians hated him. The contrisquare miles and four million six hun- butions had to be paid; they were part of dred thousand inhabitants. Before the the combinations of the European policy. war Prussia's net revenue in 1805-6 had The execution of the peace of Tilsit deamounted to twenty-seven million thalers; pended upon Russia, which continued to after having lost the most fertile and occupy the Danubian principalities. If densely populated half of its territory, it was not fit for Prussia to maintain an the income would scarcely have reached army of more than forty thousand men, twelve millions, if the war had not des- the surplus of the former war budget troyed the sources of its wealth. It should be applied to paying off the debt therefore seems incredible that Napoleon to France. Baron Stein, indeed, agreed could have tortured out the above-named with Daru on the draft of a treaty, promimmense sums from such a little, impover-ising the evacuation of Prussia with ished country; yet such is the fact. After the exception of Stettin, Kuestrin, and the battle of Jena he imposed a contribu- Glogau, and reducing the indemnity to tion of one hundred and fifty-two million one hundred and twelve million francs; francs; the treaty of Tilsit stipulated that but Napoleon took no notice of it; he the evacuation of the territories remaining violently complained to the prince of certo Prussia should be subject to the pay-tain Prussian_functionaries who kindled ment of the contribution, but it was resistance to France, and had the effronunderstood that the amount of the requi- tery to order the councillor of legation, sitions was to be placed on account of the Leroux, who had come with the prince, to sums to be paid. Napoleon reversed this leave Paris within five days. The Prusin order to have a show of motive for pro- sian government, unable to resist, was longing the occupation, and besides asked obliged to swallow everything, and to a full year's revenue from Prussia. Daru, withdraw functionaries who had only done therefore, presented a bill asking 130,- their duty. The requisitions and exac511,856 francs 90 cent. as contribution; tions went on as before; in one district 61,590,637 francs 53 cent. as revenue of alone the French commissioner asked for eight months; other demands 6,624,475|four thousand of the largest trees from francs 24 cent. in all 198,724,988 francs the royal forests for the artillery. It was 86 cent. From this sum 44,221,489 francs only the course matters took in Spain 68 cent. were considered to have been which compelled Napoleon to change paid, so that the French demand would somewhat his policy. In order to be able still be the round sum of one hundred to withdraw his troops from Prussia to and fifty-four and a half million francs.* the Peninsula, he was obliged to come to Napoleon, as Lefèbre acknowledges,† an understanding with Russia, and the knew perfectly well that Prussia was un- French army on the Oder was a menace able to pay that amount; he only wanted to that power. However, he availed him. a pretext for prolonging the occupation self of the seizure of some letters of of the country at its own cost. The rev- Stein by Soult to induce Prince William enues of the State filled the French ex- to sign a treaty which fixed the remaining chequer; contributions and requisitions indemnity at one hundred and forty milwere raised in a progressive style. The lions, although Prussia had already paid commander of Berlin, General St.-Hilaire, one hundred and forty-two millions in asked for eight hundred thalers, then for cash, and sixty millions by abandoning a thousand thalers, per week for his table; General Vitry behaved in the castle of Charlottenburg as if it belonged to him.

* Countess Voss, Sixty-four Years at the Prussian

Court, p. 324. "I got the list of what the French have

either officially taken to Paris or simply stolen; in the same wise all the royal castles were deprived of their pictures, statues, vases, and costly works: it is an incredible list." (Nov. 11, 1807.)

revenues. The private capital, according | bearing conduct of the French. At the to Art. 25 of the treaty of Tilsit, was to interview of Tilsit two little houses were remain untouched; yet in January, 1806, erected on the raft; in one the two emthe Warsaw Gazette published a decree perors met to have their famous conversaaccording to which all persons who had tion; in the other the king of Prussia to pay interest or capital to the Prussian was kept waiting, hearing even afterwards government were to pay their liabilities nothing about his fate. Napoleon treated to the French or Saxon commissioner, an distinguished German princesses, such as amount estimated at thirty million thalers. the beautiful Queen Louisa of Prussia, By this measure not only many private with the utmost coarseness; * patriots like fortunes were ruined, but the credit of Stein, Gneisenau, Perthes, had to fly for the Prussian bank and of the establish- their lives; the editor Palm was shot be. ment for maritime commerce was severely cause he had published a book distasteful endangered; decrees of December, 1808, to the French; Wilhelm Schlegel, having and January, 1809, simply confiscated cap said in an essay that he preferred the ital of Prussian subjects in the former "Phædra " of Euripides to that of Racine, Polish provinces to the amount of more had to leave Paris; French generals and than twenty million thalers, which by a prefects behaved as absolute masters evconvention with Saxony were reduced to erywhere, and sovereign princes had to seventeen millions. Only when the gov-yield precedence to imperial newly cre ernment had paid fifty million francs in ated marshals. bills, and seventy millions in bonds guaranteed by the estates of the provinces, the French army evacuated Prussia, with the exception of the above-named fortresses. As to the requisitions, they amounted from October, 1806, till December, 1808, to 216,940,646 thalers, without reckoning the supply of horses (Berlin alone had to give 108,802 horses in eight months), and the devastations of the war. Duncker, who in his quoted work gives all the statistical details on official authority, thus comes to the conclusion that, irrespective of the one hundred and forty millions indemnity, promised by Prince William's treaty and reduced at Erfurt, at Alexander's instance, to one hundred and twenty millions, and of the maintenance of the French garrisons in the fortresses, which cost from November, 1808, to March, 1813, 37,973,951 francs, Napoleon squeezed from little Prussia, impoverished by the devastation of war and by the annihilation of its commerce, navigation, and industry, the sum of 1,129,374,217 francs 50 cent. (l. c., p. 530).

The other States of northern Germany oppressed by Napoleon fared equally badly; suffice it to recall the exactions of Marshal Davoust at Hamburg, who besides stole the whole deposits of the public bank in silver bars. The city, the commerce of which was ruined by the continental system, was made a fortress; the most distinguished citizens had to dig for erecting earthworks; churches were turned into stables, and thousands of inhabitants, unable to provision themselves for the coming winter, were expelled in the severest cold. Not less exasperating than these material losses was the over

Austria in her heroic struggles against Napoleon was twice obliged to declare bankruptcy, which caused enormous losses to her population, and was reduced to less than half of her former dominions. The situation of the States forming the Confederation of the Rhine, being allies of France, was undoubtedly better, but they also suffered heavily from the constant wars, for which they had to furnish their contingents at their own expense, and by the passage of the French troops. As to the losses in lives which Germany suffered during this period no approximate estimate can be made; they were simply enormous. Napoleon himself at the interview of Dresden with Metternich cynically said, "After all, my wars have cost me barely a million of men, and most of them were Germans "-i.e., Germans who fought for him.

If after such exhausting drains of wealth and men the whole of northern Germany in 1813 rose as one man, to shake off the hated yoke of the conqueror, it was simply because the people felt that it was a struggle for existence. Their heroic efforts were scarcely compensated by the terms of peace; for Talleyrand persuaded the emperor Alexander that the restoration of Alsace, asked for by Prussia, was against the Russian interest, because it would weaken the throne of the restored Bourbons, and only a strong France would be a useful ally of the czar. The war indemnity exacted from the French, then a nation of great wealth, was one milliard, to be divided amongst the

(as the physicians say) was the consequence of too deep * The queen died from a polyp on the heart, which and lasting grief." (Countess Voss, .c., p. 380.)

allies. At that time the public income | he told me that the war between France was about nine hundred million francs, and Prussia was unavoidable, because it and ten years after the finances were in so flourishing a condition that another milliard could be devoted to indemnify the emigrated nobility. On the other hand, Germany, and particularly Prussia, were after the war left in a state of exhaustion, which it required more than thirty years