Hopes rise higher the following year: the war has begun in Spain; Austria prepares itself for the most heroic struggle that it has ever undertaken. In Prussia, also, the ground is hollow beneath the feet of the stranger; all is prepared for an outbreak; and the Police President, Justice Grüner, is one of the most active leaders of the movement. But it is not possible to unite Prussia with Austria; the first great rising of the people wastes itself in single hopeless attempts. Schill, Dörnberg, the Duke of Brunswick, and the rising in Silesia fail. The battle of Wagram destroys the last hope of Austria's help.
The courage of many sinks, but not of the best. Unweariedly do the friends of the Fatherland exercise themselves in the use of fire-arms; the Prussian army, also, which does not amount to more than 42,000 men, is secretly increased to more than double that number; and in all the military workshops the soldiers sit as artisans working at the equipments for a future war.
A second time do the hopes of the people rise; Napoleon prepares himself for war against Russia. Again is the time come when a struggle is possible; already does Hardenberg venture to tell the French ambassador, St. Marsan, that Prussia will not allow itself to be crushed, and will encounter a foreign attack with 100,000 soldiers. But the King will not resolve upon a desperate resistance; he gives the half of his standing army as aid to the French Emperor. Then 300 officers leave his service, and hasten to Russia, there to fight against Napoleon. And again hope diminishes in Prussia, freedom seems removed to an immeasurable distance.
Violent has the hatred against the foreign Emperor become in northern Germany; above all, west of the Elbe, where his ceaseless wars have sacrificed the youth of the country. The conscription is there considered as the death lot. The price of a substitute has risen to two thousand thalers. In all the streets, mourning attire is to be seen, worn by parents for their lost sons. But most violent of all is the hatred in Prussia, in every vocation of life, in every house it calls to the struggle. Everything that is pure and good in Germany—language, poetry, philosophy, and morals—work silently against Napoleon. Everything that is bad, corrupt, and wicked, all duplicity and cruelty, calumny, knavishness and brutal violence, is considered as Gallic and Corsican. Like the fantastic Jahn, other eager spirits call the Emperor no longer by his name: they speak of him as once they did of the devil, as "he," or with a contemptuous expression as Bonaparte.
Thus had six years hardened the character in Prussia.
It was no longer a great State that in the spring of 1813 armed itself for a struggle of life and death. What remained of Prussia only comprehended 4,700,000. This small nation in the first campaign brought into the field an army of 247,000 men, reckoning one out of nineteen of the whole population. The significance of this is clear, when one reckons that an equal effort on the part of Prussia as it is, with its eighteen millions of inhabitants, would give the enormous amount of 950,000 soldiers for an army in the field.[[47]] And this calculation conveys only the relative number of men, not the proportion of the then and present wealth of the country.
It was a much impoverished nation that entered upon the war. Merchants, manufacturers, and artisans, had for six years struggled fearlessly against the hard times. The agriculturist had his barns emptied, and his best horses taken from his stables; the debased coin that circulated in the country disturbed the interior commerce even with the nearest neighbours, the thalers which had been saved from a better time had long been spent. In the mountain valleys the people were famishing; on the line of march of the great armies even the commonest necessaries of life were failing; teams and seed had been wanting to the countryman as early as 1807; in 1812 there was the same distress.
It is true that there was bitter sorrow among the people over the downfall of Prussia, and deep hatred against the Emperor of the French. But it would be doing great injustice to the Prussians to consider their rising as more especially occasioned by the fiery passion of resentment. More than once, both in ancient and modern times, has a city or small nation carried on its desperate death-struggle to the last extremity; more than once we have been filled with astonishment at the wild heroic courage and self-devotion which have led men to voluntary death in the flames of their own houses, or under the fire of the enemy. But this lofty power of resistance is not perhaps free from a certain degree of fanaticism, which inflames the soul almost to madness. Of this there is no trace in the Prussians. On the contrary, there was a cheerful serenity throughout the whole nation which seems very touching to us. It arose from faith in their own strength, confidence in a good cause, and, above all, in an innocent youthful freshness of feeling.
For the German, this period in the life of his nation has a special significance. It was the first time that for many centuries political enthusiasm had burst forth in bright flames among the people. For centuries there had been in Germany nations of individuals, living under the government of princes, for which they had no love or honour, and in which they took no active share. Now, in the hour of greatest danger, the people claimed its own inalienable right in the State. It threw its whole strength voluntarily and joyfully into a death-struggle to preserve its State from destruction.
This struggle has a still higher significance for Prussia and its royal house. In the course of a hundred and fifty years the Hohenzollerns, by uniting unconnected provinces as one State, had formed their subjects into a nation. A great prince, and the costly victories, and brilliant success of the house, had excited a feeling of love in the new nation for their princes. Now the government of a Hohenzollern had been too weak to preserve the inheritance of his father. Now did the people, whom his ancestors had created, rise and give to the last effort that its prince could make, a direction and a grandeur which forced the King from his state of prostration almost against his will. The Prussian people paid with its blood to the race of its princes the debt of gratitude that it owed the Hohenzollerns for the greatness and prosperity which they had procured for it. This faithful and dutiful devotion arose from feeling that the life and true interests of the royal house were one with the people.