Attempts at reforms suited to the spirit of the age had, even before the outbreak of war, been made in Prussia by men of higher intelligence; Menken, for instance, had labored to effect the emancipation of the peasantry, but had been removed from office by the aristocratic party. During the war, the corruption pervading every department of the government, whether civil or military, was fully exposed, and Frederick William III. was taught by bitter experience to pursue a better system, to act with decision and patient determination. The Baron von Stein, a man of undoubted talent, a native of Nassau, was placed at the head of the government; two of the most able commanders of the day, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, undertook the reorganization of the army. On the 1st of December, 1806, the king cashiered every commandant who had neglected to defend the fortress intrusted to his care and every officer guilty of desertion or cowardly flight, and the long list of names gave disgraceful proof of the extent to which the nobility were compromised. One of the first measures taken by the king was, consequently, to throw open every post of distinction in the army to the citizens. The old inconvenient uniform and firearms were at the same time improved, the queue was cut off, the cane abandoned. The royal army was indeed scanty in number, but it contained within itself germs of honor and patriotism that gave promise of future glory.
The reform, however, but slowly progressed. Ferdinand von Schill, a Prussian lieutenant, who had been wounded at Jena, formed, in Pomerania, a guerilla troop of disbanded soldiery and young men, who, although indifferently provided with arms, stopped the French convoys and couriers. His success was so extraordinary that he was sometimes enabled to send sums of money, taken from the enemy, to the king. Among other exploits, he took prisoner Marshal Victor, who was exchanged for Blucher. Blucher assembled a fresh body of troops on the island of Rugen. Schill, being afterward compelled to take refuge from the pursuit of the French in the fortress of Colberg, the commandant, Loucadou, placed him under arrest for venturing to criticise the bad defence of the place.
The king of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus IV., might with perfect justice have bitterly reproached Prussia and Austria for the folly with which they had, by their disunion, contributed to the aggrandizement of the power of France. He acted nobly by affording a place of refuge to the Prussians at Stralsund and Rugen.
Colberg was, on Loucadou's dismissal, gloriously defended by Gneisenau and by the resolute citizens, among whom Nettelbek, a man seventy years of age, chiefly distinguished himself. Courbiere acted with equal gallantry at Graudena. On being told by the French that Prussia was in their hands and that no king of Prussia was any longer in existence, he replied, "Well, be it so! but I am king at Graudenz." Pillau was also successfully defended by Herrmann.[9] Polish Prussia naturally fell off on the advance of the French. Calisch rose in open insurrection; the Prussian authorities were everywhere compelled to save themselves by flight from the vengeance of the people. Poland had been termed the Botany Bay of Prussia, government officers in disgrace for bad conduct being generally sent there by way of punishment. No one voluntarily accepted an appointment condemning him to dwell amid a population inspired by the most ineradicable national hatred, glowing with revenge, and unable to appreciate the benefits bestowed upon them in their ignorance and poverty by the wealthier and more civilized Prussians.
The king had withdrawn with the remainder of his troops, which were commanded by the gallant L'Estoc, to Koenigsberg, where he formed a junction with the Russian army, which was led by a Hanoverian, the cautious Bennigsen, and accompanied by the emperor Alexander in person. Napoleon expected that an opportunity would be afforded for the repetition of his old manoeuvre of separating and falling singly upon his opponents, but Bennigsen kept his forces together and offered him battle at Eylau, in the neighborhood of Koenigsberg; victory still wavered, when the Prussian troops under L'Estoc fell furiously upon Marshal Ney's flank, while that general was endeavoring to surround the Russians, and decided the day. It was the 8th of February, and the snow-clad ground was stained with gore. Napoleon, after this catastrophe, remained inactive, awaiting the opening of spring and the arrival of reinforcements. Dantzig, exposed by the desertion of the Poles, fell, although defended by Kalkreuth, into his hands, and, on the 14th of June, 1807, the anniversary, so pregnant with important events, of the battle of Marengo, he gained a brilliant victory at Friedland, which was followed by General Ruchel's abandonment of Koenigsberg with all its stores.
The road to Lithuania now lay open to the French, and the emperor Alexander deemed it advisable to conclude peace. A conference was held at Tilsit on the Riemen between the sovereigns of France, Russia, and Prussia, and a peace, highly detrimental to Germany, was concluded on the 9th of July, 1807. Prussia lost half of her territory, was restricted to the maintenance of an army merely amounting to forty-two thousand men, was compelled to pay a contribution of one hundred and forty millions of francs to France, and to leave her most important fortresses as security for payment in the hands of the French. These grievous terms were merely acceded to by Napoleon "out of esteem for his Majesty the emperor of Russia," who, on his part, deprived his late ally of a piece of Prussian-Poland (Bialystock) and divided the spoil of Prussia with Napoleon.[10] Nay, he went, some months later, so far in his generosity, as, on an understanding with Napoleon and without deigning any explanation to Prussia, arbitrarily to cancel an article of the peace of Tilsit, by which Prussia was indemnified for the loss of Hanover with a territory containing four hundred thousand souls.
The Prussian possessions on the left bank of the Elbe, Hanover, Brunswick, and Hesse-Cassel,[11] were converted by Napoleon into the new kingdom of Westphalia, which he bestowed upon his brother Jerome and included in the Rhenish confederation. East Friesland was annexed to Holland. Poland was not restored, but a petty grandduchy of Warsaw was erected, which Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony, received, together with the royal dignity. Prussia, already greatly diminished in extent, was to be still further encroached upon and watched by these new states. The example of electoral Saxony was imitated by the petty Saxon princes, and Anhalt, Lippe, Schwarzburg, Reuss, Mecklenburg and Aldenburg joined the Rhenish confederation. Dantzig became a nominal free town with a French garrison.[12]
The brave Hessians resisted this fresh act of despotism. The Hessian troops revolted, but were put down by force, and their leader, a sergeant, rushed frantically into the enemy's fire. The Hessian peasantry also rose in several places. The Hanse towns, on the contrary, meekly allowed themselves to be pillaged and to be robbed of their stores of English goods.
Gustavus Adolphus IV. of Sweden, who had neglected to send troops at an earlier period to the aid of Prussia, now offered the sturdiest resistance and steadily refused to negotiate terms of peace or to recognize Napoleon as emperor. His generals, Armfeldt[13] and Essen, made some successful inroads from Stralsund, and, in unison with the English, might have effected a strong diversion to Napoleon's rear, had their movements been more rapid and combined. On the conclusion of the peace of Tilsit, a French force under Mortier appeared, drove the Swedes back upon Stralsund, and compelled the king, in the August of 1807, to abandon that city, which the new system of warfare rendered no longer tenable.
[Footnote 1: On the 14th of October. On this unlucky day, Frederick the Great had, in 1758, been surprised at Hochkirch, and Mack, in 1805, at Ulm. On this day, the peace of Westphalia was, A.D. 1648, concluded at Osnabrück, and, in 1809, that of Vienna. It was, however, on this day that the siege of Vienna was, in 1529, raised, and that, in 1813, Napoleon was shut up at Leipzig.]