ympathetic master, was working to perfect his new
administrative system. The churches were filled, and the hearers
understood every allusion in the glowing sermons addressed to them by
a devoted and patriotic clergy; schools, colleges, and universities
swarmed with students, whose youthful zeal found every encouragement
in the instruction of their teachers, which combined two qualities not
always found united in teaching, being at the same time thoroughly
scientific and highly stimulating.

At last, in August, Napoleon, who had looked and listened with deep
interest, read with his own eyes in one of Stein's intercepted letters
that the minister and his colleagues were aiming at a national
uprising, not of Prussia alone, but of all Germany. The illustrious
statesman, having emancipated the Prussian people, and having seen the
reform of the whole political organism in that great land, was
proceeding to extend his beneficent influence throughout all Germany.
In September Napoleon demanded Stein's dismissal, and enforced the
demand by sequestrating Frederick William's Westphalian estates,
threatening at the same time to continue the French occupation of
Prussia indefinitely. There was apparently no alternative, for the
country, although rejuvenated, had no allies, and could not fight
alone. Stein, therefore, resigned after an eventful ministry of about
a year, in which he had prepared the way for every one of the changes
which ultimately reconstructed Prussia.

The two movements which in Spain and Germany menaced Napoleon's
prestige were national; there were two others, which, if not that,
may, by a stretch of definition, be called at least dynastic. The
first was a revolution in Constantinople. The Sultan Mustapha IV had
been from the beginning a feeble creature of the soldiers, who, after
overthrowing Selim, had set him on the throne. Before long he became
the contemptible tool of an irresponsible robber gang known as the
"yamacks," who, under the guise of militia, held the Turkish capital
in terror. The situation in Constantinople had finally grown
unendurable even to the Turks, and the Pasha of Rustchuk appeared at
the gates of the city to restore Selim III, who was still a captive in
the Seraglio. When the doors of that sacred inclosure were forced
open, the first object seen was the body of the murdered sovereign,
killed by Mustapha in the belief that he himself was now the sole
available survivor of Othman's line.