as as complete as it was unexpected. It was even
greater than that of France after the later Franco-Prussian war. Prussia
was dismembered; its provinces were seized by the conqueror; its
population was reduced to less than four millions; its territory was
occupied by one hundred and fifty thousand French soldiers; the king
himself was an exile and a fugitive from his own capital; every sort of
indignity was heaped on his prostrate subjects, who were compelled to
pay a war indemnity beyond their power; trade and commerce were cut off
by Napoleon's Continental system; and universal poverty overspread the
country, always poor, and now poorer than ever. Prussia had no allies
to rally to her sinking fortunes; she was completely isolated. Most of
her fortresses were in the hands of her enemies, and the magnificent
army of which she had been so proud since the days of Frederic the Great
was dispersed. At the peace of Tilsit, in 1807, it looked as if the
whole kingdom was about to be absorbed in the empire of Napoleon, like
Bavaria and the Rhine provinces, and wiped out of the map of Europe like
unfortunate Poland.

But even this did not complete the humiliation. Napoleon compelled the
King of Prussia--Frederic William III.--to furnish him soldiers to fight
against Russia, as if Prussia were already incorporated with his own
empire and had lost her nationality. At that time France and Russia were
in alliance, and Prussia had no course to adopt but submission or
complete destruction; and yet Prussia refused in these evil days to join
the Confederation of the Rhine, which embraced all the German States at
the south and west of Austria and Prussia. Napoleon, however, was too
much engrossed in his scheme of conquering Spain, to swallow up Prussia
entirely, as he intended, after he should have subdued Spain. So, after
all, Prussia had before her only the fortune of Ulysses in the cave of
Polyphemus,--to be devoured the last.

The escape of Prussia was owing, on the one hand, to the necessity for
Napoleon to withdraw his main army from Prussia in order to fight in
Spain; and secondly, to the transcendent talents of a few patriots to
whom the king in his distress was forced to listen. The chief of these
were Stein, Hardenberg, and Scharnhorst. It was the work of Stein to
reorganize the internal administration of Prussia, including the
financial department; that of Hardenberg to conduct the ministry of
foreign affairs; and that of Sch