the French war indemnity,--one hundred and
fifty million francs, a great sum for Prussia to raise when dismembered
and trodden in the dust under one hundred and fifty thousand French
soldiers,--and to establish a new and improved administrative system.
But, more than all, he attempted to rouse a moral, religious, and
patriotic spirit in the nation, and to inspire it anew with courage,
self-confidence, and self-sacrifice. In 1808 the ministry became warlike
in spite of its despair, the first glimpse of hope being the popular
rising in Spain. It was during the ministry of Stein, and through his
efforts, that the anti-Napoleonic revolution began.

The intense hostility of Stein to Napoleon, and his commanding
abilities, led Napoleon in 1808 imperatively to demand from the King of
Prussia the dismissal of his minister; and Frederick William dared not
resist. Stein did not retire, however, until after the royal edict had
emancipated the serfs of Prussia, and until that other great reform was
made by which the nobles lost the monopoly of office and exemption from
taxation, while the citizen class gained admission to all posts, trades,
and occupations. These great reforms were chiefly to be traced to Stein,
although Hardenberg and others, like Schoen and Niebuhr, had a hand
in them.

Stein also opened the military profession to the citizen class, which
before was closed, only nobles being intrusted with command in the army.
It is true that nobles still continued to form a large majority of
officers, even as peasants formed the bulk of the army. But the removal
of restrictions and the abolition of serfdom tended to create patriotic
sentiments among all classes, on which the strength of armies in no
small degree rests. In the time of Frederic the Great the army was a
mere machine. It was something more when the nation in 1811 rallied to
achieve its independence. Then was born the idea of nationality,--that,
whatever obligations a Prussian owed to the state, Germany was greater
than Prussia itself. This idea was the central principle of Stein's
political system, leading ultimately to the unity of Germany as finally
effected by Bismarck and Moltke. It became almost synonymous with that
patriotism which sustains governments and thrones, the absence of which
was the great defect of the German States before the times of Napoleon,
when both princes and people lost sight of the unity of the nation in
the interests of petty sovereignti