Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/600

592 from Austria, and to Frederick's share in the first partition of Poland. He left $50,000,000, and his army contained 220,000 men.

Frederick William II., a weak sovereign, reigned till 1797. He took part in the first coalition against revolutionary France, and in the second and third partitions of Poland. Frederick William III. reigned from 1797 to 1840, during which time Prussia experienced every vicissitude of fortune. The first war with imperial France, in 1806-7, led to the reduction of her territory and population one half; and what was left of country and people was most mercilessly treated by Napoleon I., who should either have restored her altogether, or have annihilated her. But the great Emperor was partial to half-measures,—a folly that had much to do with his fall. The misery that Prussia then experienced was the cause of her subsequent greatness; and if she has wrested European supremacy from Napoleon III., she should thank Napoleon I. for enabling her to accomplish so great a feat of arms. The Prussian government had to undertake the task of reform, to save itself and the country from perishing. The chief man in this great work was the celebrated Baron von Stein, whose name is of infrequent mention in popular histories of the Napoleonic age, but who had more to do with the overthrow of the Man of Destiny than any other person. It is one of those strange facts which are so constantly meeting us in history, that it was by Napoleon's advice that Stein was employed by the Prussian king. "Take the Baron von Stein," said the Emperor, when the king at Tilsit spoke of the misery of his situation; "he is a man of sense." Eighteen months later, Napoleon actually outlawed Stein, the decree of outlawry dating from Madrid. The language of the decree was of the most insulting character. "One Stein" (le nommé Stein), it was said, was endeavoring to create troubles in Germany, and therefore he was denounced as an enemy of France and of the Rhenish Confederacy. The property he held in French or confederate territory was confiscated, and the troops of France and her allies were ordered to arrest him, wherever he could be found. Had he been taken, quite likely he would have been as summarily dealt with as Palm had been.

Stein fled into Bohemia, where he resided three years, when Alexander I. invited him to Russia, and employed him in the most important affairs. He kept up Alexander's courage during the darkest days of 1812, and advised, with success, against yielding to the French, though it is probable the Czar might have had his own terms from Napoleon, after the latter had reached Moscow. It is said that the American Minister in Russia, the late Mr. J. Q. Adams, was not less energetic than Stein on the same side. It may well be doubted if their advice was such as a Russian sovereign should have followed, though it was excellent for Germany and for all nations that feared Napoleon. If the American Minister did what was attributed to him, he actually acted in behalf of the very nation against which his own country had just declared war! The war between the United States and England began at the same time that active operations against Russia were entered upon by the French; and England was the only powerful nation upon which Russia could rely for assistance.

Stein had done his work before he was made to leave Prussia. He was the creator of the Prussian people. His reforms would be pronounced agrarian measures in England or America. An imitation of them in England might not be amiss; but in America, where land is a drug, and where possession of it does not give half the consideration that proceeds from the ownership of "stocks" or funds, it would be as much out of place as a mixture for blackening negroes, or a machine for converting New England soil into rocks. "Stein's main idea," says Vehse, "was, 'the burgher must become noble.' With this view, he tried to call