The treaty of Tilsit had reduced Prussia to the role of a buffer-state between France and Russia, its independence or freedom of action being severely limited. The indemnity levied by Napoleon upon Prussia was of such a size that even with the strictest of economics Prussia was not able to raise it. This caused Stein and later Scharnhorst to counsel the King to seek a rapprochement with Napoleon, a rapprochement designed only for tactical purposes until such time as Prussia could regain its freedom of action. But on this point the King was adamant; he rejected this counsel, and Stein’s suggestion that Napoleon be godfather to one of the Prussian princesses found no hearing.
The French had set specific dates for the payment of the indemnity and made the withdrawal of their forces of occupation conditional upon their being met. Stein tried to negotiate with the French but his forthright character lacked the subtle manners of the skilled diplomat. Napoleon, who had first demanded 150 million francs, than 120 million and finally 100 million, insisted that the last sum be raised from the sale of royal domains, which of course would have been tantamount to vast annexations of Prussia’s heartland. Actually this demand provided the very lever with the aid of which Stein was able to persuade the Prussian nobility to agree to a general income tax. But Napoleon was still evasive.
In that setting the Spanish rising against Napoleon erupted. Spain, perhaps besides France the only united nation on the European mainland, lit and carried the torch of national liberation, fighting the usurper as the very personification of evil, apostasy and atheism. Napoleon, in his own way a child of the Enlightenment, had calculated with measurable, empirically verifiable quantities. A rising which derived its impetus from a combination of national, religious and other spiritual forces represented an imponderable for which he had made no allowance and which therefore proved a very unpleasant surprise. Within a few months of its beginning, the widely distributed Spanish pamphlet literature inciting the population to resistance against the French had reached the German states. Here it served the same purpose, sometimes as a model, but more often directly adapted, any changes being made only to make it suitable for the specifically German situation. From Spain the pamphlet literature made its way in two major directions, to London and to Vienna, form where it found its way back into the German heartland. The Spaniards carried the torch and its sparks set aflame the emotions and passions of those suffering under Napoleon, who believed the moment was near to overthrow Napoleonic rule in Central Europe.
Russia’s Czar Alexander counseled Frederick William peace and quiet for the time being, then journeyed to Erfurt to participate in a congress to which Napoleon had invited him, France feeling the need to secure its back while engaged in Spain. In Prussia, too, the peace party (a party largely identical with the opponents of the Reform movement) advised moderation. Stein advocated that Prussia join Austria against Napoleon, but whether he could have carried the King is doubtful. In any case a letter of his dated 15 August 1808 was intercepted by the French, apparently not without some help from Stein’s Prussian opponents. The letter contained expressions of strongly anti-Napoleonic sentiment and Napoleon, who now realized the danger, demanded that Stein be dismissed and that Prussia accept France’s final demands of the payment of 140 million Francs and the occupation of three fortresses along the river Oder. Frederick William saw no other way but to sign and ratify the Paris Treaty, and finally to accept Stein’s formal resignation of 24 November 1808. The forces of reaction among the Prussian nobility triumphed: ‘one mad head had been crushed already, the remaining vipers will dissolve in their own poison’ commented General Yorck.
When Major Ferdinand von Schill attempted to cause a coup by occupying the city of Stralsund, hoping to turn it into another Saragossa (where in 1808 Spanish soldiers and civilians under the leadership of Jose de Palafox y Melci had given a splendid account of themselves in defending the city against siege by the French), Frederick William was against it. Frederick William III condemned outright Schill’s action as an act of mutiny. This was not simply in order to placate Napoleon but expressed his innermost convictions. Apart from that, the appeal to the masses, the attempt to incite an entire nation into a popular rising and a national wave of liberation were creations totally alien to him.
On 14 October 1809 at Napoleon’s headquarters, Austria signed the Peace of Schonbrunn, which reduced it to a second-rate power. It had to participate in the continental blockade and also reduce its armed forces to 150,000 men. Count Metternich, who had negotiated the treaty, now replaced Phillip Stadion as Austria’s leading minister.
Both France and Russia set out to consolidate their position in preparation for the impending conflict. Prussia’s position as a buffer-state made it virtually impossible not to take either one side or the other. In order to anticipate French measures designed to curtail Prussia’s already severely restricted area for maneuver, Frederick William offered an alliance to the French while at the same time sending Scharnhorst to St. Petersburg, which since the defeat of Austria had become the haven of Prussia’s political émigrés, including Stein. Scharnhorst informed the Czar of Prussia’s action and at the same time concluding a secret military convention. Hardenberg in Berlin, observing Napoleon’s hostile attitude, favored a public alliance with Russia, but Frederick William was not sufficiently convinced of the Czar’s reliability to take the risk that such an alliance would involve. From St. Petersburg Scharnhorst was sent to Vienna where Metternich blandly told him that it was not in Austria’s interest to further the establishment of Russian hegemony in Europe at the expense of the French. In the face of this Hardenberg once again turned to the French who were now ready for an alliance, which was concluded on 24 February 1812. According to its terms Prussia was to supply one auxiliary corps for the French troops if war between France and Russia should break out. French troops were already massed on Prussia’s frontier; had Prussia not signed they would have invaded Prussia instead of traversing it en route for Russia.
The ratification of the alliance on 5 March 1812 caused a serious upheaval among the military reformers. Scharnhorst and Gneisenau together with other generals submitted their resignation to the King. Gneisenau’s second resignation within two years was accepted and returned to England. Boyen and Clausewitz together with others went to St. Petersburg. Scharnhorst moved to Silesia and retained his competency as the King’s technical advisor.
The campaign of 1812 was more than a lost campaign for Napoleon, it was the beginning of his end. Napoleon’s auxiliary corps numbered 20,000 men commanded by General Crawert, attached to Marshall Macdonald and covering the northern wing of Napoleon’s advance along the Baltic. Crawert appears to have been an ardent and uncritical admirer of Napoleon’s military genius, but when shortly after the beginning of the Russian campaign he fell ill and was replaced by General von Yorck attitudes began to change. Ordered to Macdonald to fortify, at Prussia’s expense, the city of Memel, Yorck refused outright saying that there was no clause to this effect in the alliance treaty.
On 30 December 1812 at the mill of Poscherun outside Tauroggen, Yorck met Diebitsch again and both signed the Convention of Tauroggen by which Yorck separated his Prussian forces from those of Macdonald and promised to maintain neutrality. The signature was greeted by enthusiastic cheering from the Prussian and Russian regiments. Turning to his officers Yorck said: ‘Gentlemen I do not know what I shall say to the King about my action. Perhaps he will call it treason. Then I shall carry the consequences. I shall put my grey hand willingly at the disposal of His Majesty and die gladly, knowing that I have not failed as a faithful subject and a true Prussian.’
Indeed, Frederick William III did consider Yorck’s actions treasonous and gave orders that he be relieved of his command. However detestable it was to him, for the time being circumstances forced him into a common front with the Prussian Reform Movement. But the charge of treason stayed with him for the rest of his life. Not only was it debated by the King and within the officer corps, Yorck debated it continuously within himself and for that reason refused the title of Field-Marshal, stating ‘ I must fear, having my anxieties raised by the events of the past, that on future occasions of sate I may act against my own convictions, and therefore in one way or the other make a mistake at the decisive moment.’ This was Prussia’s military nobility at its best.
By March 1813 Prussian and Russian forces had also joined up and on the same day on which Frederick William III issued the proclamation ‘An mein Volk’, Yorck and his corps entered Berlin to public rejoicing. Russian Cossacks ventured even as far as Hamburg where they were received enthusiastically.
Napoleon had also begun to rally his forces, to build a new army from the remnants that had returned from Russia. Napoleon moved his forces rapidly via Mainz and Frankfurt towards Saxony. He had drawn up his plan of battle but was unexpectedly disturbed by the Allies’ attack at the village of Grossgorschen on 2 May. Tenaciously Napoleon fought off the attack and forced the Prussian and Russian forces to withdraw, but without tasking any prisoners or booty because he was so short of cavalry that he could not pursue the Allied withdrawal. One thing this first engagement made clear to Napoleon was that the Prussian army at Grossgorschen was a different force from the one he had fought at Jena and Auerstadt. In a letter to his wife, Gerhard Leberecht von Blucher who had been put in command of the Prussian forces, gives an idea of the fierceness of the fighting: ‘What news you hear, remain calm. Although I have been hit by three bullets and my horse has been shot from under me I am and remain in full activity. I have been shot in the back which pains me. I shall bring you the bullet. We are now facing the enemy again and are looking forward to the second battle, and in it Napoleon shall not fare any better.’
The battle at Leipzig raged on from 16 to 19 October 1813 and was one of the greatest battles to be fought in the 19th century. Heavy street fighting raged within the city, the French and their allied contingents trying to fight their way out to the west. When, however, a French corporal blew up the Elster bridge over the Elbe a vast number of French and Confederation of the Rhine troops had their escape cut off. some tried to swim to the other bank of the river. The Polish noblemen Marshall Poniatowski, Marshal of France, perished in the attempt. The French were defeated. In the market square at the Leipzig the Allied armies, their commanders and their monarchs met. The Confederation of the Rhine dissolved itself.
When the allied armies reached the plateau of Langres, they halted again and reiterated their terms for a peace to Napoleon, this time within the frontiers of 1792. the negotiations came to nothing, Blucher achieved the Allies first victory on French soil at La Rothiere. It was mainly due to Blucher’s and Gneisenau’s efforts that a withdrawal to the plateau of Langres was avoided, and on 31 March 1814 the Allies entered Paris. A few days later Napoleon abdicated and left for the island of Elba.
The hero of the day was without any doubt Marshal Blucher, ‘Marshal Forward’. For the Germans he became the very symbol of the War of Liberation, but not only for them. The British, who several decades before had cheered the successes of Frederick the Great, found equal and perhaps even more admiration for the old, forthright man, and his visit to London proved a personal triumph: ‘Yesterday I landed in England, and I cannot understand that I am still alive. The people nearly tore me into pieces, they removed my horses and carried me. This is the way I got to London. How they go about me in London is equally indescribable. The moment I show myself they start shouting and soon 10,000 are gathered. I cannot venture to appear in uniform. I am being fatigued inhumanly, am being painted by three painters simultaneously. I have not even had time to have a look around. I have to shake hands with everybody and the ladies virtually court me. They are the craziest people I know.’
On 20 march 1815 Napoleon entered in splendor a Paris which had just been hurriedly vacated by the Bourbons. Among the Allies only the British and the Prussian forces were on an immediate war footing. The British army under Wellington was in the Netherlands, the Prussian army under Blucher in the Rhenish provinces. Once again Gneisenau was appointed Blucher’s chief-of-staff, which to him was something of a disappointment since he had hoped for an independent command. But he obeyed the King’s instruction and acted as the brain behind Blucher’s military actions. In fact it is through Gneisenau that the office of chief-of-staff attainted the role it has played ever since.
Gneisenau issued the instruction that the Prussian retreat from Ligny should not be in the direction of the Rhine but to the northeast towards the village of Waterloo, there to join up with the British. The Prussians had therefore made the sacrifice of their main base. This went against Napoleon’s calculations and proved disastrous for him. It was behind his reckoning that a defeated enemy would accept a second battle immediately, and he assumed that the British and the Prussians would retreat in different directions. Marshall Grouchy was dispatched with his forces towards Liege to harass the Prussians, only there were none to be harassed. Believing he had only one enemy to face, Napoleon made ready to fight the British at Waterloo.
Wellington moved into defensive positions, and determined to hold them: ‘Our plan is simple: the Prussians or the night.’ Napoleon in full view of British contingents, calmly reviewed his troops and then attacked. Three major attacks collapsed against the defensive fire from Wellington’s forces. Nevertheless the British position was becoming very precarious when towards the late afternoon the Prussian army, driven on by Blucher to the limit, reached the battlefield and from their marching columns immediately reformed for the attack, taking the French in their right wing and rear. At first Napoleon thought that it must be Grouchy, who had about one-third of the French army with him, but soon realized his error. Blucher’s attack transformed the situation completely. The defensive battle now became an offensive one and the French, fearful of being taken between the British and Prussians, tried to escape en masse. With Wellington’s forces in a state of near exhaustion the Prussians undertook the pursuit of the enemy. Gneisenau told the troops: ‘We have shown the enemy how to conquer, now we shall demonstrate how to pursue.’ Almost all the French artillery was captured, as well as Napoleon’s carriage.
Near a farm with the name of Belle Alliance, Blucher and Wellington met. Not much was said; both were too moved by the awareness of how close they had been to the abyss of defeat, too grateful that it had been transformed into victory. And victory was complete, for Napoleon had been toppled, his career had ended. The nemesis for power had taken him to St. Helena, there to end his days.