sides other degrading conditions, bound Prussia to keep down her army to fortytwo thousand men.

Tyranny had now to be met by cunning. Many of the exterior features of the old system had to be preserved as a disguise. The plan was adopted of giving soldiers leave of absence after a period of thorough drill, and taking fresh recruits in their places, so that the whole body of young Prussians might pass through the army. Everything was done to evade the keenness of the French spies: regiments were marched to exercise, leaving large numbers of sound men in barracks or hospitals; and at last, while nominally keeping up an army of only forty-two thousand men, Scharnhorst had trained and inspired a hundred and fifty thousand.

Troubles arose, too, from the suspicions not only of the French, but of the Prussians themselves. Nervous men, impatient men, frivolous men, were constantly in danger of precipitating a catastrophe. Selfishness and prejudice were also active, and the pressure of individual and family influence against the new system was at times enormous; the routine men in the army raged against Scharnhorst, and to show the depth of their scorn called him "schoolmaster."

1

The poverty of the country was also a great hindrance, and for months the artillery in Silesia could not exercise effectively because Napoleon's satraps had carried off their powder. For five years Scharnhorst, one of the most open, manly, and frank of men, had to double and turn, concealing his plans and acts, like a hunted criminal, until, at the beck of Napoleon, the King was forced to disgrace him, to remove him from his higher position to a lower, virtually to drive him from the service.

But the great work could not then be stopped, and to these beginnings are due,

1 For most interesting and instructive details of this struggle, see Treitschke: Deutsche Geschichte im 19en Jahrhundert, Erster Theil, Zweiter Abschnitt.

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in great measure, not only the glories of Leipsic and Waterloo, a few years later, but of Düppel, Sadowa, St. Privat, and Sedan. Scharnhorst, with Stein advising and strengthening him, thus began the military system which Moltke completed.

But while Stein stood firmly and hopefully by his great colleague, providing for the wants of the nation and laying plans to baffle Napoleon, he was still occupied with the civic system and with the reorganization of the general administration. Having taken measures for the abolition of monopolies, — the mill monopoly, the millstone monopoly, the butcher, the baker, the huckster monopolies, and a multitude of others; and having rooted up, as far as possible, all barriers against the admission of women to various trades and occupations for which they were fitted, his main strength was thrown into administrative reform. This, in many respects, was the greatest work of all, though he did not remain in office long enough to complete it.

The general administrative system of Prussia had become a muddle like all the rest. There were councils, chambers, directories, departments, cabinets, ministers administrative, ministers territorial, generally working in accordance with outworn needs or ideas, or with the appetites or whims of the persons who happened to sit on the throne. A strong king, like Frederick the Great, did mainly without them; a luxurious king, like Frederick William the Fat, left them to lumber on chaotically; a mediocre king, like Frederick William III, unable to see his way in this jungle, knew no other plan. than to lean on a little coterie of favorites, and to avoid any decision as long as possible.

The local administrations were of like quality. Out of these Stein began developing something better. He made no attempt to change suddenly the nature of the people: whatever had helpful life in it, he endeavored to preserve, and, pecially, he sought to restore some features introduced by Frederick William I,

es

which, under Frederick the Great, had been lost sight of.

The edict drawn up under his direction proposed to give to the administration of affairs the greatest possible energy and activity, and yet to put all in direct relations with the central government. The whole plan was wrought out carefully and logically; large as a whole, precise as to details, it combined all Stein's experience, his knowledge of men, his boldness, his caution.

Preliminary to all this was the creation of a Council of State, made up of fitting men from the royal family, ministers, privy councilors of distinction, former ministers, heads of bureaus and of departments; but a far more important change was one which in these days seems exceedingly simple, but which in those seemed almost impossible,

the assignment of a small number of ministers to the main subjects of administration throughout the whole monarchy. These ministers were mainly of the interior, finance, foreign affairs, war, and justice; and, with a few other officials of great experience, formed a cabinet to decide on various weighty and general matters, with the understanding, which now seems axiomatic, but which then seemed chimerical, that no clique of favorites should stand between the Cabinet and the King.

Various departments, each with a minister at its head, have been added since Stein's day, a Ministry of Trade and Commerce, a Ministry of Agriculture, a Ministry of Ecclesiastical, Educational, and Medical Affairs; but his simple system, as a whole, remains as he planned it.

For historical and patriotic reasons, he rejected the example of the French Revolution, and allowed the old territorial divisions to remain, with proper officers, each with functions which could be discharged for the good of the country, but without injury to the new system. The general local system was also carefully studied, and reforms were begun in

accordance with experience and sound sense. Stein had expected, indeed, to go further into the lower local organization. but he was too soon driven from office. His successors attempted to deal with it, injuring it in some respects, improving it in others; but taken as a whole, his was a great and fruitful beginning, and it has grown into that system which has made Prussia the most carefully and conscientiously administered nation in the world; - doubtless with sundry disadvantages: with too much interference and control, with too little individual initiative, but, after all, wonderfully perfect. At the present time, one of the most interesting studies for a close political thinker would be a comparison between this system, which seems to hold that government best which governs most, and our own, which, in theory, holds that government best which governs least.

Stein's object was to secure, in the whole administration, unity, energy, and responsibility. His correspondence and his papers show that he intended later to propose a parliamentary system, with two houses, in which the better national spirit could be brought to bear on the discussion of general affairs and on the enlightened support of the monarchy. Royal edicts put in force his plans as far as he had developed them during the latter months of 1808, but anything further was prevented by a catastrophe. During the whole year Napoleon was striving to free himself from the fearful complication of his affairs. Up to this time, his conquests had been comparatively simple and easy. Austria, Prussia, and Italy were beneath his feet, and he had now attempted a policy of conquest in the Spanish Peninsula. Here came the first capital folly of his career. Spain was ignorant, corrupt, priest-ridden, but it was not a collection of ill-compacted governments like Germany; it was, with all its faults, a nation, and its uprising against Napoleon's effort was the beginning of the anti-Napoleonic revolution. At every important point in Spain Napoleon's marshals were worsted,

and at Baylen came a great disgrace: for the first time in his history, one of his armies was forced to capitulate. In the Portuguese part of the Peninsula, where the British forces aided those of the population, he encountered the same desperate resistance. The Emperor's brother was obliged to flee from the Spanish throne, and finally the great conqueror himself found it necessary to put himself at the head of his army against the Spanish people; but, though for a time he broke down all opposition, this revolt in Spain gave a new idea to all Europe,

the

idea that, after all, a people, if united, could throw off his tyranny. Nowhere did this thought spread wider or strike deeper than in Germany, and among those most profoundly influenced by it was Stein.

In the midst of his labor for municipal reform, administrative reform, military reform, Stein devoted himself to impressing this Spanish example upon the leading men of his country, especially by letters, and finally one of these letters fell into the hands of Napoleon. It had become especially dangerous for any man, no matter how high in place, to incur the wrath of the great conqueror; but how great the danger of Stein became has only recently been revealed. For, within the last ten years, the world has received a revelation of the Napoleonic tyranny, in Germany especially, which enables us to see what unbridled autocracy means and to what dangers Stein exposed himself in opposing it. Under the second French empire, there was formed, about the middle of the nineteenth century, a pretentious commission, presided over, finally, by Prince Napoleon, the son of Napoleon's youngest brother, King Jerome, which published, in a long series of volumes, what claimed to be Napoleon's complete correspondence. But it was soon found that this correspondence had been carefully expurgated, and since that time various investigators have given to the world letters which the official committee omitted. There could be no more

fearful revelation of the tyranny engendered by unlimited power. The conqueror had come to regard any resistance to his plans, or even to his wishes, as a crime worthy of death. The whole world had long known how he had ordered the Duc d'Enghien to be executed at Strasburg for a crime of which he was guiltless, and how he had ordered the bookseller Palm, at Nuremberg, to execution, for having in his possession a simple and noble patriotic pamphlet; but these letters recently published by Lecestre, Brotonne, and others have shown that this cruelty had become, especially after his reverses, a prevailing principle with him.

In these letters we find the great conqueror treating his brothers, whom he had placed on thrones, as mere lackeys, with utter contempt, and with not the slightest recognition of their duties toward the peoples whom he had called them to govern. His letters to them are frequently couched in such terms as no self-respecting man should use toward a lackey. Among the letters also appear simple offhand instructions to his commanders in various parts of Germany, which are really orders to commit murder. As a rule, the moment the spies of the Emperor report any person as troublesome, there comes back a virtual order to punish the offender with death. Orders to shoot this or that troublesome patriot in Germany or Spain are frequent, but perhaps the climax is reached in a dispatch to Junot, to whom Napoleon writes that no doubt the General has disarmed Lisbon, and adds, "Shoot, say, sixty persons." 1

1

It was in this frame of mind that Napoleon read Stein's intercepted letter, and his wrath became at once venomous. At first it was somewhat dissembled, probably with the hope of bringing the

1 For examples of these letters showing Napoleon's rage provoked by opposition, see Lecestre: Lettres Inédites de Napoléon, An. viii -1815: Paris, 1897, passim; and especially for the letter to Junot, page 136. Also de Brotonne : Lettres Inédites de Napoléon, Paris, 1898.

culprit more easily within striking distance. The notice of it in the Moniteur, September 8, 1808, was merely contemptuous; but this was the prelude to more severe measures against Prussia, and three months later, Napoleon, from his camp at Madrid, issued his decree placing the German statesman not only under the ban of the Empire, but under the outlawry of Europe.

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Beginning with a contemptuous reference to him as "a person named Stein," this decree proceeds with a notice that his property of every sort in all parts of Germany and in France is confiscated, and it ends with an order to seize him wherever he can be caught by our own troops or those of our allies." This edict was posted in every part of Germany, and even in Poland. Though Stein, from the first discovery of his letter by Napoleon, must have seen its inevitable result, he braved all dangers. His heart was set on the edict for administrative reform, and to this he devoted himself, until, on the 24th of November, the King was at last induced to sign it. And still Stein lingered to render other administrative services, until his family and friends, in utter distress, prevailed upon him to consider his own safety, and possible future services to his country. On the night of January 5, 1809, he took flight in a sledge from Prussia into the snowy mountains of Bohemia, and for three years, amid privations, illness, and suffering, though constantly active, was, by the world at large, unheard-of. There seemed to come to him as complete an effacement of personality and influence as to Luther during his stay in the Wartburg.

Stein's escape was made none too soon. The simple fact was that in him Napoleon recognized a man who understood the Napoleonic policy thoroughly; who knew, down to the last details, the whole story, not only of the Treaty of Tilsit, but of Napoleon's violations of it, and of that wholesale plunder, without warrant of the treaty, which Germany was forced

to endure during the years which followed it. More than this, the conqueror recognized in Stein a man whose German patriotism was invincible; one who saw the vulnerable point in the Napoleonic system of conquest, as Napoleon himself must have begun to see it at Madrid when the official proclamation against his enemy was issued; one who had the gift, also, of inoculating others with his patriotic spirit. Therefore it was that Napoleon, who had at first urged him upon the King of Prussia as a man whose financial talent and genius could develop the nation for the better support of the French armies, now made him an outlaw, and would certainly, could he have laid his hands upon him, have put him to death.

This was no ordinary case of outlawry, and it brought results which the conqueror little foresaw. It gave Stein a hold on the German heart which all his vast services had failed to gain. It secured him recognition as a leader throughout Europe, from royal palaces to the huts of peasants. It inspired phlegmatic men with indignation, and prosaic men with eloquence. Of this there is a striking example to be found in every wellfurnished library. About the middle of the nineteenth century, Privy Councilor Dr. Pertz, eminent for close historical research, director of the Royal Library at Berlin, gave to the world his Life of Stein. It was in seven octavos, closely printed, a collection which Carlyle would have blasphemed as the work of the arch-fiend Dryasdust; but which, though minute and painstaking almost to a fault, betrays a wholesome enthusiasm. Throughout the whole seven volumes the erudite Privy Councilor restrains himself; but when he reaches this period in Stein's history, there comes the one outburst of eloquent indignation in the whole vast work. Having given the text of Napoleon's edict, dated in his camp at Madrid, the historian gives scope to his feelings as follows:

at Erfurt, at Magdeburg, and at Hanover, the population read with astonishment and sorrow this declaration of war whereby the conqueror of Marengo, Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, and Tudela, the sovereign of France, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, half of Germany and the whole of Spain, singled out one defenseless man from the innumerable numbers of his contemporaries and branded him as his enemy for life and death. But this measure of blind passion, far from reaching its purpose, turned against the man who devised it. Napoleon's hate pointed out to his enemies their main hope. Innumerable men then read Stein's name for the first time, but this outlawry at once surrounded his head with the halo of a martyr. The hearts which in all parts of Germany longed for freedom had found their living leader. He became instantly a personage on whom downtrodden peoples far outside the boundaries of Prussia placed their hopes and expectations; and, that the mightiest of this earth might stand in awe of eternal justice, from this person named Stein,' six years later, went forth the thought of a European outlawry to which the Emperor of a hundred days was to yield.” 1

But a dark veil hung over this retributory future. The mighty of the earth, whether French or German, considered this outburst of the conqueror's hate as a decree fixing Stein's entire future. And the hatred of Napoleon was by no means the worst thing that Stein had to encounter; even more galling to his spirit was the opposition of the German courtiers and nobles, and especially of those who had taken positions under the Napoleonic régime; by these the bitterest epithets were lavished upon him. It became common among a large number of the court and government officials to declare him the worst foe to monarchy. From time to time, Napoleon followed

1 See Pertz: Leben Steins, vol. ii, pp. 319, 320. It is a curious fact that Pertz himself first heard of Stein when he read Napoleon's proclamation placing him under the ban.

up the decree of outlawry by charging him with Jacobinism; and not only in Prussia, but throughout Germany. At the Austrian capital, Stein's efforts to uplift the lower orders of the Prussian people gave strength to this charge. His idea of appealing to the national feeling was declared to be more dangerous than the worst tyrannies of Napoleon; a large body of influential men and women devoted themselves to everything which might thwart his efforts, and some of them kept Napoleon informed regarding him, thus helping to bring on the catastrophe. Seeley, in his Life of Stein, hesitates to believe this, but no one can look over the pages of Pertz and Treitschke without becoming convinced that many of Stein's German enemies were capable of going to any length in betraying him.

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In the midst of this personal catastrophe, he was constantly meditating not merely means of raising the German nation against the Napoleonic tyranny, but new reforms which should strengthen the people for the coming struggle. Just before leaving office, he presented to the King a summary of his views, which has passed into history under the name of Stein's Political Testament." In this his wish to crown the whole edifice with a legislative system, and to bind the whole together with a constitution, is made clear. As he had changed the rural population from serfs to freemen, the dwellers in cities from ciphers to citizens, and the whole administration from a worn-out machine to a vigorous, living organism, so it now became clear that he wished to change the old Prussian despotism into a limited monarchy, tempered by a national representation, such as came to Prussia forty years later, after the revolutions of 1830 and 1848.

For the time being all these patriotic efforts were brought to naught by what Napoleon considered Stein's unpardonable sin his crime in detecting and discussing the vulnerable point in the Napoleonic system, the heel of Achilles. He it was who more than any other had de