I need not go into the details of a system which made Prussia a nation of patriots as well as of soldiers, and which made Scharnhorst a great national benefactor, sharing with Stein the glory of a great deliverance.  He did not live to see the complete triumph of his system, matured by genius and patient study; but his work remained to future generations, and made Prussia invincible except to a coalition of powerful enemies.  All this was done under the eye of Napoleon, and a dreamy middle class became an effective soldiery.  So, too, did the peasants, no longer subjected to corporal punishment and other humiliations.  What a great thing it was to restore dignity to a whole nation, and kindle the fires of patriotic ardor among poor and rich alike!  To the credit of the king, he saw the excellence of the new system, at once adopted it, and generously rewarded its authors.  Scharnhorst, the peasant’s son, was made a noble, and was retained in office until he died.  Stein, however, whose overshadowing greatness created jealousy, remained simply a baron, and spent his last days in retirement,—­though not unhonored, or without influence, even when not occupying the great offices of state, to which no man ever had a higher claim.  The king did not like him, and the king was still an absolute monarch.

Frederick William III. was by no means a great man, being jealous, timid, and vacillating; but it was in his reign that Prussia laid the foundation of her greatness as a military monarchy.  It was not the king who laid this foundation, but the great men whom Providence raised up in the darkest hours of Prussia’s humiliation.  He did one prudent thing, however, out of timidity, when his ministers waged vigorous and offensive measures.  He refused to arm against Napoleon when Prussia lay at his mercy.  This turned out to be the salvation of Prussia, A weak man’s instincts proved to be wiser than the wisdom of the wise.  When Napoleon’s doom was sealed by his disasters in Russia, then, and not till then, did the Prussian king unite with Russia and Austria to crush the unscrupulous despot.

The condition of Prussia, then, briefly stated, when Napoleon was sent to St. Helena to meditate and die, was this:  a conquering army, of which Bluecher was one of its greatest generals, had been raised by the levee en masse,—­a conscription, indeed, not of peasants alone, obliged to serve for twenty years, but of the whole nation, for three years of active service; and a series of administrative reforms had been introduced and extended to every department of the State, by which greater economy and a more complete system were inaugurated, favoritism abolished, and the finances improved so as to support the government and furnish the sinews of war; while alliances were made with great Powers who hitherto had been enemies or doubtful friends.