As we have seen, Napoleon deliberately took the perilous middle course with the Hapsburgs after Austerlitz.  He tore away from them their faithful Tyrolese along with all their Swabian lands, and he half crippled them in Italy by leaving them the line of the Adige instead of the Mincio.  Later on, he compelled Austria to join the Continental System, to the detriment of her commerce and revenue; and his thinly veiled threats at Erfurt nerved her to strike home as soon as she saw him embarked on the Spanish enterprise.  She had some grounds for confidence.  The blows showered on the Hapsburg States had served to weld them more closely together; reforms effected in the administration under the guidance of the able and high-spirited minister, Stadion, promised to reinvigorate the whole Empire; and army reforms, championed by the Archduke Charles, had shelved the petted incapables of the Court and opened up undreamt-of vistas of hope even to the common soldier.  Moreover, it was certain that the Tyrolese would revolt against the cast-iron Liberalism now imposed on them from Munich, which interfered with their cherished customs and church festivals.

Throughout Germany, too, there were widespread movements for casting off the yoke of Napoleon.  The benefits gained by the adoption of his laws were already balanced by the deepening hardships entailed by the Continental System; and the national German sentiment, which Napoleon ever sought to root out, persistently clung to Berlin and Vienna.  A new thrill of resentment ran through Germany when Napoleon launched a decree of proscription against Stein, who had resigned office on November 24th.  It was dated from Madrid (December 16th, 1808), and ordered that “the man named Stein,” for seeking to excite troubles in Germany, should be held an enemy of France and the Confederation of the Rhine, and suffer confiscation of his property and seizure of his person, wherever he might be.  The great statesman thereupon fled into Austria, where all the hopes of German nationalists now centred.[207]

On April the 6th the Archduke Charles issued a proclamation in which the new hopes of reformed Austria found eloquent expression:  “The freedom of Europe has sought refuge beneath your banners.  Soldiers, your victories will break her chains:  your German brothers who are now in the ranks of the enemy wait for their deliverance.”  These hopes were premature.  Austria was too late or too soon:  she was too late to overpower the Bavarians, or to catch the French forces leaderless, and too soon to gain the full benefit from her recent army reforms and from the diversion promised by England on the North Sea.[208] But our limits of space render it impossible adequately to describe the course of the struggle on the Danube or of the Tyrolese rising.