Download The Impact of the Napoleonic Wars on Germany

CENTRAL EUROPE IN 1770
The
Hohenzollern
ruled
Prussia;
the
Habsburgs
ruled Austria,
Bohemia,
Hungary,
Croatia,
Lombardy, &
Belgium
PRE-INDUSTRIAL SOCIAL STRUCTURE:
The Three French Estates (Clergy, Nobility, Commoners)
had become secularized in Germany
NOBLES
BURGHERS
(townspeople)
PEASANTS
2-3%
20-30%
East-Elbian Junkers manage knightly
estates with serfs; western seigneurs
collect tithes and dues
Ca. 5% in cities with over 20,000
people, based on long-distance trade,
dominated by patrician merchants
Ca. 20% in small towns with under
20,000 people, based on local trade,
dominated by artisanal guilds
Serfdom prevails east of the Elbe;
70-80% perhaps 50% of western peasants own
enough land to support their families.
“To reap, haul,
and thresh the
grain”
(ca. 1740):
They use oldfashioned sickles
Pieter Breughel the Elder, “The Harvesters” (1565):
Most peasants lived in villages, surrounded by fields where
strips of land were owned privately but worked collectively.
The peasant economy allowed for much leisure time:
Pieter Breughel the Elder, “The Peasant Dance” (1568)
AUGSBURG in 1493, with a population of 30,000:
The House of Fugger was a multi-national corporation
According to Machiavelli, German cities “obey the Emperor
only when they wish to” because of their excellent
fortifications and citizen militias (The Prince, chap. 10).
“THE TAILOR”
(1788)
Most artisanal workshops
in the old guild system had
no more than five
employees:
• Apprentices began work
at around 11 years of
age;
• Journeymen, at around
18 years;
• Masters, by age 30.
Guilds restricted entry to
the trade to secure a good
living for each master.
POPULATION IN MILLIONS
COUNTRY
Europe
Germany
(1914
borders)
Prussia
Austrian
Empire (born
in 1806)
1700
1750
115.0
16.0
5.1
--
1800
1850
140.0
187.0
(+34%)
266.0
(+42%)
18.0
24.0
(+33%)
31.0
(+29%)
6.4
9.0
(+41%)
18.0
(+100%)
23.0
30.7
(+33.5)
--
“The Storming of the Bastille” (July 14, 1789)
“The Memorable Journée of Tuesday, July 14, 1789:”
The heads of de Launay and Flesselles in the Place de Grève
“Louis XVI,
King of a Free People”
The Marquis de Lafayette,
commander of the Paris
National Guard
THE FRENCH IMPACT ON GERMANY
1789: French Revolution applauded by German intellectuals
1792: Austria and Prussia invade France but are stopped at
Valmy.
1793/94: French Reign of Terror
1795-1800: Prussia reverts to neutrality as France conquers
the Rhineland and Italy
1805: Napoleon conquers Austria
1806/07: Napoleon conquers Prussia and reorganizes
Germany in alliance with Bavaria, Baden, & Saxony
1812/13: Napoleon’s defeat in Russia sparks the German
“Wars of Liberation”
Parisians overthrew their monarchy when they
heard that Austria and Prussia were invading:
“The Capture of the Tuileries Palace, 10 August 1792”
Largely untrained French volunteers defeated the invaders:
“Kellerman at Valmy,” September 20, 1792
The French Convention, “Decree Proclaiming the Liberty
and Sovereignty of All Peoples,” December 1792
 “The National Convention, faithful to the principles of the sovereignty of
the people, which do not permit it to recognize any of the institutions
which bring an attack upon it, decrees:”
 “In the countries which are or shall be occupied by the armies of the
Republic, the generals shall proclaim immediately, in the name of the
French nation, the sovereignty of the people, the suppression of all the
established authorities and existing taxes, the abolition of the tithe, of
feudalism, of seigneurial rights, of real and personal servitude, of the
privileges of hunting and fishing, of corvées, of nobility, and generally of
all privileges.”
 “They shall announce to the people that they bring them peace,
assistance, fraternity, liberty, and equality, and that they will convoke
them directly in primary or communal assemblies, in order to create and
organize an administration and a provisional judiciary.”
 “There shall be made a list of the expenses which the French Republic
shall have incurred for the common defense, and the French nation shall
make arrangements with the government which shall have been
established for that which may be due.”
The foreign
invasions and
counterrevolutionary
uprisings of
1793/94
Jean-Baptiste
Regnault,
“Liberty or
Death!”
(1794).
Anonymous,
“Robespierre,
guillotining the
executioner after
having guillotined all
the French.”
In April-June 1794 the
Committee of Public
Safety purged both
the “Dantonists” and
“ultrarevolutionaries.”
THE REVOLUTION DEVOURS ITS CHILDREN:
Danton riding to the scaffold, April 1794; Robespierre, July 1794
Napoleon took
power in 1799
and exploited
Prussia’s
neutrality to
invade Italy:
“Napoleon at
the St. Bernard
Pass” (1801)
Europe after the
Peace of Amiens
(1802/03)
Prussia remained neutral when Napoleon conquered
Austria in 1805:
“The Battle of Austerlitz, 2 December 1805”
Napoleon’s
Entry into Berlin
through the
Brandenburg
Gate, 1806:
Most Berliners
appeared to
admire their
conqueror
Prussia then suffered devastating defeats
at Jena and Auerstedt in 1806
Napoleon meets Tsar Alexander I at Tilsit, June 1807:
Russia agreed to join the “Continental System”
“Napoleon Receives
the Prussian Queen
Luise in Tilsit,”
6 July 1807
(painted in 1837):
Here King Frederick
William III is reduced
to the role of onlooker
Europe in 1812
The Wedding of Prince Jerome Bonaparte and Princess
Frédérique Catherine of Württemberg, 1807:
Jerome now became “King of Westphalia”
Much of Germany
adopted French law
and institutions
Baron
Karl vom Stein
(1757-1831),
Chancellor of
Prussia,
1806/07
THE PRUSSIAN REFORMS LAUNCHED BY
STEIN & HARDENBERG IN 1807
(see Blackbourn, pp. 61-66)
 Abolition of serfdom (but the lords get most of the land)
 Municipal self-government (but with 3-class suffrage)
 Educational reform: careers open to talent (Wilhelm von
Humboldt promotes the Gymnasium to foster a classical
humanist education)
 Military reform: careers open to talent (Scharnhorst,
Gneisenau, Clausewitz)
The Austrian government insisted, however, that any
concession to the principles of revolutionary France would
destroy the foundations of stable government and
international peace; it expanded the police instead.
“Napoleon Exhorts the Bavarian and
Württemberger Troops at Abensberg,” 1809
The Destruction of the Grande Armée in Russia in 1812
D.-A.-M. Raffet, “Episode on the Retreat in Russia” (1856)
General Yorck von Wartenburg Addresses the
Provincial Estates of East Prussia, 5 February 1813
“The East Prussian Landwehr Takes the Field in 1813”
(the Prussian army swelled from 42,000 to 280,000 men in 1813)
In theory,
these
units
imitated
the
“democratic”
principles
of the
French
National
Guard.
Students of the University of Jena march off with the
Lützow Free Corps in 1813 (painted in 1909)
The “Battle of the Nations,” Leipzig, October 16-10, 1813
Eleonore Prohaska, “Potsdam’s Joan of Arc,”
mortally wounded in September 1813
The Congress of Vienna, 1815: Wellington, Hardenberg
(seated), Metternich (standing), Castlereagh, & Talleyrand
THE BIRTH OF GERMAN NATIONALISM?
In medieval universities students were grouped in
nations depending on their country of origin.
Around 1400 all legal documents came to refer to the
“Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.”
Martin Luther’s first popular manifesto was “To the
Christian Nobility of the German Nation” (1520).
Yet the 18th-century nobility preferred to speak
French and imitated French fashion, and the study of
politics began with Montesquieu and Rousseau.
The young Goethe was considered peculiar for
praising the “gothic” Strasburg Cathedral
Johann Gottlieb Fichte delivered his “Addresses to the
German Nation” in Berlin in the winter of 1807/08
***
“The German speaks a language
which has been alive ever since it first
issued from the force of nature, whereas
the other Teutonic races [e.g., Franks]
speak a language which has movement
on the surface only but is dead at the
root.”
***
“Only the German... really has
ein Volk…, and he alone is capable of real
and rational love for his nation.”
***
“The divine has appeared in das
Volk…. Hence, the noble-minded man
will... sacrifice himself for his people….
In order to save his nation he must be
ready even to die that it may live.”
[“Das Volk” could be translated
as “nation”, “people”, or “race”.]