The Period of Ruin (1800).--The condition of Germany--Courts and cities of the Empire--People and armies of the Empire--The emigrants--Effect of the revolution on the Germans--The Prussian State--Its rapid increase--Von Held--Bureaucracy--The army--The Generals--The downfall--Narrative of the Years 1806-1807, by Christoph Wilhelm Heinrich Sethe--His life
Rise of the Nation (1807-1815).--Sorrowful condition of the people in the year 1807--The first signs of rising strength--Hatred of the French Emperor--Arming of Prussia--Character and importance of the movement of 1813--Napoleon's flight--Expedition of the French to Russia in 1812, and return in 1813--The Cossacks--The people rise--General enthusiasm--The volunteer Jägers and patriotic gifts--The Landwehr and the Landsturm--The first combat--Impression of the war on the citizens--The enemy in the city--The course of the war--The celebration of victory
Illness and Recovery (1815-1848).--The time of reaction--Hopelessness of the German question--Discontent and exhaustion of the Prussians--Weakness of the educated classes in the north of Germany--The development of practical activity--The South Germans and their village tales--Description of a Village School by Karl Mathy
CONCLUSION.--The Hohenzollerns and the German citizens
A shot from the alarm-gun! Timidly does the citizen examine the dark corners of his house to discover whether any strange man be hid there. The peasant in the field stops his horses to consider whether he would wish to meet with any fugitive, and earn capture-money, or whether he should save some desperate man, in spite of the severe punishment with which every one was threatened who enabled a deserter to escape. Probably he will let the fugitive run away, though in his power, for in his secret soul he has a fellow feeling for him, nay, even admires his daring.
There is scarcely any sphere of earthly interest which stamps so sharply the peculiarities of the culture of the time, as the army and the method of carrying on war. In every century the army corresponds exactly with the constitution and character of the state. The Franconian landwehr of Charles the Great, who advanced on foot from their _Maifeld_ to Saxony, the army of the noble cuirassiers who rode under the Emperor Barbarossa into the plains of Lombardy, the Swiss and Landsknechte of the time of the Reformation, and the mercenary armies of the Thirty Years' War, were all highly characteristic of the culture of their time; they sprang from the social condition of the people, and changed with it. Thus did the oldest infantry of the proprietors take root in the old provincial constitution, the mounted chivalry in the old feudalism, the troops of Landsknechte in the rise of civic power, and the companies of roving mercenaries in the increase of royal territorial dominion; these were succeeded in despotic states, in the eighteenth century, by the standing army with uniform and pay.