Though Frederick William II marched into France in 1792, to support the French monarchy, neither his army nor his people were prepared or fit for this enterprise, and he soon retired. In 1793, Prussia joined Russia in a second partition of Poland, but in 1795, angry with what was considered the double dealing of Austria and Russia, Prussia concluded a peace with France, the treaty of Basle was signed in 1795, and for ten years Prussia practically took no part in the Napoleonic wars.
Napoleon took over the lands on the left bank of the Rhine, took away the freedom of forty-eight towns, leaving only Hamburg, Bremen, Frankfort, Augsburg, and Nuremberg, and in 1803 he took Hanover. Later, in 1805, Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Baden aided Napoleon to fight the alliance against him of Austria, England, Russia, and Sweden. In that same year the Electors of Würtemberg and Bavaria were made kings by Napoleon. In 1806 Bavaria, Baden, Würtemberg, and Hessen seceded from the German Empire, formed themselves into the Confederation of the Rhine, and acknowledged Napoleon as their protector. In 1806 Francis II, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, resigned, and there was neither an empire nor an emperor of Germany, nor was there a Germany of united interests.
In 1806 Frederick William III, driven by the grossest insults to his country and to his wife, finally declared war against France; there followed the battle of Jena, in which the Germans were routed, and in that same year Napoleon marched into Berlin unopposed. In 1807 the Russian Emperor was persuaded to make peace, and Prussia without her ally was helpless. The Peace of Tilsit, in July, 1807, deprived Prussia of the whole of the territory between the Elbe and the Rhine, and this with Brunswick, Hessen-Cassel, and part of Hanover was dubbed the Kingdom of Westphalia, and Napoleon's youngest brother Jerome was made king. The Polish territory of Prussia was given to the Elector of Saxony, who was also rewarded for having deserted Prussia after the battle of Jena by being made a king. Prussia was further required to reduce her army to forty-two thousand men.
It is neither a pretty nor an inspiriting story, this of the mangling of Germany by Napoleon; of the German princes bribed by kingly crowns from the hands of an ancestorless Corsican; but it all goes to show how far from any sense of common aims and duties, how far from the united Vaterland of to-day, was the Germany of a hundred years ago. It adds, too, immeasurably to the laurels of the man who produced the present German Empire out of his own pocket, and stood as chief sponsor at its christening at Versailles in 1871.