Napoleon entered Berlin on 27 October 1806 and as his triumphal procession made its way under the newly completed Brandenburg Gate and down Unter den Linden curious Berliners lined the streets to watch him pass. The sculptor Gottfried Schadow, who had designed the new Quadriga atop the Brandenburg Gate, sketched the stubble-faced victor glowering at the people from under his hat. That evening French troops celebrated by breaking into churches, plundering wine cellars and raiding food stores.7 Napoleon dismissed the acting governor Prince Hatzfeld and ordered the councillors to gather 2,000 eminent Berliners together; sixty were elected to a new city council, with seven forming the executive. He appeased Berliners by promising political reforms, the institution of the Code Napoléon and a modern constitution, but soon after the signatures were dry on the Treaty of Tilsit of July 1807 it became clear that he saw Berlin as little more than a subjugated capital from which to squeeze reparations.
Tilsit was Prussia’s final humiliation. Despite the occupation of Berlin Prussia had remained formally allied to Russia and at war with France, but on 14 June 1807 Napoleon defeated the tsar at Friedland and Russia sued for peace. On 9 July Tsar Alexander and Napoleon met on a luxurious raft on the river Niemen; Frederick William was forced to wait on the riverbank while the two leaders signed the treaty which dismembered Prussia and removed her territory west of the Elbe along with most Prussian-held territory in Poland, which became the grand duchy of Warsaw under the duke of Saxony. Prussia, which had had a population of 6 million at the death of Frederick the Great, now had only 4,938,000 people. Only four provinces were left, all of which were occupied by Napoleon. The land was impoverished and weakened by war and the Prussian army was reduced to 42,000 men, 16,000 of whom were to be at Napoleon’s disposal. Furthermore, Prussia was forced to pay an indemnity of over 100 million francs and also to cover the costs of the occupation of a huge foreign army of over 150,000 men, a burden which would cost 216 million francs.8 Napoleon knew that Prussia would be unable to raise the money quickly and used this tardiness as an excuse to continue his occupation. At the same time, the French stripped Berlin of its wealth and its few treasures; the official list of plunder included 116 paintings, 96 busts and statues, 183 bronzes, 538 gems, 7,262 medals and coins, manuscripts, amber and the Quadriga, which had only just been placed atop the Brandenburg Gate. This was a meagre haul compared to the 4,000 cartloads of booty taken from Rome, which became the foundation of the Musée Napoléon (the Louvre), but the loss of their few treasures irked the population. There was also a good deal of unofficial looting and Berliners were forced to watch as officers piled goods on to boats and sent them off to Paris.9 Berliners also resented the rowdy troops quartered in their homes and the creation of huge French barracks like the Camp Napoléonburg in Charlottenburg, which housed 25,000 men. Manufacturers and merchants suffered from a drop in trade brought about by Napoleon’s ‘continental system’, but even when Napoleon replaced the blockade with an import ban of between 40 and 50 per cent, scarcity and price rises caused hardship. Berliners could not believe that their mighty capital had fallen so quickly and so far.
Napoleon was astounded by the ease of his victory over Prussia. When he visited the tomb of Frederick the Great he told his officers: ‘Hats off, gentlemen! If he were still alive, we would not be here.’10 Napoleon’s words were echoed by Queen Luise, who lamented that Prussia had ‘gone to sleep on the laurels of Frederick the Great’. The problem lay in part with Frederick’s own success. His obsessive control over the army and administration had kept enlightened absolutism alive long past its natural life. His successors had ignored his advice, but for an artificial state made strong primarily by its oversized army the decision to allow it to decay had been a form of suicide.
Napoleon’s occupation of Berlin did have one surprising benefit: it ushered in a period of reform which led to profound changes in the army, education and administration of Prussia. The reason was clear. Under the old system of absolutism the monarchy had seen no need to change. Napoleon’s lightning strike had exposed the rot in the system. Even the reactionary king understood that if he did not introduce reforms Prussia would never again attain great power status in Europe. He did not want reforms because he felt they were right; he introduced them because he had no choice. Prussia could no longer survive as an absolutist state. It was a question of reform or perish.
Berlin was now under French military control and although the king was in Königsberg the government in Berlin did appear to be pro-French, not least because open defiance of Napoleon would have led to immediate reprisals. In return for his loyalty the king was allowed some autonomy in the running of his government and managed to appoint a number of ministers who were given unheard of authority despite being clandestine opponents of France. Frederick William advised that the Prussian state should ‘replace by spiritual strength those material things which have been lost’. The reformers wanted to modernize the army, improve the educational system, and above all create a constitutional government. Under normal circumstances the king would have seen these ideas as radical and dangerous. As it was, they were his only hope if he was to preserve his own power.
The city of Berlin remains something of a shrine to the reformers who struggled to modernize Prussia under the watchful eye of the French. Statues, plaques, busts, streets and squares still bear the names of men hailed as everything from German nationalists to the ‘fathers of German democracy’. Humboldt University – so named by the Soviets in 1945 – is graced by statues of the brothers Alexander and Wilhelm; statues of Freiherr vom and zum Stein and August von Gneisenau stand on Unter den Linden; Hardenbergstrasse, Hardenberg Platz, Gneisenaustrasse and Niebuhrstrasse criss-cross the west end. Ironically these ‘great Berliners’ had come from elsewhere: Scharnhorst and Hardenberg were Hanoverians, Niebuhr was educated in Holstein, Stein was Franconian and educated in Hanover, Blücher and Queen Luise were from Mecklenburg, and only the Humboldt brothers, Schleiermacher and von Schön were born in Prussia. Many had originally come to Berlin to work in the civil service and were shocked to find their adopted city subjugated by a foreign power. The reformers were universally anti-French. Stein had initially adopted a tolerant line but when Napoleon continued to demand larger sums from destitute Prussia he realized that the only course open to them was to wage war on France and provoke a popular uprising.11 Gneisenau said, ‘As a patriot I sigh. In the time of peace we have neglected much, occupied ourselves with trivialities, flattered the people’s love of show, and neglected war which is a very serious matter.’12 Heinrich von Bülow wrote in 1806 that leaders who let even large armies ‘lie idle in garrison service, where it rusts and bastardizes and sinks into a spiritless militia of the sort that German students call Philistine … The fact is certain, Prussia has lost her independence since she forgot how to make use of 200,000 men.’13 And Hardenberg had warned the king: ‘a radical treatment of the defects of our administration is absolutely and urgently necessary.’14 The most influential of the reformers was Stein, who was appointed after Tilsit in July 1807. He would be in power only one year, but his impact on the government and administration of Berlin would be remarkable.
Baron vom und zum Stein came from an old Thuringian family but had moved to Berlin to take up a post in the Prussian General Directory in July 1804. He was highly independent, had a fiery temperament and a determination which had already set him apart from his colleagues. After Jena Stein and his friend Hardenberg persuaded the king to dismiss the Kabinett, the powerful but irresponsible group of courtiers which had helped lead Prussia to ruin and included men like Lombard, Beyme and von Köckeritz and the ineffectual and stupid minister of foreign affairs Haugwitz; Lombard had in fact been a traitor, feeding information to Napoleon while pretending to advise the king. In 1807 Stein was presented to the king as the ‘only man’ who could save Prussia and in his memoirs Stein recalled looking out at the defeated capital, a sight which fuelled his desire to create a ‘rousing, moral, religious, patriotic spirit in the nation, of inspiring it anew with courage, self-confidence, readiness for every sacrifice in the cause of independence of the foreigners and of national honour, and of seizing the first favourable opportunity to begin the bloody and hazardous struggle for both’.15
Stein began by taking over the Civil Organization Commission, which included men like von Schön, Niebuhr and Stägemann. Like Stein they had been deeply influenced by Adam Smith, had worked to rid Prussia of backward class divisions and hoped to set up representative institutions in their place.16