He Could Do Wonderful Things

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 39





Chapter Two



He Could Do Wonderful Things



It’s only when I’m on the attack that I really know what I’m doing.



— Ferdinand von Schill









Walk out of the auditorium at the conclusion of Professor Fichte’s lecture, exit the building, turn

west onto Unter den Linden, Berlin’s great central boulevard, and within a few blocks, certainly

before you reach the Brandenburg Gate, you will see French soldiers in the streets. It is the winter

of 1807/08. Prussia has been carved up like a roast, the slices handed out to Napoleon’s allies

such as the Poles and Saxons, or in the most striking example, to his 23-year-old playboy brother

Jerome, the new king of Westphalia. The great Schloss is empty; the royal family is still far away

in Königsberg. If you continue west along Unter den Linden, you will notice that the

Brandenburg Gate has been mutilated. The Quadriga (the statue of the goddess of victory in her

four-horse chariot) is missing; Napoleon has ordered it removed and taken back to Paris as a

trophy.

The lecture you have just heard is that of Professor Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a small, hunched

man with an immensely long, pointed nose, his body seeming to crumple into his heavy greatcoat.

In the midst of occupied Berlin, less than a year after the Prussian catastrophe, he has begun a

series of lectures which he calls Addresses to the German Nation, in which he argues that the

foreign conquest and humiliation of Germany is the starting point for a revolutionary new social

and political rebirth. This kind of wrench-in-the-machinery behavior is classic Fichte. Despite his

humble birth (the son of a weaver in Saxony), humility has never been in his nature. He rose

meteorically on the strength of his scholarship and philosophy, taking his place among Kant,

Schiller, Schlegel, and Goethe, all of whom praised his work at one time or another. Then he

proceeded to make enemies of them all, challenging each in turn, finally losing his job at the

University of Jena after a student revolt. Although he settled in Berlin and generally behaved

himself, he was not known as a loyal Prussian, and had certainly never been a nationalist until

1806. But something happened to him when he saw the shattered remnants of the Prussian army.

Fichte fled to Königsberg and volunteered for military service.1 When the peace came and he

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 40





returned to Berlin, he was a changed man: a German patriot, convinced that Napoleonic France

was trying to wipe German identity, culture, and language from the face of the earth.

So now he is fighting back with words. And as if to underscore the boldness of Fichte’s deed,

Napoleon has already made it clear that French censorship will be enforced in Germany, ad

extremis, if necessary. The Nürnberg publisher Johann Philipp Palm has been sentenced to death

for his pamphlet Germany in Her Deepest Humiliation.2 Other publishers in the Hanseatic cities

of Bremen and Hamburg, under French occupation and soon to be annexed to France, have been

shut down for their failure to praise the new regime, and will soon suffer worse if they actually

dare to criticize it.3 Napoleon’s police have taken over or shut down papers and arrested editors in

Mannheim, Würzburg, Leipzig, Frankfurt and the Grand Duchy of Berg.4

Given that Napoleon Bonaparte was no enthusiast of a free press, it is ironic that by 1807 he

found himself ruling (directly or through subordinates) over thirty million Germans, the people

who had given birth to the western world’s printing industry, and who had the broadest and most

prolific – and certainly least controllable – press on the continent. Unlike Britain and France,

where a single capital city completely dominated the media and drew it together in a commercial

and intellectual nexus, Germany had no London or Paris, and thus every sizable German city had

evolved its own press. Moreover, the Germans were arguably the most widely literate of Europe’s

peoples in 1800, having passed through what some historians call a “reading revolution”

(Leserevolution) in the 18th century.5 John Quincy Adams, traveling from Hamburg to Berlin,

remarked on his surprise at finding libraries in even the smallest, poorest German towns, and to

find such a profusion of reading options in the big cities: much more than he had experienced in

Britain. Hamburg, for instance, published an astonishing six hundred periodicals, certainly not

just for its population of roughly 100,000 people. Germans tended to read not only the news from

their own neighborhoods, but also from the presses around greater Germany, and on esoteric

topics published far away. Widespread literacy was, by the early 1800s, just beginning to break

down the linguistic barriers between the different German regions and their radically-different

dialects, by providing a relatively standardized version of the langauge.

Had Napoleon studied recent German political history, he would have seen several examples

of German rulers trying in vain to stifle dissent in print. His ally, the recently elevated Kingdom

of Württemberg, had tried for decades to crush a dissenting free press, arresting even such

notables as Johann Jacob Moser - only to see authors and publishers move to some nearby state

and resume their activities from there. Prussian kings had tried for generations to enforce

censorship, but the offending books and pamphlets would still appear in Berlin, brought in from

publishers in Hamburg or Leipzig. All of this meant that while Napoleon could beat German

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 41





armies, or even enlist them in his service, he would have a much harder time conquering the

creators of German opinion, many, if not most, of whom were pointedly opposed to his

hegemony.

That is not to say that he didn’t try. Napoleonic France possessed probably the most

sophisticated organs of censorship that the technologies of 1800 would allow. The French

emperor occasionally chose an offender to make an example, and he issued preventative death-

sentences on writers and editors, to be carried out in the event that they resumed publication.6 Yet

it was through writing that Prussia’s new leaders intended to fire the first salvoes of rebellion

against the conqueror. As Professor Fichte pointed out in his final lecture in 1808, “The fight with

weapons has ended; there arises now, if we so will it, the new fight of principles, of morals, of

character.”

Men of weapons are not always comfortable transferring their energies to pen and paper. In

Prussia after 1807, however, they had little choice. Most of those men remaining in the service of

the Prussian state after the peace of Tilsit were committed reformers, sketching out their dreams

of recuperation, renewal and/or vengeance for some indeterminate future. If there was a center

point of this web of scribbling Prussians, it was probably the new minister of state, the Baron

vom Stein. This colorful and vigorous Nassauer enjoyed the confidence of the Queen, and he

juggled poets, professors, generals, and diplomats in a bewildering performance of reform

projects, most of which were secret. He had longstanding connections with both military and

civilian administrators, and despite his stormy relations with the king, who by this point had

already fired him once, Stein had enough powerful friends to assure him a seat at the center of

Prussia’s affairs.

At the apex of the new military sat Scharnhorst, the de-facto director of the commission for

reform. He was now in a position to use his influence to protect his old mentor Blücher, who had

never known when to keep his mouth shut, and who was given to expressive outbursts,

unfortunately often in writing, from which French agents could not help but glean intelligence.7

Scharnhorst was also in a position to recruit new minds, and Gneisenau was an obvious choice.

Thus the defender of Kolberg continued his rapid ascent, and was soon working on projects of the

utmost importance and secrecy. Soon he, too, was the recipient of cheerful and dreadfully-

misspelled letters from Blücher.

One of the older generation of Prussian generals who found himself in limbo after 1807 was

Ernst von Rüchel. At fifty-two he was certainly not a fossil in an army whose commanders

included sexta- and septuagenarians. Indeed he had been the youngest corps commander, by

nearly a decade, in the 1806 army. But his service under Frederick the Great marked him as

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 42





belonging to a bygone era. A man of some influence within both the army and the court, Rüchel

was already controversial because of his outspoken views on military and financial

modernization, as early as 1803. His name became politically charged as a result of the defeat at

Jena, where his corps was tardy arriving at the battle and unable to stem the French tide. But he

retained the confidence of the king and by late 1806 had the job of organizing the first military

reform commission. As one of the Prussian officers whom Napoleon had expressly forbade to

hold office, Rüchel went into retirement in 1807, making way for newer faces like Gneisenau,

whose career he had cultivated. He remained a sort of ghost in the machine, active in social and

intellectual circles. And as the war ended, Rüchel came to know another promising young

Prussian officer who had made a name for himself. His youngest daughter, Elise, had fallen in

love with a dashing cavalry major named Ferdinand von Schill.





À la Schill





Shrunken by the peace treaty to roughly one-fifth its previous size, the Prussian army had to re-

think everything. Scharnhorst and Rüchel obtained several of the changes they had been

recommending for some time: the abolition of foreign recruitment, an end to corporal

punishment, and a complete revision of the rules for conscription. Their goal was a true national

army, albeit a very small one.

Under the rules of the regional canton system, the new 2nd Brandenburg Hussars should

theoretically have been drawn entirely from the Mark Brandenburg. But in fact this regiment was

the new command of Major Ferdinand von Schill, and he was given tremendous leeway to choose

his own officers and men from the many requests he received to serve under him. Naturally,

Schill favored those men he already knew, most of whom had served with him at Kolberg or in

his free-corps.

The officers of the 2nd Brandenburg Hussars were extremely young, even by the standards of

Prussia’s new army. Most of the lieutenants were still teenagers. Schill, himself only a little past

thirty, was a father-figure for many of them, and he broadly shaped their sense of patriotism and

duty. His celebrity status, moreover, attracted young men from some of Prussia’s oldest warrior

families, and the pedigree of the 2nd Brandenburg’s officers’ mess was impressive indeed.8 Schill,

who had a distaste of discipline when it was imposed on him, had no qualms now about imposing

it on others. Despite what was apparently a fairly chaotic beginning, his regiment became a solid

and cohesive unit.9

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 43





It was also shockingly informal. Schill retained the practice from his time at Kolberg, of

speaking to all his officers in the familiar du. In German this can be either affectionate or

patronizing, depending upon the context and the relationship. Schill’s young officers spoke this

way to each other, even in front of the troopers. Many years later, Karl von Scriba, who had

joined the regiment in the final week of Schill’s life, recalled the unique atmosphere among the

officers, so different from what he had witnessed in Napoleon’s Confederation regiments. He

called them simply, “Schill and his friends.”10

His power over his young charges was supreme, but Schill’s influence also extended to a

certain degree throughout the army, where admirers and former comrades now served in various

other regiments. Many of his old Kolberg infantry, for instance, had been taken into the light

battalion of the Leib (royal bodyguard) Regiment, allegedly the elite infantry of the army. The

battalion was named “von Schill,” a remarkable honor, given that this regiment was supposedly

under the direct command of the king.

What sort of figure did Ferdinand von Schill cut in the new Prussian army? As a dragoon,

before the war, he had passed unnoticed. Having had little money, he was certainly not a man-

about-town. All his biographers agree on this point: after the transformative experience at

Auerstädt, he somehow became everything that he once was not: swaggering, bold, egocentric, a

risk-taker, glamorous – a man who craved the spotlight.

Physically, he was unimpressive. He was of average height, around 5’6”, although lean and

muscular. In a nation where blonde hair was considered beautiful in both sexes, his was almost

perfectly black. His face was very round, his nose long with a marked bridge, his moustache thick

and combed, his sideburns long, as was fashionable for men of that time. Of course he bore the

deep, ugly scar from his wound at Auerstädt: a diagonal slash across his forehead, but this

apparently only added to his mystique. All those who left recollections of him say that he smiled

and laughed a great deal, something we might today consider attractive, but which for a Prussian

nobleman would have been gauche, particularly in an era when people of culture and dignity did

not display their teeth. He had ruddy cheeks and dark brown eyes, neither of which would have

been considered handsome in his day and place.

Yet the man undeniably had charisma. Everyone loves a winner, and by late 1807, that’s what

Prussians had decided that Schill was. For men he was a jovial, back-slapping comrade. For

women he symbolized a sort of dangerous, sexy celebrity. By 1808 they blew kisses to him as he

passed, and some actually dared to plant their lips on his cheek in public.

In late 1807 Schill planned a visit to his father, whom he had not seen in two years. Before he

could leave, however, he was summoned to the court at Königsberg. The royal family had not

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 44





returned to Berlin after the peace of Tilsit, in part because the French presence in the capital was

ubiquitous and would have made it virtually impossible to keep any secrets. But also in part

because of Queen Louise’s personal hatred of Napoleon, who had defiled her private chambers at

Charlottenburg by plucking souvenirs from them which implied an affair between her and the

Tsar Alexander. (For the sake of wounding the pride of both his enemies, Napoleon had

published various “captured” letters between Louise and Alexander which were, at the very least,

deeply embarrassing, and indicated that the Prussian queen did have an immense crush on the

Tsar.)11 Louise could not stand the idea of returning to Berlin as long as Napoleon’s soldiers

patrolled her capital. Thus the court remained in East Prussia. A continuous stream of military

men came and went, in an ongoing dialogue with the emerging new administration.

Schill arrived early in the new year, ostensibly to be honored by the king for his services to

Prussia. It is not clear what honor, precisely, he was to receive, since Frederick William had

already decorated him with the Pour le Mérite.12 Schill ate dinner with the royal family, but his

presence at the court that day is murky. The normally eagle-eyed Countess Sophie von Voß, aide

to the queen and manager of the family’s social schedule, made no mention of his arrival in her

day-book. That is odd, to say the least, since before he left, Schill did have a private meeting with

Queen Louise.

No one knows what, exactly, they discussed, or how long the meeting lasted. Officially,

Louise’s purpose was to give Schill an honor of her own: the gift of a red leather portfolio, on

which she had had engraved the words: “For the Brave Herr Schill — Louise.” The substance of

their discussion, and the mystery of whether or not the portfolio contained anything (instructions

perhaps?), would provide two centuries of speculation for German writers to come.

Schill’s visit may have marked his initiation into the Tugendbund, the quasi-Masonic

“League of Virtue” that Stein had resuscitated in the wake of the peace. Stein used the

Tugendbund as a network, a means of channeling communication between the various secret and

semi-secret fraternities that were springing up across northern Germany, in which men swore

oaths of vengeance against the French.13 It was yet another of Stein’s projects: a sort of Prussian

Illuminati to channel patriotic collaboration against Napoleon.14 Although it certainly made King

Frederick William III very nervous, we can again only speculate, regarding both his knowledge

and his assent for the Tugendbund’s activities. Georg Bärsch, who had been brought into the

Tugendbund by Gneisenau, was in Königsberg to get a royal commission as “inspector” of

Pomerania, when in reality he was going to help organize the Tugendbund there. As Bärsch was

leaving, he met his old commander, the Graf von Krockow, who was just coming to town. Why?

Because he, too, was in the Tugendbund, and was reporting to Scharnhorst and Stein. Given that

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 45





the membership was a veritable Who’s-Who of Prussia with at least 700 members, it is hard to

imagine that Frederick William was not informed. He mentioned the Tugendbund elliptically in a

handful of letters, and he actually received several “applications” from officers asking his

permission to join the organization while remaining in his good graces. Queen Louise was

certainly kept informed, as her correspondence regularly revealed. It is even harder to imagine the

French not having a reasonably good picture of the Tugendbund’s membership, and perhaps of its

general intent.

Schill may have been inducted at the time of this visit to the court, or it may have happened

on a subsequent visit to Königsberg later in the year, but he certainly knew most of the

collaborators by 1808 and was in regular correspondence with several of them. The Baron vom

Stein probably sensed that Schill was a bit too loud to be trusted with the most sensitive

information.15 Georg Bärsch had noted, when Gneisenau had first brought him into the

Tugendbund, that Gneisenau kept a list of “friends of the people.” The first name on the list was

Schill’s. Later, when Bärsch met Schill for the first time in Königsberg, “we sealed a tight bond

of friendship.” Whether he meant that metaphorically, or literally as one of the oaths that the

members took, is not clear. But Bärsch acknowledged that Schill was a liability because he could

not keep his mouth shut: “Without any reservations he told me of his plans to liberate the

Fatherland and thereby join up all Germany in a union....”16

From the court, Schill traveled south to Silesia to visit his father. Johann Georg was now

seventy-two but still strong and healthy, still interested in the affairs of the world. Again, the

substance of their conversations is unknown, and provided generations of German writers with

grist for speculation and dramatic scenes. The Romantic depiction of the old Hussar counseling

his son on his duty to the Fatherland is almost surely false. Johann Georg knew the value of

staying on the good side of a monarch, and most likely would not have incited his son to rebellion

or disobedience. But the image of father and son as patriotic rebel collaborators was probably

inevitable, given the similarities in their career paths.

Nonetheless, the visit was probably purely for Schill’s pleasure. He may have also wanted to

tell his father about his personal plans. Schill had fallen in love with one of his many admirers:

young Elise von Rüchel, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the general. By the time he returned to

Berlin in the spring of 1808, they were a celebrity couple.

Such a discrepancy in age was not unheard-of in this period. Napoleon, after all, would soon

be exploring marriage prospects with two different teenagers. But it was generally not the norm

for a 32-year-old to court a girl who was barely past puberty. If General von Rüchel felt any

unease about the relationship, no record of it survives. Rüchel’s future son-in-law was, after all, a

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 46





national hero. The legends about Schill were already multiplying, none confirmed, of course: he

had single-handedly defeated six French horsemen in personal combat, he had stolen four of

Napoleon’s prize horses from the emperor’s own stables, and so on.

Simultaneously, Schill had become the darling of the Berlin social scene. He and Elise were

given V.I.P. treatment at the opera. The major was toasted at dinner parties in the same breath as

the king. Schoolboys wore home-made versions of his regimental shako, fake Schill-moustaches,

and cut their hair à la Schill.17 Prints of the major mounted on his horse sold on the streets of

Berlin for as much as portraits of Queen Louise. (Including the portrait she had done, wearing a

feminine version of a Hussar’s uniform, very close in appearance to that of Schill.) Already by

late 1807 Schill was complaining to Blücher that he couldn’t sign any order or letter without

people wanting to keep it as an autograph.18 Thousands of copies of Schill-memorabilia and

collectibles were available for sale throughout northern Germany by the end of 1808, as far away

as Hamburg. Small desktop Schill-portraits featured several different variations of the major in

his uniform. Many Schill-cameos still survive, in varying sizes, all with the loop for a necklace,

indicating that hundreds of German women wore the major’s portrait upon their bosoms.

Women’s jewelry boxes and makeup compacts featured Schill portraits or scenes of the major

performing his legendary adventures. Men carried key-chains with fobs bearing Schill’s image in

copper, silver, and gold.19 Little booklets appeared, often directed at boys or young men, using

Schill as an example of a model German man.20 And correspondence from this period indicates

that a number of folk-songs about Schill had become popular throughout northern Germany.21

What did Schill think about his fame? Of all the visitors and letters that urged him to “save”

Prussia, and in many cases, all of Germany? Few people could remain stoic and dispassionate in

the midst of such national adulation, and Schill’s ego certainly swelled from the acclaim. But he

did occasionally indicate that he was baffled by the faith that people had placed in him. In a letter

from 1808, whose addressee and exact date are now lost, he wrote: “The thing is... it’s all instinct

for me, just natural inclination, and so artless that if I were to try to write it down logically, or if I

were to try to explain it orally in a report, I’d probably make people laugh at me; the explanation

would probably irritate them.... It’s only when I’m on the attack, or out on patrol, or on a raid that

I really know what I’m doing and perhaps – and only perhaps – when I know my real worth.”22

Schill rented a house on the Wilhelmstraße. In those days Berlin’s political and residential

center of gravity was in the East. The western part of the city was relatively new, and indeed the

Wilhelmstraße had only been created in the previous two generations by removing the old

medieval walls and strongpoints so that the growing capital could spread outward. Later in the

19th century the Wilhelmstraße became the broad boulevard that housed much of the imperial

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 47





government in huge granite edifices. (And later still, the exact spot of Schill’s house was where

Goebbels built his Ministry of Propaganda.) But in Schill’s day this district was practically a

suburb. From his back window he might have seen the young men coming and going from the

artillery academy, two blocks away on Unter den Linden. And from his front door, looking south-

west, he would have had a view of a small ceramics factory. Beyond that, starting where the

modern skyscrapers of the Potsdamer Platz dominate the skyline today, would have stretched

farmland.

Here Major von Schill made his home. He may not have been in the midst of the city, but he

was certainly in the midst of society. People who visited him remarked that he was always busy,

always receiving callers, and always the recipient of an impressive amount of fan-mail.23 He

apparently was earning enough money now to have at least one servant, since correspondence

occasionally mentions his “domestic.” Either in this home, or nearby, Schill proposed to his

young sweetheart. He and Elise were engaged shortly after her sixteenth birthday. Their future

could not have seemed brighter.

By the Autumn of 1808 French spies had given Napoleon an alarming enough picture of

developments in Prussia that he demanded the dismissal of the Baron vom Stein. Napoleon was

no doubt nervous about his new Russian ally’s friendly visit to the Prussian court in Königsberg.

His people also reported the many rumors already circulating in Berlin about a renewed Austrian

war in the coming Spring.24 The final straw came when a French agent seized several of Stein’s

letters to Tugendbund conspirators which sketched out possible scenarios for a German revolt

against Napoleonic rule. Napoleon published the most damning of these in his Moniteur on 8

September – after the French translation altered its verbiage to make it look even worse.25 The

original German text began to appear in the Berlin newspapers ten days later. Under pressure

from Napoleon, Frederick William stripped Stein of his portfolio, although he retained his

ministerial access for another two months. Finally, knowing the game was up and that not even

Queen Louise could save him this time, Stein submitted his resignation on 24 November. He

initially planned to “retire” to Berlin, allegedly to be with his family, but of course to stay in the

midst of the action. Napoleon was not so easily fooled. From his headquarters in Madrid (where

he was wrapping up – so he thought – the conquest of Spain), he issued an Ordre de l’Armée on

16 December. It ordered the confiscation of Stein’s property, and declared: “Stein, who sought to

stir up troubles in Germany, is hereby declared an enemy of France and the Confederation of the

Rhine.”

Like everything else that involved him, Stein’s dismissal was extraordinarily complex. It was

tied to the Prussian attempts to wriggle at least partially free from the crushing burdens of the

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 48





peace agreement.The Peace of Tilsit stipulated that the French would gradually evacuate Prussia

in a westward motion over the course of about four months. To initiate each stage of this process,

however, the Prussians had to pay massive war indemnities, and until they were paid, the French

could remain at their discretion, while the Prussians were obliged to pay to feed and maintain

those garrisons. This was substantial; the French took horses, food, money, and virtually

everything else they needed, as they pleased. While old East Prussia remained free of French

troops, a number of garrison towns and fortresses like Glogau, Küstrin, Stettin, and the area

surrounding Berlin were placed under a special status that allowed the French to remain there

even after the indemnities were paid. That, however, was moot, because Prussia’s total indemnity

(154 million francs) was so gigantically larger than its remaining tax base (56 million francs), and

the treaty forbade Prussia many revenue-raising measures such as setting tolls on certain roads

and rivers.26 Thus the French were not obligated to proceed with their evacuations as long as the

Prussians failed to pay their bills. So desperate were the Prussians to get out from under this debt

that Frederick William III had even been willing to bind Prussia into a defensive and offensive

alliance with France, in return for a large reduction in the payments. Napoleon, who already had

the Prussians exactly where he wanted them, wasn’t interested in altering the terms he had just

dictated.

Prior to his scandal, Stein had been pursuing a variety of negotiations with the French in an

attempt to formulate reductions and alterations of the indemnity terms. His appeals had been

utterly fruitless, and as Prussia was on the verge of bankruptcy Stein became desperate enough to

consider the worst-case scenario that Scharnhorst and Gneisenau had sketched out for him: to join

Austria in war in 1809, risking everything to be rid of Napoleon once and for all, or to die trying.

Lacking much of an army anymore, Prussia would have to make do with something like the

Spanish response: a popular uprising supplemented by whatever regular forces could be

assembled, and funded by the British. They would have to “speak to the common man,”

Scharnhorst concluded, and thus the Tugendbund began testing the waters in various secret

communications with possible conspirators across northern Germany.27 Schill was in regular

communication with all three of these men, and it is very likely that many of his ideas about a

popular revolt and pan-Germanic liberation movement took shape during this period.

But after the embarrassments of French arms in Spain during the Summer of 1808, Napoleon

became more conciliatory. Tsar Alexander nudged him at their meeting in Erfurt that September

to reduce the Prussian indemnity, and Napoleon finally authorized Daru to make some

accomodations, including Stein’s most important symbolic demand: the return of Berlin.28 But

although Stein would not be allowed to savor it, and although Queen Louise would have none of

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 49





Berlin for the time being, the Hohenzollerns intended to make the most of their “return” to their

largest city. The king appointed old General L’Estocq as military governor and set a date for a

triumphal reentry of Prussian troops in the capital after two years of French occupation.

For two years the Berliners had been forced to celebrate Napoleon’s birthday, the

anniversaries of his victories over them at Jena-Auerstädt, and various other French holidays (the

state theatre had to give a special performance on Josephine’s birthday, replacing the one

traditionally for Louise), all with parades and illuminations, of course at local expense. Under

their breath Berliners referred to them not as Feiertage (holidays), but as Knechttage (slavery-

days).29 But now, the bracing winter weather notwithstanding, they could finally have a parade of

their own. On 10 December the Prussian army marched through the Brandenburg Gate and the

boulevards of Berlin. In the position of honor leading the parade, and quite obviously the star of

the whole show, was Major Ferdinand von Schill.

First came Schill’s infantry: the “Light Infantry Battalion von Schill” of the Leib-Regiment.

People went wild, cheering “long live Schill!” and throwing laurels at the men as they passed.

Georg Bärsch was riding with Schill’s Hussars. He recalled that, “The jubilation was

indescribable. Crowns of laurels and flowers rained down on us, and from every window the

pretty women and girls in their best jewelry waved at us. Wherever Schill went, he was mobbed

by people. Several times he called out, ‘You’re making too much of me!’”30 It is also likely that,

wherever he went, French spies were watching. By late 1808 Schill was receiving so much fan-

mail that the French were actually confiscating it and reading it for intelligence. Napoleon

received two separate reports about the parade and the reaction of the crowd, and on Schill’s

stardom in general.31

Not everyone in Prussia was in love with the major. Achim von Arnim recalled to a friend

that the hero was also a divisive figure: “Schill, from whom you’ve probably heard little, is a

strikingly uninhibited man. I see him almost daily, and because of his liveliness, people expect

much from him. But his wounds have affected him, and he changes like the weather. Every child

in the city knows him. The stiffer military folks have a grudge against him, and even hate him.”32

The older generation of the Prussian military was notably uncomfortable with the Free Corps

concept and the idea of a popular revolt or a “people’s army.” The veneration of Schill’s ragged

band at Kolberg, and his meteoric ascent from a nobody-second-lieutenant to the most celebrated

military man in Prussia deeply disturbed an element of the officer corps who felt that Prussia

needed discipline, not a mob of cheering, half-trained peasants. But these were the views of a

minority, and any criticism of Schill brought out reams in his defense. When Field Marshal von

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 50





Kalkreuth called Schill a “foolish provocateur,” a Hamburg journalist retorted that the fatherland

needed “many more such fools.”33

In the cheers of the crowd, in the newspaper write-ups, and in the souvenirs and kitsch sold

by Berliners in his honor, Schill was “the hero of Kolberg.” His reputation was based entirely

upon his exploits as the free-corps leader. That meant that his adventures (suitably expanded and

distorted for popular propaganda) easily dwarfed those of the real defender of Kolberg, Neidhardt

von Gneisenau.

Although he loved the flattery and obviously enjoyed an audience, Schill was uncomfortable

with this latest transformation. According to Georg Bärsch, Schill tried on several occasions to

correct people when they gave him credit for the defense of Kolberg, and he pointedly reminded

them that Gneisenau had commanded the city. Biographers and historians in general depict

Gneisenau as a self-effacing man, largely based on his willingness to play second fiddle to the

much more charismatic Blücher from 1813-15. But Gneisenau had an ego, and he was clearly

bothered by this distortion of the story at his expense.34 His letter to Bärsch two months after the

parade contains more than a hint of Shakespearean protest:



Because of Schill’s popularity and widespread name-recognition, he could do wonderful

things. We must therefore glorify him as much as we can. You understand, dear Bärsch,

where I want to go with this.... My view of the future is brightened only when I think of

how we can break the foreign yoke. In such a struggle, I’d gladly perish.... I mustn’t feel

jealousy toward another man whose service is so highly esteemed, no matter what the

public at large says, so long as I deem him worthy. I have my eyes focused on only one

thing: Freedom, and for this I’ll sacrifice everything.35









Freedom?





Many Germans, before and after the Napoleonic period, lived in oppressive and/or reactionary

states. They were often governed by a handful of paranoid aristocrats who regarded constitutions

and democracy as dangerous viruses that government was specifically designed to counter. Many

biographers of Napoleon have therefore presented the argument that French conquest was in

reality a liberation which would ultimately have allowed all Europeans to thrive in a new, rational

European super-state, but for the resistance of the old reactionary regimes who fought and finally

overcame the forces of the French revolution. This has been a recurrent theme in Napoleonic

biography, reproduced down to the present day by the French emperor’s many admirers. This

vision of Napoleon as a new Prometheus did indeed have some cachet in Germany, at least until

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 51





French soldiers began to arrive. For most intellectuals and artists like Beethoven, the bloom was

off Napoleon’s rose once he made himself Consul for Life.36 Certainly Goethe, who included

many humorous anti-French asides in Faust, had the French occupation in mind when he warned:

“The wise man worries when the soldiers come.”37 (Granted, his admiration for Napoleon

increased exponentially once the Emperor was safely locked away on St. Helena and French

troops were no longer trampling down Goethe’s beloved gardens.)

Napoleonic propaganda was often so gratuitously strident that it is hard to assess its

effectiveness, and in the case of the Germans it is very difficult to determine whether or not many

people truly believed that being part of the French empire constituted an improvement in their

lives. Napoleon could not realistically claim to be coming to their rescue, as he could with the

Poles, for example. Unlike the conquest of Italy, where Napoleon actually spoke the language and

could claim to be freeing the local bourgeoisie from their oppressive foreign overlords, the

French emperor remained forever an alien in Germany. He disliked the sound of the German

language and showed scant interest in a culture which had produced - in his own lifetime -

Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven (to name but a few.) On a purely military

level his contact with Germans was considerable, as he was either making war against them,

using them in his own armies or as allied contingents, or both simultaneously, for most of his

career. He conquered all of Germany, re-shaping much of it to suit the needs of his military

machine and the ambitions of his family, as well as annexing millions of Germans directly to

France. And of course he divorced his infertile French wife and married a German princess.

“Marry a German, dear fellow,” he quipped to a bachelor after his happy second union with

Austria’s Marie-Louise. “They are the best women in the world....” Thus his beloved only

legitimate child lived and died a German prince.38

What, then, do we make of the central premise of Ferdinand von Schill’s cause? Did Germans

need or want to be “liberated” from Napoleonic rule? Was there indeed an insurgent German

national identity emerging in the wake of Napoleon’s victories and the remaking of Germany?

Historical writing about Germany in the period 1806-15 has traditionally been organized

around two interpretive schools. One argues that the period of anti-Napoleonic wars was a

Fürstenkrieg, or “War of Princes,” in which the people did little more than follow the instructions

of their aristocratic leaders in the state and army. These leaders knew how to use patriotic

propaganda to manipulate the common people, but fought the wars against Napoleon primarily

for the advantage of their own regimes, just as under different circumstances they had allied with

France. This opportunism helps to explain the tens of thousands of German troops still loyal to

Napoleon until his defeat at Leipzig in late 1813. Moreover it highlights the intra-German

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 52





bickering at the Congress of Vienna, where German rulers showed themselves to be every bit as

predatory as Napoleon had been, and equally satisfied to rule over Polish-speaking, Italian-

speaking, or German-speaking subjects, so long as they increased the net power of their states. In

the Fürstenkrieg model, pan-German patriotism was a tool used by the aristocracy and then put

aside once the politico-military goals had been achieved. It was a bald-faced power grab cloaked

in romantic language, which goes far to explain the failure of a national movement to create a

German nation-state after 1815. In the words of one historian, “The ‘national uprising’ just didn’t

happen.”39

The other, older school of interpretation holds that the period 1806-15 was a Volkskrieg, or

“People’s War,” in which a pan-German sentiment emerged, admittedly manipulated by the

Prussian aristocracy, but nonetheless powerful, sincere, and above-all, organic. This explains the

popular enthusiasm for people like Schill, or the numerous new patriotic songs composed (by

common people) in 1813. These Kriegslieder (“war songs”) remained a staple of German

patriotic fare for more than a century thereafter, and their lyrics spoke of Liberty, Fatherland, and

Sacrifice with a passion and rawness that was very new in German experience. The Volkskrieg

model always offered the example of the high morale of the barely-trained and poorly-equipped

Landwehr (militia), and the supposed enthusiasm with which their families and towns sent them

off to war with parades, festivals, and tearful exhortations of patriotic duty. In truth, of course, the

degree of enthusiasm for militia service varied widely across Prussia (generally, the further West

one moved, the less-enthusiastic the recruits and local officials became!) And although the

Landwehr was mobilized much more slowly and with less celebration than the old Volkskrieg

model had always suggested, once in the field, these men tended to stay there and fought with

increasing confidence. Contrasted with the exhausted and desertion-prone German allied

contingents with the French army by 1813, the Prussian difference in morale and motivation

seems to beg for a national, patriotic explanation. By 1813, certainly, if not yet by 1809, the

Germans on the allied side saw themselves as liberators.40

It is worth noting that other models have been proposed over the years, some of which draw

from these two traditional interpretations, and others which are altogether original. Recent years

have seen explorations by German historians of religion as a motivating force, as well as an

investigation of the role of gender and images of manhood in the anti-Napoleonic struggles.41

Marxist interpretations tended to borrow from both the Fürstenkrieg and Volkskrieg models,

citing a rising class-consciousness of people versus nobility, yet also romanticizing the nationalist

uprising as an empowerment of the common man.

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 53





It should also be noted that not everyone sees these two models as a dichotomy. If we

dispense with alleged motivations and concern ourselves simply with activity, then it becomes

clear that the War of Liberation became both Fürstenkrieg and Volkskrieg. Obviously, state

leaders did their best to manipulate public opinion and direct it toward policies that would

strengthen the state and bring revenge against the French. Baron vom Stein went so far as to try to

coordinate the activities of writers, poets, playwrights, and philosophers as part of a great

national, spiritual preparation for taking arms against the enemy.42 But equally obviously, those

leaders chose themes that already resonated with common people, who didn’t need very much

official prodding in order to hate foreigners or to perceive them as enemies, particularly when

foreign troops had marched across their land and were barracked there.

A French conquest of Germany might not have necessarily awakened any sort of popular

nationalism or Germanic revolt. In these small villages, people just needed to get by. If a new

administration brought better roads and an easier toll system, a better, more efficient legal

system... what did the peasants care if the overlords spoke French? Many of these people spoke

such thick German dialects that they couldn’t have made themselves comprehensible to the king

of Prussia in any event. (Not to mention that Prussian bureaucrats at this point still wrote perhaps

as much as one-third of their official business in French.)

If the natural political status of peasants was indifference, many German nobility seemed

potentially inclined to transfer their loyalties to a new French hegemon. In the Rhineland, for

instance, Frederick William II had significantly expanded the Prussian nobility, hoping to create a

new segment of the aristocracy tied to the Hohenzollern dynasty. Nonetheless, many of those

Rhenish nobles preferred an overbearing yet religiously neutral French regime, over the

possibility of overbearing and religiously-different German regimes. Rhineland Catholics in

particular were never happy being Prussians, neither before nor after the Napoleonic wars. Many

families, after exile during the Revolution, returned to the western Rhineland and took the

required oath of loyalty to the new French regime. Some took roles in local administration, some

even moved to Paris to work for Napoleon’s government. Others sat miserably on the remains of

their estates and accused those collaborators of treason against the old German empire and

German nobility in general.43

Napoleon frequently squandered the potential loyalty of many German nobles by absconding

with their land and stripping away their titles. In Westphalia, for instance, he seized nearly one

thousand large estates – more than half of all the land owned by German nobility in the areas to

comprise Westphalia – and gave it to French officers or officials.44 At a stroke he had created a

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 54





new French nobility for this new “German” state (and, of course, an angry and dispossessed

German nobility.)

Among the middle and lower classes, the French missed their opportunity to cement their

administration, in part because a near-constant state of war imposed high taxes and conscription,

and in large part simply because French occupation was often so violent and demanding on the

common people. As early as 1792, as Rouget de Lisle was writing the Marseillaise, there were

already what we would today call “ethnic cleansings” in German-speaking regions of France. 45

As the revolutionary period passed into the Napoleonic period, the French spread their armies

across the entire German-speaking world. Letters from this period often glow with fear: “I hid

your little sisters,” a Pomeranian mother wrote to her son, who was away fighting Napoleon, as

the French entered their town and came looking for food, fodder, and women.46 “What can one do

against 50,000 berserk men who are free to do as they please?” asked Johanna Schopenhauer in a

letter to her son Arthur, as the French entered Weimar.47

Men were conscripted. Villages were torn up and despoiled. Women were raped. Crops and

animals were taken, leaving farming communities destitute. In areas where Polish populations

were mixed in with Germans, the Poles were armed by the French and became vigilantes. In the

German port cities, legal commerce came to a virtual standstill. Even when the current war

ceased and peacetime occupation commenced, the situation did not measurably improve for most

Germans. Taxes increased dramatically, and Napoleon frequently forced localities to make

“contributions” to his treasury, as well as providing supplies and men for his army. In many

places (particularly the port cities) corrupt French officials extorted the locals, and the former

local officials were often displaced. The historian Katherine Aaslestad writes that, “poverty,

begging, vagrancy, and prostitution rose alongside smuggling in the urban centers, sure indicators

of the distress generated from imperial directives (taxation, conscription, and economic

dislocation.)”48 Other historians like T.C.W. Blanning and Michael Rowe have noted that it took a

decade for regions like the Rhineland to recover a new economic life and begin again to prosper

under French rule. In most of Germany, the French presence did not last that long, and thus most

Germans experienced only the disruption of frequent wars and ongoing blockades.

Napoleonic efficiency could be very impressive. Within six weeks of the annexation of the

German Hanse cities, 22,000 bilingual copies of the Code Napoléon had arrived in Bremen,

Hamburg, and Lübeck. But of course that also meant that all the German barristers, clerks, and

most of the lawyers lost their jobs, as Frenchmen arrived to administer the new legal system. And

what good was a better, more modern legal code if the Emperor himself didn’t abide by it? If

Napoleon could personally reach into any part of Germany controlled by him or his subordinate

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 55





German monarchs, and punish, on his own personal authority? If criticism of his regime, or even

the “crime” of speaking in the English language could result in the loss of one’s property,

freedom, or life?49 Imperial France officially practiced the rule of law, but of course Napoleon

allotted for himself a dictatorial superstructure, creating enough authoritarian short-cuts that he

could very easily arrest, imprison, and execute anyone in any part of Europe where French

soldiers stood.50

Napoleonic France did indeed introduce new, centralized economic and administrative

concepts to Germany. As John Gill has observed, these reforms benefited several German rulers

by strengthening their own regimes.51 But in the short-term the benefits to common people must

have been elusive, particularly if modern French secularism and streamlining of government

meant that thousands of Germans would be unemployed who once worked in local administration

or the law. Infrastructural improvements were likewise a mixed blessing: what good were new

roads and canals if the emperor’s Continental System had turned black-marketeering and

smuggling into the fastest-growing sectors of the economy? A French observer in Hamburg in

1811 wrote to Napoleon that his new port of “Hambourg” had become a vast poorhouse:

“Hambourg ne produit rien, ne fabrique rien.”52 In Bremen, the US consul wrote, “The military

occupation by the French has... nearly ruined commerce and navigation. The wealth and

prosperity of those in former times so happy is now entirely vanished.” Unsympathetic to the

plight of his new German citizens, Napoleon assigned each of these cities a large “contribution”

to be paid to his treasury. Bremen’s annual burden was a crushing 860,000 francs, Hamburg’s

over a million.53

It is surely true that German patriotism and nationalism was in a sense an artificial, deliberate

creation of that small portion of the German-speaking world who belonged to the educated,

moneyed classes. This should come as no surprise, nor is it unique to the German experience.

Patriotism is always made; it is always taught. But it is also true that the unpleasantness of

Napoleonic rule created a broad and receptive audience for German patriotic propaganda among

the common people. Given the violence against civilians, particularly in the Revolutionary

period, Germans were likely, as Ruth Kittner writes, “not to see the French as modernizers, but

rather as destroyers.”54 By the end of 1813 the citizens of the Hanseatic cities, who had once been

so skeptical of Prussia and certainly were not German nationalists, were openly cheering the

Russians and Prussians as liberators and referring to their new-found enthusiasm as “Hate against

the foreign tyranny.” Hamburgers, for instance, were still not convinced pan-German nationalists,

but they were by 1813 willing to cheer anyone who freed them from French rule, which “had

brought misery and poverty to most of the city’s residents.”55

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 56





Napoleon also faced a problem of language and culture. The French presence in Germany

was frankly alien. And it carried ideas from the French Revolution which were as upsetting as

they were enlightening, particularly to religious farming people in the small towns. (A present-

day analogy for an American would involve being told by your new French rulers that socialized

medicine is being imposed, the death penalty is abolished, same-sex marriage is legal, the metric

system is hereby enforced, and the new calendar shows this to be the month of “Frost” in the

“Year Eleven.”) As happened in Spain, a longing for the “good old days” was probably

inevitable. It is one thing to be oppressed by your own local dynasty; it is quite another to be

oppressed by a foreigner, even if the foreigner manages to fix some long-standing problems.

To smooth the path in many places Napoleon ruled through German proxies. By enlarging the

domains of states like Bavaria, Saxony, Württemberg, and Baden, Napoleon could maintain an

administrative and political continuity in these regions, as well as keep his relationship to them

relatively simple. But the proxy rulers faced obvious and frequent reminders that they were not

really in charge. When Napoleon condemned Stein, for instance, he did so by declaring him “an

enemy of France and the Confederation of the Rhine” [italics added]. The implications could not

have been lost on any observant German: Napoleon, sitting in Madrid, essentially fired the

Prussian Minister of State, and took the liberty of speaking for all the other German rulers who

were theoretically still sovereign. And Napoleon reserved the right to intervene as he pleased in

any of these allegedly-autonomous states, whether that meant the French police shutting down a

newspaper in Saxony or Württemberg, the French army requisitioning men, animals, or materials

from Bavaria, ordering the German monarchs to mobilize and place their men under the

command of French marshals, or whatever else the emperor desired.56

In Westphalia French domination was even more blatant. As he did with his brother Joseph in

Spain and his brother Louis in Holland, Napoleon frequently went over the head of his puppet

ruler and spoke directly to the French commanders and other authorities who had been sent to run

the place.57 Joseph, at least, was an intelligent and politically-savvy man who had an enlightened

plan of government for his angry subjects. Jerome, however, was not only unsure that he wanted

the job, but also generally inept at performing it.

Aside from its location on a map, there was nothing German about the Kingdom of

Westphalia. Wilhelm Ludwig Falkmann, an officer in Lippe’s contingent of the Rheinbund,

passed through Kassel in April 1809. He observed that, “You would think you had entered a

French city; so completely had they altered it.”58 All official business was done in French. The

royal administration and all ministries kept records entirely in French. The postal system required

the names of persons and localities to be written in the French spellings.59 The official seals of all

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 57





the royal departments, and their letterheads, were in French. In 1809, when the Westphalians

arrested some of Schill’s co-conspirators and found incriminating letters on them, they first had to

translate the letters into French, in order for them to be admitted into the court as evidence,

because German was not the official language of the Westphalian legal system.60 Whenever she

entered a room at court, Jerome’s German wife was announced with the words “La Reine!”

rather than “Die Königin!”61 Westphalian proclamations (to the common people) were almost

always bilingual, with the French printed in the left column of each page, and the German in the

right. Why was that necessary in a country whose inhabitants were 100% German-speakers? Why

not simply issue the proclamations in the language of the people? Because many of the nobility

were Frenchmen sent by Napoleon to occupy land taken from its former German owners.

Because King Jerome and much of his court couldn’t understand German. And because, as

everybody knew, the real monarch was in Paris.

Such a government was inevitably alien to the great mass of the people who didn’t speak any

French. Therefore it was crucial for Jerome Bonaparte – if his regime were to survive and prosper

– to connect with the educated middle and upper classes in Westphalia. These people had been

thoroughly penetrated by the Enlightenment, many of them already spoke French, and

particularly among the Bourgeoisie could be found ambitious and worldly men who recognized a

chance for personal improvement by actively supporting a new regime. Many were not unwilling

to consider a new French-dominated political superstructure.

That, however, is precisely why the Baron vom Stein targeted most of his propaganda at an

educated, cultured – we might say today “high-brow” – audience. It is why he devoted so much

money and effort to enlist and coordinate the efforts of scholars, poets, writers, and philosophers.

He was presenting the German bourgeoisie with an alternative to the new French models, in an

attempt to win them over to a German national concept and thus enlist them in the struggle

against Napoleon. James J. Sheehan, among others, has argued that the call of German

nationalism was produced and consumed only by the small intellectual elite, and then used as the

basis for subsequent mythology. This is of course true. But it neglects the importance of a

leadership class that has drunk deeply from its own myths and is now using them in official, war-

making rhetoric to mobilize the lower classes and to justify the war to them. History is replete

with successful examples of this phenomenon, arguably including the American Revolution.

Some historians of the Fürstenkrieg school seem to have missed that point entirely when they

note that the propaganda – in such lofty forms as lectures, poetry, and plays - went straight over

the heads of 90% of the population.62 Of course it did. It was always intended to be absorbed

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 58





primarily by that crucial segment of the population – the educated Bourgeoisie - who were at risk

of being won-over by the Bonaparte regimes.63

And that, in turn, is why Napoleonic France took such strenuous measures to censor and even

crush dissent in print. It was a Sisyphean task. As early as 1804, Napoleon had ordered that the

Rhineland be culturally sealed off from the remainder of the German-speaking world by strictly

controlling the importation of printed materials.64 But once Napoleon ruled over the large

majority of Germany, such a cordon was no longer feasible.

Can pretty words really raise up a national rebellion? Will the merchant or the middle-class

tradesman transfer his anti-French sympathies to action? Napoleon’s efforts certainly indicate that

he was worried about the possibility. It seems that Gneisenau and Scharnhorst had decided as

early as 1808 that it could be done, and they had thrown their full support behind Stein’s

propaganda projects. A planned Volkskrieg was, in their view, an essential component of any

German counteroffensive against Napoleon. This was not simply a romantic flight of fancy

inspired by the Spaniards. Two years after Schill’s revolt, they laid it before Frederick William III

in a formal proposal, which he predictably refused, dismissing it as “poetry.” Gneisenau

responded with cold logic: “Religion, prayer, love for the King, for the Fatherland, for Virtue –

these are nothing more than poetry. The security of the throne is based upon poetry.”65









“A Country Already Drained”





Jerome Bonaparte began his military career in the navy, where he performed adequately but with

a marked tendency to indiscipline. After plucking his little brother out of a dynastically

inconvenient marriage in the United States, Napoleon decided to make a soldier out of him.

Perhaps as training for his coming role, Jerome was given nominal command of a German corps,

primarily of Bavarian and Württemberg troops. This unit (the IX Corps) remained in fact under

the command of a French General, and was tasked with the reduction of Prussian fortresses in

Silesia during the 1806-07 war. Jerome’s correspondence in this campaign shows some parallels

with his later career as king: he begs Napoleon to be relieved of command, to have an easier job

as an Imperial aide, he disregards orders he doesn’t like, and he ultimately faces dissent and open

disobedience from his troops.66 After this inauspicious start, Jerome Bonaparte, at the age of

twenty-three, became King of Westphalia.

Westphalia was created by amalgamating the territories of nearly two dozen German states. A

majority of the people had originally been subjects of Prussia, Brunswick, Hannover, or the

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 59





Hessian principalities. The design was entirely Napoleon’s, the early administration

overwhelmingly French. In many ways, Westphalia was to be the centerpiece of the new

Confederation of the Rhine, and a showcase of the new, Napoleonic Germany. Unlike the other

major components of the Confederation, Westphalia was the only German state that had been

conjured out of thin air.

It is hard to envision the Kingdom of Westphalia as anything more than an extension of

French control over Germany. The Emperor appointed his brother Jerome as king and arranged

Jerome’s marriage to Princess Catherine of Württemberg (for whom the young monarch showed

as little enthusiasm as he did for learning the German language.) Napoleon sent Jerome

Westphalia’s new constitution with a note explaining that the younger sibling “must follow it

judiciously” and reminding him of “the influence it can have upon your glory and mine.” 67

Jerome’s royal residence, the former Schloss Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel, was renamed “Schloss

Napoleonshöhe.” One Westphalian nobleman commented that, “the Emperor considers the

kingdom not to be a sovereign state but rather an extension of France.”68

Napoleon reached into every inch of Westphalia. He monitored Jerome’s correspondence and

told him which ambassadors to send to which countries with which messages. If Jerome

committed the sin of attempting to pick his own ministers, Napoleon corrected the error with an

angry letter and a Frenchman (usually a general) en route to Kassel. Westphalian newspapers

were closely monitored by French authorities, at Napoleon’s direct instructions. The

Magdeburgische Zeitung, for instance, was ordered to accept orders only from the (French)

military – not from the Westphalian authorities, and by 1811 was directly controlled by the

French garrison commander, who had to approve every word before it could be printed –

mandatorily in both French and German.69

The Westphalian military, originally pegged by Napoleon at 25,000, would initially be

commanded by French officers and in some cases its ranks would be filled with French troops.

Indeed, almost half the army in 1809, including the cadres for the Guard and all the military

police, was French.70 Hesse-Kassel and Braunschweig both had long mercenary traditions (albeit

usually in British service), and Napoleon did not expect much difficulty raising soldiers from this

region. Nonetheless by 1808 only half the soldiers were “volunteers,” supplemented by German-

speaking French citizens from the Rhineland, and finally, conscripts. The Westphalian Guards,

however, drilled entirely in French.71

The French emperor’s reach was not simply concerned with media and personnel. As with his

other German territories, Napoleon extracted wealth from Westphalia for his own treasury. Two

million francs (roughly 5% of the annual Westphalian budget) went directly to France as “rents.”

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 60





Additional bills were due for the maintenance of French soldiers throughout the kingdom. For a

government that began its life with a deficit of nearly 20% over its revenues, this was adding

insult to injury. Jerome’s infamously sybaritic lifestyle did not help matters, as his court devoured

another five million francs annually: a greater percentage of the national budget than Louis XIV’s

Versailles had consumed in its day. “It was impossible not to think of an Oriental harem,” wrote

the Princess Pauline of Lippe when she visited Jerome’s court in Kassel in May 1808.72

On an 1808 tour of his new fortress of Magdeburg, Jerome saw a population struggling to pay

for the large and unwanted French garrison. When he pleaded with his older brother for financial

relief, Jerome received this blunt reminder of the purpose of Westphalia:



The immense expenses that are required to rebuild my fleets and to supply my armies do

not allow me to agree to your request. The province of Magdeburg is the richest… it must

pay me just as the other provinces have.73





Jerome tried without success to plead the case for reductions. In addition to the “rents” and

the land specifically set aside for French use (the obligation for which was written into the

Westphalian constitution), Napoleon continued, in the words of a Kassel woman, “to squeeze this

country like a lemon.” Jerome recognized that he ruled over “a country already drained,” and that

new taxes were unlikely to win converts to the Bonaparte regime. Nor was the practice of French

generals requisitioning supplies for their troops from the Westphalian civilians. In one of his

resignation attempts the following year, Jerome claimed that, “the misery has risen to such a

degree throughout the kingdom (no one can be paid), that if your majesty does not come to its aid,

it will not survive two more months.”74

Little escaped the attention of Napoleon’s meticulous mind, and of course he was well aware

of the fragile nature of the state he had just created. Packing the army and ministries with

Frenchmen was an admission that there were, as yet, no actual “Westphalians.” Napoleon

concluded as much in a letter in December 1807, when he instructed his brother to send an

ambassador to Russia:



But whom to send. A German? You do not have any devoted enough, and your

ambassador can only be useful to me in as much as he will be attached to my interests

and perfectly second my ambassador.75





According to Georg Bärsch, the foreignness of the Westphalian regime was painfully

obvious. “The new ruler,” he wrote, “elevated from ship’s ensign to king, couldn’t understand the

language of his own people.” Jerome himself was not bashful on this point. When he attempted to

resign his crown in October 1809, he told his brother, “I do not like Germans or Germany; I am

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 61





all French.”76 In Braunschweig, the townspeople cheered a visit by Queen Catherine in May

1808, but this initial goodwill evaporated quickly, and Napoleon’s demand for war

“contributions,” combined with the quartering of soldiers and the economic distresses of the

Continental System, goes a long way toward explaining why less than a year later so many of the

townspeople were in open contempt of their new rulers. One group took down the Westphalian

national insignia from a tollhouse and dragged it through the street. Another obtained a

Westphalian flag, dyed it with black ink, and flew it like a pirate’s jack. Many people dressed in

“Oels-Fashion,” wearing black clothing to show solidarity with their exiled young Duke. College

students composed a new patriotic song in the “Black Duke’s” honor, and they sang the forbidden

lyrics as if on parade, while local police looked the other way unless French officials were

present.77

Bärsch had not given much thought to Westphalia until a colleague in the Tugendbund

(probably Gneisenau) showed him some correspondence from Westphalian secret societies who

wanted to coordinate their anti-Jerome activities with their Prussian colleagues.78 As Bärsch

became involved with them he began to comprehend the widespread dissent. Whatever the faults

of their old rulers – including some who were quite unpopular – the new foreign rule made them

shine in retrospect, and the popularity of the old houses, particularly that of Brunswick, waxed

with nostalgia. Bärsch, like many other Prussians by 1809, believed that Westphalia was ripe for

revolution.

The obvious place for an uprising would be Jerome’s own army. Here could be found officers

with conflicted loyalties (some were members of the Tugendbund) and soldiers who were

certainly less than enthusiastic. Some historians have argued that the Westphalian army in 1807-

09 was still in the midst of teething problems, and that it ultimately matured into a solid and

reliable force.79 Westphalian cavalry generally performed well, but the infantry, the backbone of

the force, was often unreliable. Fritz Wolf, a Westphalian lieutenant who was loyal to Jerome,

complained that his soldiers “were quite untrustworthy because they were conscripted and could

only be managed with strict discipline and fear. Only a few self-motivated among them did their

duty….”80 As we shall see, the Westphalian military did indeed produce rebels in 1809, hundreds

of deserters who joined other rebels such as Dörnberg and Schill, and failed to stand against the

young Duke of Brunswick.









The Prussians Decide to Become Germans

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 62





Although none of the Prussian reformers at the time or thereafter would dare admit it, Napoleon

had done them a favor at Tilsit. By chopping away nearly all their Polish possessions, he made it

possible for Stein and the others to pursue a new policy of national-identity politics based on

ethnic, linguistic, and historical ties to the regime. It was now feasible to consider “Prussian” as

something tangible, and indeed something in many ways interchangeable with “German.”

Certainly Prussians, like other Germans, had been using the word “German” to describe

themselves for centuries. A sense of German national identity – even if only as a Kulturnation –

had long pre-dated Herder’s writings on the subject during the 1770s. The Prussian defeat,

however, and the presence of the French, gave new urgency and significance to discussions of

German identity. It is hard to imagine Wilhelm von Humboldt declaring “I love Germany with

my deepest soul,” before Jena-Auerstädt, and his assertion gathers momentum when he speaks of

the existential crisis: “The misfortune of the age binds me still closer to it.”81

Napoleon did Prussia another favor, of course, by handing them a defeat so massive, so

catastrophic, that real, thorough-going reform was the only option. Napoleon cleared away

Prussia’s deadwood in a way that Frederick-William III would never have dared or been able to

do. Thus by striking down the old Prussia (a state where German, Polish, Danish, Dutch, and

Swedish were spoken, and their greatest ruler usually spoke French), Napoleon almost certainly

planted the seeds of the new, intensely German Prussia which – as it ultimately morphed into a

Prussian Germany - would become the nemesis of France for more than a century. One German

historian has called this Prussia’s “discovery of the people.”82 The sight of Prussian officials

trying to persuade their people that they were all simply Germans now, must have been jarring. It

calls to mind the troubled Franco-German hero of de la Motte Fouque’s sprawling Napoleonic

novel The Refugee, who complains about the changing spirit of the times: “Prussianness can now

only be Germanness! And indeed Prussianness is disappearing into Germanness!”83

Even so, the Prussian reformers had a hard load to pull. By 1806, Prussia had become a place

deeply mired in tradition, in some cases for its own sake. Stein’s reforms met opposition from

many angles. The king had his own problems with several of Stein's ideas. There was also a

conservative opposition among the landed nobility who worried about the economic implications

for the Junker class and the centralization of power in the hands of a new national-state.84 (Not to

mention the challenges to noble prerogatives that were inherent in actions like the abolition of

serfdom.) And Napoleon still had a handful of admirers within the highest ranks of Prussian

society, even at this late hour. As in other German states, there were Prussian officials and literati

who were more than willing to take their place in a new, Napoleonic Germany. Seeing Monteglas

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 63





in Bavaria as their model, men like von Cölln, Buchholz, and Johannes von Müller all advised the

Prussians to learn to live with Napoleon.

Following Stein’s ouster there was a short-lived ministry under Dohna-Altenstein, but Louise

pushed for Hardenberg. Another non-Prussian (from Hannover), Hardenberg was far more skilled

at manipulating the king and the media, and proved to be a more thorough-going economic and

social liberal than Stein had been. If anything, conservative opposition to reform crystallized

more against Hardenberg than it had done against his predecessor, yet ultimately with less

success because the man was more subtle. As a figure from the pre-Jena days of the

administration, he also represented at least a degree of reassuring continuity in a period of

change.85

Although he was out of power by the end of 1808, the Baron vom Stein remained in contact

with all the prime movers of the Tugendbund. His weekly correspondence with Gneisenau in

1808 continued throughout 1809, even though Stein was on the move and now in exile. They

discussed the Spanish victory at Bailen, the upsurge of Spanish guerillas and Napoleon’s apparent

inability to deal with them, the increasingly obvious Austrian preparations for war, and the

question of Prussia’s role as leader of a German revolt. On this final point they were optimistic,

but sober. Prussia was not ready. The Germans were not yet ready. And Stein, Gneisenau, and

Scharnhorst were by early 1809 apparently of one mind on this point: Prussia must not rush ill-

prepared into another conflict against Napoleon. The patriotic hot-heads were useful, but must be

controlled.

Ferdinand von Schill was no doubt high on anyone’s list of patriot-provocateurs. By the end

of 1808 he had grown increasingly bold and careless in his speech. His new next-door neighbor

was Johann-Phillip Wessenberg, an “envoy” from Austria, whom the French watched as closely

as they watched Schill.86 A steady stream of visitors came and went from Schill’s house on the

Wilhelmstraße, often carrying parcels or letters from all over northern Germany. French agents

trailed many of these men back to Westphalia. Schill impatiently urged action upon his superiors,

particularly Gneisenau, as in this letter from January 1809:



In my opinion, we’ve reached a point where it’s possible to do almost anything, if one

just gets a good grip on the situation.... If we had one good leader to direct it, [we would]

see all our plans come to fruition, rather than sitting around wishing it were so.”87





Gneisenau was doubtless concerned about security, and on 2 February he wrote in reply:

“Have patience! Caution is necessary for us.” Nonetheless, he hinted at support: “I promise you

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 64





my faithful collaboration in your plans.”88 Scharnhorst followed this with a similar letter whose

date is lost, but which is believed also to have been sent in February:



The time is near, when we’ll have to consider serious action. Keep a good eye on things

in Austria; the war will probably break out there this year, perhaps early in the year. We

must above all be ready to undertake a Little War, and for that I’m counting on you the

most. It would be good if you could find a way to take Magdeburg and raise an

insurgency in central Germany. But wait for the signal and don’t rush into anything.89





That was always the caveat that frustrated Schill: don’t rush into anything. By early 1809 he

had so many co-conspirators in his immediate circle and his correspondence that, for a man of

little patience like him, the order to sit tight must have been unbearable. Captain Friedrich von

Katte and Colonel Ferdinand von Dörnberg, both former Prussian officers now in Westphalia, the

latter in command of a battalion of Jerome’s Guards, were contemplating rebellions in

conjunction with Schill. As usual, Schill was doing a poor job keeping this a secret; Georg

Bärsch, who knew that Schill had sent money to Katte, fretted to Gneisenau that, “The Major is

walking on a very slippery surface here.”90 Dörnberg and Schill had corresponded a number of

times by February 1809 about the best way to take Magdeburg, and Schill had passed these

conversations along to Adolf von Lützow.91 Schill, probably being fed with Austrian hints (and

perhaps money) from his new neighbor “the envoy,” apparently understood that Austria’s

offensive would begin in March or April. He and Dörnberg thus believed that there was no time

to waste, and the Prussians should prepare at once for war.

But timing was not the only sensitive question. There was also the issue of political

legitimacy. Schill’s superiors, and the Prussian leadership in general, had grave misgivings about

the very word “insurrection.” It blanched even the most aggressive reformers. How, after all, does

one rebel and yet simultaneously strengthen the authority of a hereditary monarchy? How could

the insurrection be exported from Prussia into the Confederation of the Rhine, without threatening

chaos and instability in Prussia itself? The answer seemed to be Westphalia: the only German

regime that was entirely illegitimate, the only state that could be overthrown without damaging a

long-standing German dynasty. If Westphalia collapsed, particularly while Napoleon’s forces

were tied down in Spain and against Austria, it might serve as the first domino falling among

German princes to re-think their loyalties to the Bonaparte system. Thus by 1809 much of the

Tugendbund leadership had chosen Westphalia as the target for the insurrection. Indeed, Stein’s

letter to Wittgenstein in August 1808 (the one that got him fired) had specifically pointed to

Westphalia as Napoleon’s Achilles’ Heel. He claimed to know many men who were ready to

revolt, and argued that it would only take a few brave actors to bring down Jerome’s shaky

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 65





throne, although he added that familiar caveat that patience and careful preparation would be

required for both before and after the insurrection.

Furthermore, Schill and other Tugendbund plotters had been in contact with British officers

since 1808, and many Prussian patriots now expected and invited a British landing on the North

Sea coast or perhaps even the Baltic. The British Foreign Secretary, Lord Canning, had hinted

broadly at such a plan, although it was not clear where the British would land, in what strength,

and whether it would be for an active campaign or simply to send arms and supplies to German

rebels.92 Napoleon must have understood at the least the general outline of these plans, because

when the war did break out in 1809, he ordered Jerome to coordinate the French-Dutch-Danish-

Westphalian response to any British landings between Bremen and Hamburg.93 It appears that

Scharnhorst had, at the very least, some notes on the concept, if not a concrete plan. He had

drafted a memo in August 1808, calling for any Prussian rebellion to be coordinated with a

British landing in Hanover.94 Such a complex operation would therefore require still more patient

political and military preparation.

At some point in late 1808, Schill had been approached by a wealthy farmer named Albrecht

Romberg from Ravensberg in Westphalia, who revealed that he was a member of the

Tugendbund. He told Schill that he had an excellent cover (a false passport that identified him as

a Prussian merchant) which allowed him to travel between Westphalia and Berlin without

arousing suspicion. Romberg described a hated and tottering Westphalian regime, ready to come

crashing down if only some pressure were applied. Schill may have been initially skeptical or

reluctant, because Romberg left, came back several weeks later, and showed him letters written

by many of Ravensberg’s leading citizens, who had signed their names to these treasonous

condemnations of the Bonaparte regime.

Romberg proposed to act as an interlocutor between Schill and several Westphalian plotters,

including Dörnberg. He was a bit star-struck to meet the Major, whom he and his colleagues

idolized, and much of what he carried from Schill into Westphalia was actually responses to fan-

mail, including autographed portraits.95 By February, however, Romberg and Schill had become

well-acquainted, and the former had made several trips. But his cover was nowhere near as

opaque as he thought. The French had been watching Romberg ever since an 1808 Christmas

party in Berlin, where they first spotted him talking to Schill and Blücher’s sons. One agent had

even followed Romberg closely enough - so he claimed - to watch him give Schill four letters.96

It is impossible to say how closely Gneisenau or Scharnhorst followed Schill’s activities in

this period. Both men had many things to worry about, many projects underway at once. They

were keenly aware of Schill’s utility, and also of his potential liabilities. If we can make a single

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 66





generalization about men like Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, it is that they were above all careful.

Launching Schill on his own into Westphalia, like an assassin’s single bullet to bring down an

entire state, was not their style. The political and military climate had to be prepared and revolts

had to be coordinated with higher state policy. Moreover, assessing the mood of Westphalians,

much less Germans as a whole, required more than handfuls of clandestine letters smuggled by

amateur spies. Stein, thinking of what the coming Austrian offensive would bring when it erupted

into southern Germany in the spring, told Gneisenau that it would take more than isolated acts of

heroism to eject Napoleon from the North: “Germany,” he wrote, “can only be rescued by

Germany.”97









“Everything Was in an Uproar”





On 25 February 1809, Felix von Voß came to Berlin. A wealthy landowner who knew the royal

family, Voß moved comfortably in the highest circles in Prussia. He also had personal reasons to

hate Napoleon: one of his estates had been appropriated when the area passed to Westphalian

control. Since then he had lived in Prague, where he had made a number of Austrian contacts.

Despite being well advanced into middle-age, Voß was willing to put words into action, and in

fact would later, after Schill’s death, volunteer for Austrian service, and later still for Russian

service, willing to lend his hand to anyone who was fighting the French.98

Voß kept a diary and was generally a meticulous observer, but his papers remain vague on

why, exactly, he had chosen to come to the capital at this time. Since the Autumn of 1808 he had

heard rumors of an impending Austrian war effort, and his many connections in the Habsburg

empire may have summoned him to Berlin for much the same task as “the envoy” Baron

Wessenberg. It was likely not just a coincidence that, one day after his arrival in a city of over

170,000 people, Voß met Ferdinand von Schill.

“From the first impression,” Voß wrote, “I didn’t quite know what to make of him. His good-

natured, almost childlike, optimistic manner appealed to me, although I was hoping to be

impressed. On the 27th, I dined with him and Iffland. After a few days I lost all misgivings; the

little, sturdy, humble Hussar, whose courage blazed from his clear brown eyes, became very dear

to me.”99

Voß often had trouble getting time to speak with Schill alone (a recollection which suggests,

of course, that Voß was trying, for whatever reason, to speak secretly with him.) Schill, he said,

“had gathered a circle around him” who listened to the Major and no one else, and “who

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 67





overestimated the power of his name.” Most of these men were veterans of the 1806-07 war, and

were much like Schill himself: young, “bold hot-heads.” Voß, who understood the dynamics of

the Prussian court and who knew Frederick William III well enough to know the king’s

reluctance to commit to any sort of conflict even under the most favorable circumstances,

concluded that if Prussia really did join Austria in a war with France in 1809, only Schill and his

hangers-on would truly have been ready and willing.100

“Schill had become the hero of the people in northern Germany,” Voß later recalled. “He was

a household name in all provinces and among all classes.” People expressed unrealistic hopes in

his magical powers, and Schill knew it. Surely it worked upon his ego. A glowing endorsement

from the former Elector-Prince of Hesse-Kassel also contributed to Schill’s impression — the

delusion of so many failed rebels throughout history — that a huge majority of like-minded

citizens existed, and were waiting to be led by him.

Felix von Voß’s all-but-forgotten papers provide us with an excellent portrait of Schill in the

final months of his life. They are ambiguous, however, on what Voß himself was doing at Schill’s

side in those same months, and why. He had come to Berlin probably already knowing that Schill

was at the center of several anti-French and anti-Westphalian conspiracies. He knew Wessenberg,

the Austrian agent in Berlin. Voß appears to have been, at least at this juncture in his busy career,

Austria’s man: “In a couple of conversations I tried to discuss my ideas with him, about the

necessity of cooperation with the Austrians... but nothing useful came of it.”101

In the midst of these discussions, events began to accelerate in Westphalia. Captain Friedrich

von Katte, the would-be liberator who had received money and advice from Schill, raised his

revolt on the evening of 2 April. Katte gathered a group of 300 rebels, led by former Prussian

officers like himself who were now Westphalian subjects.102 Although they were mostly

Westphalians, they had begun their march from Spandau, and Katte himself had been in Berlin

the previous week, probably meeting with several co-conspirators, although it is not clear if these

included Schill.103

The Katte rebels crossed the Elbe and entered Stendal, seizing a paychest with 14,000 thaler

from a handful of surprised Westphalian officials. Shortly after they got under way, however,

Katte received instructions from his Berlin conspirators to call off the revolt and return at once

because their secrecy had been compromised and the Westphalians informed. The rebels

scattered. Katte returned to Prussia where he was arrested, but most of his other officers fled

ultimately to British custody, where they volunteered for service in Spain. King Frederick

William III sent a formal apology to Jerome for the intrusion, but denied any culpability.

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 68





Katte’s rebellion was not a military threat to Jerome’s throne, but it did signal something very

dangerous. Namely: the Tugendbund was real, and the anti-Bonapartist groups were willing to

act. Jerome’s gendarmerie began finding leaflets around the country (some of which had been

distributed by Katte and were now being reprinted). Indeed, some of the anti-Jerome propaganda

began to turn up in Kassel, alarmingly close to the palace. The sheer volume of Westphalian

official correspondence in 1809-10 on the subject of German national propaganda and the

dangers it posed give us some indication of the degree to which Stein’s projects had struck a

nerve.104

The Westphalian leadership was incensed about the Katte revolt, which they felt was a

gratuitous provocation by Prussia. Jerome’s foreign minister, the Count von Fürstenstein,

forwarded a report to him from Berlin that laid the blame squarely upon the “Prussian reformers”

who “distribute their seditious proclamations at hte public expense....” He specifically singled out

“the officers of the Regiment von Schill.” A week later, Fürstenstein sent a new ambassador to

Berlin, warning him that at the center of Prussian plotting against Westphalia could be found two

men, both majors: Franz von Blücher and Ferdinand von Schill.105

Frederick William III was as worried as Jerome about the implications of this. Two days after

Katte’s arrest, angry and tired of hearing about the communications between the Austrians, the

Tugendbund, and his own administration, the king wrote a furious note to Scharnhorst in his own

hand. Scharnhorst showed the letter to Boyen, who observed that the normally phlegmatic

Scharnhorst had “gone pale.” Frederick William had written:



I can not conceive why you apparently think that your publicly-known state

correspondence with a minister of a foreign power or any other undertaking, could

possibly remain concealed. Indeed, this very act could easily be seen as treason....106





On the same day that Scharnhorst received this reprimand, Felix von Voß left Berlin, telling

Schill to call on him if he needed him. Ten days later Schill did indeed call, and Voß returned the

next day. He came to Berlin and learned two surprising pieces of news. The Austrians had

attacked Napoleon on 9 April, and a new war was already raging in southern Germany. And

Schill had moved out of his house on the Wilhelmstraße, into a small apartment, apparently in the

midst of frantic activity. When Voß finally tracked Schill down:



I found his room full of people, whom I for the most part did not know.... He himself

greeted me warmly, but his head was so full and he was talking to everyone so eagerly,

that it wasn’t until I ate lunch with him that afternoon that I could speak with him in

private. I had never seen him so animated. The news had arrived of the beginning of war

between France and Austria, and he [Schill] had just sent out a proclamation to the people

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 69





of Westphalia that morning, in which he had promised to be amongst them shortly. The

letter had gone out; he couldn’t take it back. Now he wanted to have a talk with the

Princess of Hessen, and wanted to know if I could help arrange it for him. So that same

evening I went to see her.107





Voß arranged the meeting between Schill and the princess, which apparently went well. The

dynasty of Hesse-Kassel was understandably supportive of any plan to bring down Jerome’s

regime and re-establish their own. On 20 April, when Voß had a private lunch with Schill, the

major revealed that he was resolved to enter Westphalia very soon to raise a rebellion. Schill was

excited, apparently having been assured of support from the prince and princess. Voß recalled

that, “He still hadn’t decided whether to go alone (into Westphalia) or with his regiment. I was in

favor of the former.”108

If Schill entered Westphalia with his Hussar regiment, then he would have the support of

these 500 loyal and well-disciplined men. This nucleus of an army, he planned, would grow

substantially with each success. In the event that the king declared his actions treasonous, he

would, however, be placing not simply his own head in the noose, but those of all his men. If his

men were willing to take that risk, then ideally Schill’s force could be in Westphalia in a single

day if he moved swiftly. His most obvious target would be the formerly-Prussian fortress of

Magdeburg. Although his regiment probably could not seize the fortress alone, Schill hoped that

they wouldn’t have to fight for Magdeburg at all. His correspondence with Katte in Westphalia,

carried back and forth with much of his other correspondence by the farmer Romberg, was

focused on trying to coordinate their two rebellions so that Magdeburg would already be in rebel

hands by the time Schill’s men arrived. But in the middle of April 1809, things began to go

wrong. Katte had shot his bolt early and failed to take the city, meaning that Schill would have to

fight his way into Magdeburg if he wanted it. And, more troubling still, Romberg was arrested.

Albrecht Romberg’s luck ran out in Magdeburg on 10 April. He had left Berlin, where he was

carrying a number of documents for Schill, Georg Bärsch, and several other Tugendbund

activists.109 Westphalian gendarmes, tipped by the French agents who had been following him for

five months, took Romberg into custody and found a number of suspicious letters on his person.

They ransacked his house the following day, finding more connections with Schill.

Romberg was carrying several letters, some from well-positioned men in Westphalia (a

judge, several mayors, a prominent merchant), as well as others that were entered into evidence as

being addressed to “peasants.” Almost immediately the Westphalians encountered frustrations in

their interrogation. Everyone Romberg had touched with this correspondence was brought in for

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 70





questioning over the next two days, but all denied any knowledge of him or what he was doing.

The interrogation of Herr Meyer, the Bürgermeister of Heepen 110, is typical:



“Did you write to Major Schill in Berlin?”

“No! I only know the name of Major Schill from the newspapers.”

“Did you know the tailor [sic] Albert Henri Romberg?”

“No! I don’t know him, and I don’t know the name.”





The Westphalian prosecutors began to realize that the Prussians had been fairly elaborate in

their use of codes and false names. Jerome’s Prefect of the Elbe Department testified that the

captured letters – some of which appeared simply to be Schill’s answers to his fan-mail, were “in

vague and general terms.” Worse, French and Westphalian agents in Berlin were apparently

befuddled. One man whom an agent had claimed to have “followed” in Berlin for several months,

in connection with Romberg and Schill, could not be produced at all, and the court frustratedly

had to concede that he “does not exist.” By 14 April, the court had still not charged Romberg

with a crime, and remained unsure how to proceed. As the Ministry of the Interior waffled, the

investigation broadened to include “nine veteran soldiers” from Bielefeld whose loyalties were

suspect. And, as so often happened, when events did not unfold with the alacrity he desired,

Napoleon personally intervened. On 24 April the Ministry of the Interior received direct

instructions not from their king but from their emperor, demanding “no amnesty” for

“provocateurs of revolt.” Napoleon wanted convictions. By the time those instructions had

arrived, however, revolt was already under way.111

Wilhelm von Dörnberg was fifty-one years old in 1809 and although a Hessian, he had

distinguished himself in Prussian service in 1806, being another die-hard who followed Blücher

to the bitter end at Lübeck. Although he accepted a commission in Jerome’s new royal guards,

Dörnberg was an active Tugendbund member.112 As he rose to the rank of Colonel and took

command of the Garde-Jäger battalion in early 1809, Dörnberg was also assembling a circle of

plotters around him who planned to overthrow the Bonaparte regime. For several months he was

in fairly regular correspondence with Schill, and they discussed possible strategies. Schill hoped

that he and Dörnberg could collaborate in a joint operation against Magdeburg, but Dörnberg

ultimately decided that his opportunity for striking Kassel was too good to miss. As commander

of a guard battalion, he had an excellent chance to overthrow the regime without a protracted

campaign. In fact, it appears that Dörnberg and Schill could never agree on which of them was

supposed to be supporting the other. Neither ego wanted the subordinate role.

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 71





Dörnberg’s revolt began well. On 21 April he sent a courier to Berlin, carrying messages to

Schill and other conspirators that he was beginning his revolt. That morning he had been

surprised to encounter one of Jerome’s generals, asking him to come to the palace with two

companies of guards and to strengthen the garrison against two recent local uprisings led by

peasants named Martin (in Homberg), and Berner (in Wolfhagen.)113 Sensing the timing could not

be better, Dörnberg issued his call to arms and raised two groups of rebels, north and south of

Kassel. Units and portions of units from the Westphalian military deserted to join him, and others

withdrew and tried to declare that they were “neutral.”114 Sigismund Martin’s armed peasants

marched toward the capital while Dörnberg tried to win over the army and prevent Jerome from

being reinforced. Altogether more than 5,000 rebels mobilized, and for one day at least, Jerome

appeared to be in serious trouble. Word of Dörnberg’s revolt touched off two other civilian

uprisings elsewhere in Westphalia.

Then Dörnberg lost his cool. It is unclear whether or not he was betrayed by one of his own

officers, but Dörnberg abruptly fled Kassel after two brief encounters with Westphalian and

Polish troops, leaving three large rebel groups without a commander to coordinate their

movements. By the end of the 23rd, each of the groups had collapsed after sharp encounters with

smaller forces of Westphalian and French troops. The civilian uprisings were subsequently

extinguished as well.115

As the rebellion sputtered out by the evening of 23 April, Jerome felt secure enough to make

the dramatic gesture of “allowing” his officers to join it, if they had lost faith in him. He

assembled his Guard officers and asked them to renew their oaths to him. All of those present did

so. This was, in fact, the third loyalty oath to Jerome for some of them (Dörnberg himself had

already been through the ceremony twice), and it must have seemed that the new regime was a bit

too insistent upon such re-assurances. But Jerome used the occasion to demonstrate the fealty of

his officer corps, probably as much in fear of his brother’s wrath as in fear of insurrection. The

next morning he issued a proclamation assuring his subjects that the revolt was safely over and

not too subtly reminding them that his authority was backed up by “the invincible Napoleon, your

protector.”116

If Dörnberg and Schill had agreed upon a specific day for joint action, no record of it

survives. On 22 April, as Dörnberg’s rebels began to move, Felix von Voß visited Schill and

found him “swarmed” with people. Some of these were the same people Voß had seen coming

and going from the home of the Austrian envoy, Wessenberg, in some cases openly carrying

letters, bundles, or even travel passes. Schill, Voß recalled, was too busy to meet privately, and

was extremely excited. “The fire was burning brightly in his breast!”117

The Long Ride of Major von Schill Chapter Two 72





Four days later, on 26 April, Voß saw the major for the last time. Schill had sent word that he

wanted another meeting with the princess of Hesse-Kassel, which Voß duly arranged for the next

day. As Schill and Voß had their last conversation, Albrecht Romberg in Westphalia finally gave

out after two weeks of interrogation. He altered his testimony, confessed to being an agent for

Schill, and denounced his co-conspirators. Time was running out. If Schill hoped to have any

allies remaining in Westphalia, he would have to act quickly.

On the morning after Schill’s last meeting with the princess of Hesse-Kassel, Felix von Voß

received a note. Schill asked him to come to his apartment at 3:30 that afternoon. Voß went

instead early in the morning:



When I came to see him on the morning of the 28th, everything was in an uproar. An

assessor named Eichhorn had brought the news of the outbreak of Colonel von

Dörnberg’s revolt.





Schill, however, was not home. Someone told Voß that the major had gone out on maneuvers.

Voß returned along Unter den Linden. As he was walking back to his apartment, he was passed

by a squadron of horsemen. They were Schill’s Hussars, fully armed, and with their horses’ packs

bulging. Voß stood and watched them ride toward the Brandenburg Gate.