A History of Defeat, Crisis and Victory

The events of 1806 and their aftermath were one of the most important subjects in German historiography until 1945 because they stood at the heart of the national myth of Germany’s “renewal” after the “debacle” of the crushing Prussian-Saxon defeat. If we want to understand the importance of this defeat and its aftermath for the history and memory of the period of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars, we need to understand more fully the experiences of war and occupation and to take into account the distinct regional differences within German Central Europe. These variances can explain why in Prussia and other parts of northern Germany the hatred of Napoleon and all things French was more intense in 1813 and the patriotic-national movement more developed than elsewhere in German Central Europe – in particular the south and west. These northern regions had suffered more during the war of 1806–07 and the subsequent occupation by the French army under Napoleonic rule than the southern and western territories belonging to the Confederation of the Rhine. The experiences of warfare and occupation fed anti-French sentiment far beyond “educated circles.” The distinction between an “inner” and “outer fringe” of the Napoleonic Empire introduced by Michael Broers is helpful here. The southern and western territories of Germany, alongside the Low Countries and Northern Italy, belonged to the “inner empire.” These territories profited from French rule; here, the Napoleonic system left a powerful institutional heritage. In the “outer empire,” to which the old Prussian and other northern and eastern territories belonged, Napoleonic rule “was traumatic and destabilizing.” It was “ephemeral, in that it left few institutional traces.” This difference was felt not only by contemporary politicians but also by the people, a fact that has been ignored in some of the recent scholarship.