Note (Back) — Chapter XII

263. Regeneration in the Napoleonic Period.—By reason of the vacillating policies of her sovereign, Frederick William III., the successive defeats of her armies at Jena, Auerstädt, and elsewhere, and the loss, by the treaty of Tilsit in 1807, of half of her territory, Prussia realized from the first decade of the Napoleonic period little save humiliation and disaster. Through the years 1807-1815, however, her lot was wonderfully improved. Upon the failure of the Russian expedition of Napoleon in 1812, Frederick William shook off his apprehensions and allied himself openly with the sovereigns of Russia and Austria. The people rose en masse, and in the titanic struggle which ensued Prussia played a part scarcely second in importance to that of any other power. At the end she was rewarded, through the agency of the Congress of Vienna, by being assigned the northern portion of Saxony, Swedish Pomerania, her old possessions west of the Elbe, the duchies of Berg and Julich, and a number of other districts in Westphalia and on the Rhine. Her area in 1815 was 108,000 square miles, as compared with 122,000 at the beginning of 1806; but her loss of territory was more than compensated by the substitution that had been made of German lands for Slavic.[359] The homogeneity of her population was thereby increased, her essentially Germanic character emphasized, and her capacity for German leadership enhanced.