Portugal and Denmark had felt the consequences of the peace made at Tilsit. Less, however, depended upon the fate of the Danish fleet and the Portuguese Royal Family than upon the fate of Prussia, the most cruelly wronged of all the victims sacrificed by Alexander's ambition. The unfortunate Prussian State, reduced to half its former extent, devastated and impoverished by war, and burdened with the support of a French army, found in the crisis of its ruin the beginning of a worthier national life. Napoleon, in his own vindictive jealousy, unwittingly brought to the head of the Prussian Government the ablest and most patriotic statesman of the Continent. Since the spring of 1807 Baron Hardenberg had again been the leading Minister of Prussia, and it was to his counsel that the King's honourable rejection of a separate peace after the battle of Eylau was due. Napoleon could not permit this Minister, whom he had already branded as a partisan of Great Britain, to remain in power; he insisted upon Hardenberg's dismissal, and recommended the King of Prussia to summon Stein, who was as yet known to Napoleon only as a skilful financier, likely to succeed in raising the money which the French intended to extort. [Edict of Emancipation, Oct. 9, 1807.] Stein entered upon office on the 5th of October, 1807, with almost dictatorial power. The need of the most radical changes in the public services, as well as in the social order of the Prussian State, had been brought home to all enlightened men by the disasters of the war; and a commission, which included among its members the historian Niebuhr, had already sketched large measures of reform before Hardenberg quitted office. Stein's appointment brought to the head of the State a man immeasurably superior to Hardenberg in the energy necessary for the execution of great changes, and gave to those who were the most sincerely engaged in civil or military reform a leader unrivalled in patriotic zeal, in boldness, and in purity of character. The first great legislative measure of Stein was the abolition of serfage, and of all the legal distinctions which fixed within the limits of their caste the noble, the citizen, and the peasant. In setting his name to the edict [144] which, on the 9th of October, 1807, made an end of the mediæval framework of Prussian society, Stein was indeed but consummating a change which the progress of neighbouring States must have forced upon Prussia, whoever held its government. The Decree was framed upon the report of Hardenberg's Commission, and was published by Stein within six days after his own entry upon office. Great as were the changes involved in this edict of emancipation, it contained no more than was necessary to bring Prussia up to the level of the least advanced of the western Continental States. In Austria pure serfage had been abolished by Maria Theresa thirty years before; it vanished, along with most of the