Prussia had been overcome, because, instead of uniting with the other states of Germany, she had first abandoned them to be afterward deserted by them in her turn, and because, instead of arming her warlike people against every foreign foe, she had habituated her citizens to unarmed effeminacy and had rested her sole support on a mercenary army, an artificial and spiritless automaton, separated from and unsympathizing with the people. The idea that the salvation of Prussia could now alone be found in her reconciliation with the neighboring powers of Germany, in a general confederation, in the patriotism of her armed citizens, had already arisen. But, in order to inspire the citizen with enthusiasm, he must first, by the secure and free possession of his rights and by his participation in the public weal, be deeply imbued with a consciousness of freedom. The slave has no country; the freeman alone will lay down his life in its defence. In those times of Germany's deepest degradation and suffering, men for the first time again heard speak of a great and common fatherland, of national fame and honor; and liberty, that glorious name, was uttered not only by those who groaned beneath the rule of the despotic foreigner, but even by those who deplored the loss of the internal liberty of their country, the gradual subjection of the proud and free-spirited German to native tyranny. The king of Prussia, not content with morally reorganizing his army, also bestowed wise laws, which restored the citizen and the peasant to their rights, to their dignity as men, of which they had for so long been deprived by the nobility, the monopolizers of every privilege. The emancipation of the peasant essentially consisted in the abolition of feudal servitude and forced labor; that of the citizen, in the donation of a free municipal constitution, of self-administration, and freedom of election. The nobility were, at the same time, despoiled of the exclusive appointment to the higher civil and military posts and of the exclusive possession of landed property. Each citizen possessed the right, hitherto strictly prohibited, of purchasing baronial estates, and the nobility were, on their part, permitted to exercise trades, which a miserable prejudice had hitherto deemed incompatible with noble birth. These new institutions date from 1808 and are due to the energy of the minister, Stein.