Let us go back to Wieland, and we shall find that he held Napoleon in the same high estimation, even before such an opinion had been justified by the events of history. In 1798 he declares that France stands in need of a dictator, and that no one is fit for the post except General Bonaparte, then in Egypt. In 1800 he prophesies that Bonaparte will and must make himself king, and defends him against the attacks of the English newspapers. Napoleon, having been told of these prophecies, had a lengthy interview with Wieland at Erfurt in 1808. None of the great Germans at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century knew what national enmity meant. It was without a spark of any such feeling that Goethe, in the capacity of spectator, made the campaign of 1793 in France. Schiller valued his certificate of French citizenship, and believed that it might come to be of use to his children. Knebel, Goethe's friend, wished that he dared sing Napoleon's victories. Goethe himself looked on with complacency while Napoleon shattered the kingdom of Frederick the Great into fragments; it is evident that he must have regarded that kingdom of Prussia as a passing phenomenon in the history of Germany. He had witnessed Napoleon's rise and victorious career, and had seen him suppress that anarchy which was so hateful to himself, the aristocrat and evolutionist. At last he made his personal acquaintance, saw him surrounded by his marshals, in an atmosphere of brightness, amiability, geniality, general irresistibility. The personal impression made upon him by Napoleon was such as to increase his previous admiration for him. Hence it was that even after the Russian campaign, even during the rehabilitation of Germany, Goethe continued to say: "It is all of no use; the man is too strong for them." It was not till all was over that he made a sort of compulsory amends by writing a play for the fête on the occasion of the peace.