France abolished the poll tax in 1784. As early as 1781 the Academy of Metz offered a prize for the best essay on the improvement of the Jews. The prize was won by Abbé Grégoire, a Catholic priest, who advocated the abrogation of all Jewish disabilities. About the same time Christian F. Dohm, an official in the Prussian war department, wrote an essay on the civil improvement of the Jews, in which he likewise advocated the granting of full equality to the Jews. This principle became for the first time a fact when on September 27, 1791, the French National Assembly passed a bill giving the Jews full civic and political equality with other citizens. When the French rule spread over adjacent countries this was everywhere adopted. Such was the case in Holland in 1796, and in all parts of Germany which directly or indirectly came under French influence. In Cologne, where for nearly four hundred years no Jew had been permitted to reside, Jews began to settle in 1798. In Mayence the population tore down the gates of the ghetto in 1798, and this was done in Rome when the French ruled there. In Frankfort-on-the-Main, where the Jews labored under cruel discriminations, their condition was considerably improved in 1807 by an edict of the Grand Duke, Baron von Dahlberg, and in 1811 they were given full civil equality. Even reactionary countries like Prussia could not resist the current of the time, and the edict of March 11, 1812, declared the Jews to be citizens, gave them freedom of residence and occupation and the right to professorships in the universities; and although it withheld from them political rights, it promised to grant them such in the future. Jews have been drafted into the army in Austria since 1787, and in Prussia since 1812; but numerous Jews joined the army as volunteers and distinguished themselves by acts of bravery during the wars of liberation. In 1809 the Austrian Jew, Israel Hönig, was made lieutenant for bravery on the battlefield of Aspern, and a few years afterwards was promoted to the rank of captain. In Prussia several Jews were promoted to the rank of officers during the Napoleonic wars.