When Napoleon looked abroad he saw nothing to reassure him, and everything to create alarm. In Prussia there was a regeneration such as was comparable only to a new birth. The old military monarchy, under which the land had been repressed like an armed camp by its sovereigns, was gone forever. The Tugendbund, that "band of virtue" already mentioned, had ramified to the farthest borders; partizan warfare was abandoned; piety, dignity, purity, courage, and the power of organization were filling the land. The presence of the French could not quench the new spirit, but instead it added fuel to the flames of national hatred. Patriotic conventicles and every other form of secret meeting were held. Scharnhorst went steadily on with the training and reform of the army, while Stein, with a noble devotion, and under an unsympathetic master, was working to perfect his new administrative system. The churches were filled, and the hearers understood every allusion in the glowing sermons addressed to them by a devoted and patriotic clergy; schools, colleges, and universities swarmed with students, whose youthful zeal found every encouragement in the instruction of their teachers, which combined two qualities not always found united in teaching, being at the same time thoroughly scientific and highly stimulating. At last, in August, Napoleon, who had looked and listened with deep interest, read with his own eyes in one of Stein's intercepted letters that the minister and his colleagues were aiming at a national uprising, not of Prussia alone, but of all Germany. The illustrious statesman, having emancipated the Prussian people, and having seen the reform of the whole political organism in that great land, was proceeding to extend his beneficent influence throughout all Germany. In September Napoleon demanded Stein's dismissal, and enforced the demand by sequestrating Frederick William's Westphalian estates, threatening at the same time to continue the French occupation of Prussia indefinitely. There was apparently no alternative, for the country, although rejuvenated, had no allies, and could not fight alone. Stein, therefore, resigned after an eventful ministry of about a year, in which he had prepared the way for every one of the changes which ultimately reconstructed Prussia.