Anton Neidhardt von Gneisenau (II)
The Prussian Reform
During the dark days between the Peace of Tilsit of 1807 (which regularized Napoleon’s dominance over Prussia) and the beginning of the War of Liberation in 1813, the work of Anton Neidhardt von Gneisenau was guided by his political philosophy. In many respects, Gneisenau was what men of his generation called a “liberal.” Among other things, he believed in doing away with many of the “feudal” institutions that had grown like barnacles on the hull of the ship of state. The liberation that Gneisenau sought, however, was not that of contemporary French or British liberals.
The latter saw the state, with its armies, police power, and voracious appetite for money, as the chief enemy of liberty. Gneisenau, however, viewed the state, not merely as the agent of liberation, but as the medium through which individuals might find an outlet for their talents, as well as an escape from the pettiness and seeming futility of private life. In short, the state had the potential to give meaning to life.
This idea was widespread in Germany in Gneisenau’s time. The other members of the Prussian Reform Movement, as well as many literary men, philosophers, and even theologians, developed a similar attitude to an idealized Prussian state. Some, like the philosopher Hegel, went so far as to imbue a highly abstracted state with the attributes of Divinity.
Gneisenau’s background make him particularly susceptible to this view of the state. Though less than successful in private life and full of memories of his barefoot childhood, Gneisenau’s position in the Prussian service had given him the opportunity to obtain considerable fame, an honored position in society, and even a degree of financial security. More importantly, the Prussian state gave Gneisenau an arena in which to exercise his considerable creativity.
One of the most important corollaries of Gneisenau’s cult of the state was his belief in universal military service. On the surface, this consisted simply of abolishing the many exemptions that had kept the ablest and most productive members Prussia’s population out of the ranks of the Army. The implications of this simple change, for both the Army and Prussian society, were many.
An army based on the principle of universal military service would have to use a different sort of discipline than a force consisting of vagabonds, mercenaries, and the younger sons of the poorest class of peasants and artisans.
In particular, the degrading punishments and conditions of service that made military life so repugnant to those possessed of even a little education or position in civil life would have to change. Fear would have to be replaced by more positive sentiments - patriotism, ambition, and comradeship - as the chief means of maintaining discipline. Thus, while contemporaries may have condemned the lash, the running of the gauntlet, and the arbitrary beatings from purely humanitarian grounds, Gneisenau seems to have been primarily motivated by the need to bring out the best in every soldier.
Similar sentiments led Gneisenau to advocate the breaking of the nobility’s monopoly on officership in the infantry and heavy cavalry regiments. (The less prestigious arms - the engineers, the artillery, the Jäger, the fusiliers, and the light cavalry - already contained a large number of non-noble officers.) “While the kingdom wallows in senility and dishonor,” Gneisenau wrote, “there is, perhaps, in some miserable village a Caesar guiding a plow or an Epaminondas who has trouble earning his daily bread.”
In May of 1808, Gneisenau was made a member of the Artillery and Engineer Committee and Inspector of Fortresses. In September of the same year, the duties of Chief of Engineers were added. These appointments may have reflected Gneisenau’s achievements in the defense of Kolberg. They may also have been the result of an attempt by Gneisenau’s enemies at court to have him “kicked upstairs” or kept too busy to get involved in politics. (The task of rebuilding and refurbishing Prussia’s fortresses, after all, was a huge task that required a great deal of time on the road. Indeed, two and a half years would pass before Gneisenau would be able to visit his family. When he did, his children failed to realize who he was.)
Despite these distractions, Gneisenau was full of projects for assembling Prussian forces to the point where they could throw off the Napoleonic yoke. Gneisenau gauged the power of Napoleon to be so great, however, that only the full energies of the Prussian people would suffice to create and support an army strong enough to win. Thus, in a famous memorandum of the year 1808, Gneisenau argued for the formation of a national assembly and the granting of a constitution as the chief pillars of an attempt to give the majority of Prussians a stake in the outcome of the project.
In April of 1809, Austria rekindled the embers of its long conflict with Napoleon. Gneisenau’s first thought was the creation of a Prussian legion to fight alongside the Austrians until a proper alliance between Prussia and Austria could be arranged. Before Gneisenau could start lobbying for these projects, he was transferred to Königsberg. In the meantime, other Germans were taking up arms against Napoleon. The Duke of Brunswick-Oels, at the head of his famous “Black Brunswickers,” invaded Saxony. (Saxony was then an ally of France.)
Another black-coated formation, the Freikorps of Major von Schill, played the role of Gneisenau’s Prussian legion. Schill’s famous (and entirely unofficial) diversionary expedition, however, was not the prelude to an Austro-Prussian alliance that Gneisenau hoped for. Instead, Prussia remained neutral, allowing Napoleon to concentrate his forces against Austria.
Not one to give up easily, Gneisenau asked for leave. His plan was to travel to England, there to ask the British government to organize an amphibious landing along the Baltic or North Sea coast of Germany. A sizable force, supplied by sea, could, Gneisenau hoped, do for a German uprising against Napoleon what Sir John Moore and Sir Arthur Wellesley’s forces in the Peninsula were doing for Spanish and Portuguese resistance.
Gneisenau traveled to London via Sweden. While en route, he heard the news of Napoleon’s victory at Wagram and, while in London, learned that the British government was more interested in an expedition to Antwerp than a land- ing in North Germany. After that expedition had been repulsed and Austria had made peace with Napoleon, Gneisenau returned to Berlin. Arriving in the Prussian capital in June of 1810, he discovered that he was not welcome there. He therefore returned to his estate at Mittel-Kauffung and spent the fall and winter of 1810 putting his long- neglected personal finances in order.
Inspired by the defense of the “lines of Torres Vedras” in Spain and remembering, no doubt, his own success at Kolberg, Gneisenau dreamed of a campaign in which the handful of fortresses that remained in Prussian hands would tie down the bulk of the French army. By the summer of 1811, these plans had grown into a full-blown project for “people’s war.”
This time the inspiration seems to have come, not merely from the regular operations of the Peninsular Campaign, but from the guerrilla fighting that went on behind and between the armies. The administration of conquered provinces, Gneisenau argued, should refuse to cooperate with the French. The Prussian population should oppose French requisitions, ambush French convoys, and, in general, cooperate with the small regular army in the way that Spanish guerrillas cooperated with the Wellington’s small force.
As might be expected from a monarch who preferred French domination to the prospect of an armed populace, King Frederick William was not thrilled with Gneisenau’s concept for turning Prussia into a flatter, colder version of the Iberian Peninsula. Indeed, instead of resisting France, Frederick William signed, on the eve of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, an alliance with the French Emperor.
Some of the Prussian reformers, such as Clausewitz and Boyen, responded to this development by resigning their commissions and offering their swords to the Russian Tsar. Scharnhorst retired to the country. Gneisenau left Prussia and, with the tacit approval of King Frederick William (who seems to have been interested in purchasing an insurance policy against Napoleon’s defeat), went abroad to solicit support for a new coalition against Napoleon.
In Vienna, Gneisenau visited the Archduke Charles. In Riga he wrote a memoir for the Tsar, arguing that Napoleon’s army could not withstand the rigors of the Russian climate. In Sweden, he met with Bernadotte, the French marshal who, soon after becoming king of Sweden, had begun to think of betraying the Emperor who had placed him on his throne. In England, he met with the Prince Regent (the future George IV.
Gneisenau’s proposals to the English indicate provide an interesting perspective on his political views. His renewed argument for an English landing in North Germany was based, not only on the need to fight Napoleon, but also on the possibility of injecting into the German body politic English ideas about constitutional government. The means for doing this was to be the creation, in northwest Germany, of an English colony.
Once again, Gneisenau’s plans were overtaken by events. While he was in England, Napoleon’s Grande Armée had been nearly destroyed at the Battle of the Beresina, and the Prussian corps that had formed part of that army had, under the command of General Yorck, defected to the Russian side. With or without the King, the Prussian War of Liberation had begun.
Despite ill-health, Gneisenau rushed back to Prussia on a ship provided by the British government. On the 25th of February, 1813, he landed at Kolberg, the site of his previous triumph.
Source: Paul Rocques, “Adversaires prussiens de Napoléon,” Revue Militaire Générale, 1914, pages 816-842