In this way every able-bodied male
Prussian was in preparation for an expected War of Liberation.
Of course Napoleon had some idea of what was happening in Prussia: he
protested, he threatened, he actually succeeded late in 1808 in
securing the dismissal of Stein. But the redoubtable Prussian reformer
spent the next three years in trying to fan the popular flame in
Austria and thence betook himself to Russia to poison the ear and mind
of the Tsar Alexander against the emperor of the French. In the
meantime Napoleon was far too busy with other matters to give thorough
attention to the continued development of the popular reforms in
Prussia. There the national spirit burned ever brighter through the
exertions of patriotic societies, such as the _Tugendbund_, or
"League of Virtue," through the writings of men like Fichte and Arndt,
and, perhaps most permanently of all, through the wonderful educational
reforms, which, associated indissolubly with the name of Wilhelm von
Humboldt (1767-1835), gave to Prussia the basis of her present common-
school system and to the world the great University of Berlin (1809).
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