Prussia

Prussia is presented as a European power whose political and social order was drawn into the upheavals of the French Revolution. The book situates it among the states confronting revolutionary France and among the territories where French expansion disrupted entrenched feudal relations and economic restrictions.

Prussia and the Old Order

In the late eighteenth century, the areas invaded by French revolutionary forces retained institutions that empowered kings, princes, and nobles while restricting trade in towns and the countryside. Prussia is included among the eastern European territories where serfs remained tied to the land. The contrast with western Europe was not absolute: while strict serfdom had disappeared in the West, peasants there could still owe feudal lords fees, taxes, and labor services. Across these regions, inherited obligations formed part of the economic order the revolutionaries would challenge.

War Against Revolutionary France

In 1792, several European powers organized around Austria to attack France, ostensibly to free Louis XVI but, in the book’s account, with the larger purpose of crushing the Revolution. Prussia was among the powers aligned against the new republic. The expectation that the improvised French armies would quickly collapse proved mistaken: after early defeats and serious organizational difficulties, the republic’s forces prevailed. Their introduction of mass conscription in August 1793 enabled France to field large armies and gain a military advantage even before Napoleon’s major campaigns.

French Expansion and Institutional Change

French leaders used early military successes to extend the republic’s borders and establish a buffer against hostile monarchies, including Prussia and Austria. The account traces French control through the Austrian Netherlands, the United Provinces, and much of modern Switzerland, before turning to the Rhineland. By 1795 France had secured the territory on the Rhine’s left bank; Prussia recognized this reality under the Treaty of Basel. France held the Rhineland from 1795 to 1802, when it was formally incorporated into France.

The military contest also carried an institutional program. In lands under French control, the Revolution and Napoleon destroyed absolutist arrangements, ended feudal land relations, abolished guilds, and imposed equality before the law. The book presents these changes as a preparation for more inclusive institutions and the economic growth they could support. Prussia thus appears both as an opponent of revolutionary France and as part of the wider eastern European setting where land-bound serfdom and older social structures remained consequential.