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Dissolution of the Reich brutally exposed Prussia’s position in the north. Napoleon had consolidated his political hold on the south, enlisting the now enlarged, more potent sovereign states as military auxiliaries through the new Confederation. It was clearly not in Prussia’s interests to see this system extended to the north where it retained considerable, if scattered, possessions. Though this area had retreated with Prussia into neutrality after 1795, it had not left the Reich and, like Alan Forrest and Peter H.

But for Napoleon’s Grand Empire, expansion was a raison d’être. 30 Napoleon saw himself as heir to the Revolutionary dynamic and its humanist, civilising mission. Like the Romantic writers who lionized him, he was a dreamer, prepared to launch his troops into ever more ambitious military campaigns in order to impose his dominance on Europe. It was a powerful, intoxicating dream for many of his supporters, but it had at its heart an economy, a spoils system, and a political machine that were increasingly geared to the pursuit of war.

Social and economic change, related to accelerating population growth ensured that many fell partially or entirely outside such communities. Nonetheless, German freedom also incorporated certain common individual rights, including considerable protection against discrimination and freedom of conscience for the three recognised Christian confessions. It is the presence of such rights that forms the Alan Forrest and Peter H. 29 The Napoleonic ideal was very different, possessing an expansionist, cultural imperialist drive entirely absent from the Reich.