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I clicked on the link.. Napoleon going around Europe slaughtering is somehow "how we got meritocracy" and a "goodie"? Um. I don't see it. (I'm not an expert in

• JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > Napoleon going around Europe slaughtering is somehow "how we got meritocracy" and a "goodie"? Pardon me, a quote from a better source: "Prussia, notwithstanding the reforms of Frederick the Great, had retained its half-feudal institutions down to the decisive defat of Jena. The agricultural classes were serfs bound to the soil and compelled to work a certain part of each week for their lords with our remeration. The population was still divided into three distinct castes, nobles, burghers, and peasants, who could not acquire one another's land. The disaster of Jena and the losses at Tilsit convinced the statesmen of Prussia–among whom Baron von Stein and Prince Hardenberg were conspicuous–that the country's only hope of recovery was a complete social and political revolution not unlike that which had taken place in France. They saw that the old system must be abolished, the peasants freed, and the restrictions which hedged about the different classes done away with, before it would be possible to arouse public spirit to a point where a great popular uprising might expel the intruder forever." Beard and Harvey, James Robinson. Outlines of European History. Ginn & Company, 1907. https://books.google.com/books?id=z14AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA220&lpg=PA220&dq=battle+of+jena+reform&source=bl&ots=FRoOuJMWso&sig=21Xg2pkLyIGJHmMBsx7IY7F8xGs&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-nY6-4rfZAhVhmuAKHUbNBTw4FBDoAQgsMAE#v=onepage&q=battle%20of%20jena%20reform&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=z14AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA220&lpg=...