Jena-Auerstedt

October 14, 1806

On a single October day, two French armies annihilated the Prussian military machine that Europe had feared since Frederick the Great. Napoleon rode into Berlin two weeks later. Humiliation drove Prussian reformers - Stein, Scharnhorst, Clausewitz - to rebuild the army that would one day unify Germany. Hegel, watching Napoleon ride through Jena, called him the world-soul on horseback, history in the saddle.