Something I often read in Napoleonic histories is that Prussia was in decline in the early 19th Century. Her military edge waning, her court politics growing decadent. Which, these histories then go onto say, is why Napoleon thoroughly thrashed the Prussians when they joined the wars against him.
But, in the French Revolutionary war, the Prussians seem to have performed quite ably and no-one accuses them of being in decline when they were partitioning Poland.
So what happened between 1793 and 1806 that made Prussia "decline"? Was there a real weakening of the country, or is the narrative simply a product of historian's biases?
fasquardon