Ferdinand Baptista von Schill was a Prussian officer who revolted unsuccessfully against French domination in May 1809.
Background
He was born on January 6, 1776, at Wilmsdorf (now a part of Bannewitz, Saxony). His father, Johann-Georg Schill, had been an ambitious commoner from Bohemia, who attained the aristocratic "von" for his services to Austria and Saxony during the Seven Years' War. J. G. von Schill had raised a "Freikorps", a small raiding party of cavalry and mounted infantry, operating behind enemy lines, and acquired some measure of fame and success. Many of Ferdinand von Schill's later biographers assumed that his father's example was an important influence on his subsequent career.
Career
Entering the Prussian cavalry at the age of twelve, he was still a subaltern of dragoons when he was wounded at the battle of Auerstadt. From that field he escaped to Kolberg, where he played a very prominent part in the celebrated siege of 1807, as the commander of a volunteer force of all arms. After the peace of Tilsit he was promoted major and given the command of a hussar regiment formed from his Kolberg men. In 1809 the political situation in Europe appeared to Schill to favour an attempt to liberate his country from the French domination. Leading out his regiment from Berlin under pretext of manoeuvres, he raised the standard of revolt, and, joined by many officers and a company of light infantry, marched for the Elbe. At the village of Dodendorf (5th of May 1809) he had a brush with the Magdeburg garrison, but was soon driven northwards, where he hoped to find British support. The king of Prussia's proclamations prevented the patriots from receiving any appreciable assistance, and with little more than his original force Schill was surrounded by 5000 Danish and Dutch troops in the neighbourhood of Wismar. He escaped by hard fighting (action of Damgarten, 24th of May) to Stralsund, and attempted to put the crumbling fortifications in order. The Danes and Dutch soon hemmed him in, and by sheer numbers overwhelmed the defenders (May 31). Schill himself was killed. Some parties escaped to Prussia, where the officers were tried by court-martial, cashiered and imprisoned. A few escaped to Swinemiinde, but the rest were either killed or taken. Handed over to the French, the soldiers were sent to the galleys, and the eleven officers shot at Wesel on the 16th of September.
Membership
He was an active member of the Tugendbund, the quasi-Masonic "League of Virtue" founded in June 1808, and including many notable Prussian reformers such as Gerhard von Scharnhorst and August Neidhardt von Gneisenau.