The system's proponents overcame such resistance with the help of foreign pressure and internal failures, after the defeat of Prussia in the early stages of the Napoleonic Wars. After the military blunder of Prussian drill and line formation against the levée en masse of the French revolutionary army in the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt in 1806, reformers and German nationalists urged for major improvements in education. In 1809 Wilhelm von Humboldt, having been appointed minister of education, promoted his idea of a generic education based on a neohumanist ideal of broad general knowledge, in full academic freedom without any determination or restriction by status, profession or wealth. Humboldt's was one of the earliest white papers to lay out a reform of a country's educational system as a whole. Humboldt's concept still forms the foundation of the contemporary German education system. The Prussian system provided compulsory and basic schooling for everyone, but the significantly higher fees for attending "gymnasium" or a university imposed a high barrier between upper social strata and middle and lower social strata.