Ferdinand von Schill Ferdinand Baptista von Schill ( 6 January 1776 – 31 May 1809 ) was a Prussian officer who revolted unsuccessfully against French domination in May 1809 . Life . Schill was born at Wilmsdorf ( now a part of Bannewitz , Saxony ) and entered the Prussian Army ' s cavalry at the age of twelve or fourteen ( sources differ ) . 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 . Ferdinand von Schill was a second - lieutenant 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 1806 – 07 , as the commander of a Freikorps , raiding behind the French lines . After the Treaty of Tilsit , he was promoted to major , awarded the Pour le Mérite , and given the command of a hussar regiment formed primarily from his Kolberg men . Schill ' s revolution . In 1809 the political situation in Europe appeared to Schill to favor an attempt to liberate Germany from the French domination of Napoleon Bonaparte . 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 . It was banned in 1809 . Many Tugendbund leaders believed that the new Kingdom of Westphalia , created by Napoleon from many smaller German states , and ruled by Napoleon ' s youngest brother Jérôme Bonaparte , was ripe for revolution . Schill planned to create an uprising in Westphalia that would topple the Bonaparte regime there , and – coupled with the efforts of Austria , Spain , and Britain – would bring about the fall of Napoleonic dominance in Germany . 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 first south through Saxony , and then north - west into Westphalia . At the village of Dodendorf on May 5 , 1809 , he had a brush with the Magdeburg garrison and won a small victory . Schill had no difficulty defeating , or even recruiting , the unreliable Westphalian troops sent against him , and his rebellion swelled to over 2 , 000 men . He had less success , however , with the gathering Danish and Dutch forces , which gradually drove him in a north - east direction toward the Baltic Sea . His most serious difficulty was the condemnation of Prussia ' s king Frederick William III , who feared that the revolt would drag a weakened and unprepared Prussia into another disastrous war against Napoleon . By the end of May , although he had left garrisons and raiding parties in various places , Schill ' s main force was trapped at Stralsund . He had between 1 , 500 – 2 , 000 men , against a force of 8 , 000 Danish and Dutch troops under French command . Liberation fails . On May 31 the Napoleonic forces stormed Stralsund . Schill was killed in the street fighting as his defenses collapsed . Over a thousand of his rebels escaped to Prussia , overland or by ship , where the officers were tried by court - martial , cashiered and imprisoned ( although all were subsequently pardoned . ) Some smaller parties of rebels including his two brothers escaped to Sweden , and ultimately Austria and Britain , but the rest were either killed or taken . The French commander counted 570 prisoners , the majority of whom were then sent to the galleys . About 100 rebels who had been Westphalian deserters were separated and taken to Brunswick , where 14 of them were ultimately executed . Eleven of Schill ' s officers were taken by Napoleon ' s orders to the fortress of Wesel where they were given a show trial and executed on September 16 . Another of Schill ' s officers , the Swede Friedrich - Gustave Peterson was executed by firing squad in Stralsund . Schill ' s body was decapitated . The corpse was dumped in an unmarked grave in Stralsund . The head was sent to Jerome Bonaparte as a trophy , but he gave it to a Dutch surgeon who collected oddities , and it remained at the University of Leiden until 1837 , when German patriots obtained it for the dedication of a Schill monument in Brunswick . Legacy . By the 1830s Schill was widely considered a hero throughout Germany . Monuments and historical markers to him or to his rebels have been erected in towns and cities : Wesel , Stralsund , Braunschweig , Wilmersdorf , Potsdam , Ohlau , Cottbus , Anklam , Geldern , and Wittenberg . Military units were named after him , streets and plazas bear his name to this day . Over 400 biographies , novels , plays , operas , and collections of poetry have been published about him in German , and he is featured in over a dozen German films including Rudolf Meinert ' s 1926 silent film " The Eleven Schill Officers " and his 1932 sound remake .