The discrimination, persecution, and murder of Jews have a long history. Protection schemes in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era tended to have economic and political motivations. Still, European and Near Eastern societies treated Jews as subjects with lesser rights, and most social and political classes were closed to them. The age of rationalism and enlightenment since the Reformation, and the principles of the French Revolution and Napoleon's wars, gave impulses to the gradual emancipation of the Jews. In Prussia, a royal decree in 1812 declared: ‘The Jews and their families who are currently residents in Our States and are provided with general privileges, naturalisation patents, letters of protection and concessions are to be regarded as native residents and Prussian state-citizens’.