Major Ferdinand Baptista von Schill (6 January 1776 – 31 May 1809) was a Prussian Army officer who revolted unsuccessfully against France's domination of Prussia in May 1809.

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).

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.

After the Treaty of Tilsit, he was promoted to major, awarded the Pour le Mérite,[2] and given the command of a hussar regiment formed primarily from his Kolberg men.

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.

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.

A dramatic letter-writing campaign led by Philippine von Griesheim, the fiancé of one of the eleven officers, Albrecht von Wedell, and appeals to the Prussian King Frederick William III by the eleven asking to die by a Prussian firing squad instead of at the 'hands of the enemy' helped create a legend that would become part of the propaganda encouraging the German liberation movement of 1813 leading to Prussia's restoration of independence.

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.