



Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive





Transcriber's Note:
  1. Page scan source:
     http://www.archive.org/details/picturesgermanl03freygoog






                        PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE

                                 IN THE

                  EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES.

                             SECOND SERIES.

                           *   *   *   *   *

                                VOL. II.






                                PICTURES

                                   OF

                              GERMAN LIFE

                  In the XVIIIth and XIXth Centuries.



                             Second Series.


                                   BY
                            GUSTAV FREYTAG.


                    Translated from the Original by
                             MRS. MALCOLM.



                 _COPYRIGHT EDITION.--IN TWO VOLUMES_.


                                VOL. II.



                                LONDON:
                   CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193 PICCADILLY.
                                 1863.






                                LONDON:
               BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.




                               CONTENTS.


                              CHAPTER VII.

Away from the Garrison (1700).--The army, and the constitution
of the State--The country militia and their history--The soldiery of
the Sovereign--Change of organisation after the war--The beginning
of compulsory levies about 1700--Gradual introduction of
conscription--Recruiting and its illegalities--Desertions--Trafficking
with armies--The Prussian army under Frederic William I.--The regiment
of guards at Potsdam--Prussian officers--Ulrich Braecker--Narrative of a
Prussian deserter


                             CHAPTER VIII.

The State of Frederic the Great (1700).--The kingdom of the
Hohenzollerns, its small size; character of the people and
princes--Childhood of Frederic--Opposition to his
father--Catastrophe--Training and its influence on his character--His
marriage and relations with women--Residence in Rheinsberg--His
character when he became King--Striking contrast between his poetic
warmth and his inexorable severity--Inward change in the course of the
first Silesian war--Loss of the friends of his youth--The literary
period till 1766--His poetry, historical writings, and literary
versatility--Seven years of iron labour--His method of carrying on war,
and heroic struggle--Admiration of Germans and foreigners--His
sufferings and endurance--Extracts from Frederic's Letters from
1767-1762--Principles of his government--Improvement of
Silesia--Difference betwixt the Prussian and Austrian
government--Feeling of duty in the Prussian officials--Acquisition
of West Prussia--Miserable condition in 1772--Agriculture of
Frederic--His last years


                              CHAPTER IX.

Of the Year of Tuition of the German Citizen (1790).--Influence of
Frederic on German art, philosophy, and historical writing--Poetry
flourishes--The aspect of a city in 1790--The coffee gardens and
the theatres--Travelling and love of the picturesque--Different
sources of morals and activity amongst the nobles, citizens, and
peasants--Characteristics of the life of the country nobles--The piety
of the country people--Education of the citizens--Advantages of the
Latin schools and of the university education--The sentimentality and
change in the literary classes from 1750-1790--The Childhood of Ernst
Frederic Haupt


                               CHAPTER X.

The Period of Ruin (1800).--The condition of Germany--Courts and cities
of the Empire--People and armies of the Empire--The emigrants--Effect
of the revolution on the Germans--The Prussian State--Its rapid
increase--Von Held--Bureaucracy--The army--The Generals--The
downfall--Narrative of the Years 1806-1807, by Christoph Wilhelm
Heinrich Sethe--His life


                              CHAPTER XI.

Rise of the Nation (1807-1815).--Sorrowful condition of the people in
the year 1807--The first signs of rising strength--Hatred of the French
Emperor--Arming of Prussia--Character and importance of the movement of
1813--Napoleon's flight--Expedition of the French to Russia in
1812, and return in 1813--The Cossacks--The people rise--General
enthusiasm--The volunteer Jaegers and patriotic gifts--The Landwehr
and the Landsturm--The first combat--Impression of the war on the
citizens--The enemy in the city--The course of the war--The celebration
of victory


                              CHAPTER XII.

Illness and Recovery (1815-1848).--The time of reaction--Hopelessness
of the German question--Discontent and exhaustion of the
Prussians--Weakness of the educated classes in the north of
Germany--The development of practical activity--The South Germans and
their village tales--Description of a Village School by Karl Mathy


CONCLUSION.--The Hohenzollerns and the German citizens





                        PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE.


                             Second Series.




                              CHAPTER VII.

                        AWAY FROM THE GARRISON.
                                (1700.)


A shot from the alarm-gun! Timidly does the citizen examine the dark
corners of his house to discover whether any strange man be hid there.
The peasant in the field stops his horses to consider whether he would
wish to meet with any fugitive, and earn capture-money, or whether he
should save some desperate man, in spite of the severe punishment with
which every one was threatened who enabled a deserter to escape.
Probably he will let the fugitive run away, though in his power, for in
his secret soul he has a fellow feeling for him, nay, even admires his
daring.

There is scarcely any sphere of earthly interest which stamps so
sharply the peculiarities of the culture of the time, as the army and
the method of carrying on war. In every century the army corresponds
exactly with the constitution and character of the state. The
Franconian landwehr of Charles the Great, who advanced on foot from
their _Maifeld_ to Saxony, the army of the noble cuirassiers who rode
under the Emperor Barbarossa into the plains of Lombardy, the Swiss
and Landsknechte of the time of the Reformation, and the mercenary
armies of the Thirty Years' War, were all highly characteristic of the
culture of their time; they sprang from the social condition of the
people, and changed with it. Thus did the oldest infantry of the
proprietors take root in the old provincial constitution, the mounted
chivalry in the old feudalism, the troops of Landsknechte in the rise
of civic power, and the companies of roving mercenaries in the increase
of royal territorial dominion; these were succeeded in despotic states,
in the eighteenth century, by the standing army with uniform and pay.

But none of the older forms of military service were entirely displaced
by those of later times, at least some reminiscences of them are
everywhere kept. The ancient landfolge (attendants on military
expeditions) of the free landowner had ceased since the greater portion
of the powerful peasantry had sunk into bondsmen, and the strong
landwehr had become a general levy, of little warlike capacity; but
they had not been entirely set aside, for still in the eighteenth
century all freeholders were bound at the sound of the alarum to hasten
together, and to furnish baggage, horses, and men to work at the
fortifications. In the same way the knights of the Hohenstaufen were
dispersed by the army of free peasants and citizens, at Sempach,
Grunson, Murten, and the lowlands of Ditmarsch, but the furnishing of
cavalry horses remained as a burden upon the properties of the
nobility; it was after the end of the sixteenth century--in Prussia,
first under Frederic William I.--that it was changed into a low
money-tax, and this tax was the only impost on the feudal property of
nobles.[1] The roving Landsknecht also, who provided his own equipments
and changed his banner every summer, was turned into a mounted
mercenary with an unsettled term of service; but in the new time the
customs of free enlistment, earnest money, and entering into foreign
service, were still maintained, although these customs of the
Landsknecht time were in strange and irreconcilable contrast to the
fearful severity with which the new rule of a despotic state grasped
the whole life of the recruit.

The defects of the standing army in the eighteenth century have been
often criticised, and every one knows something of the rigorous
discipline in the companies with which the Dessauer stormed the
defences of Turin, and Frederic II. maintained possession of Silesia.
But another part of the old military constitution is not equally known,
and has been entirely lost sight of even by military writers. It shall
therefore be introduced here.

The regiments which the sovereigns of the eighteenth century led to
battle, or leased to foreign potentates, were not the only armed
organisation of Germany. Besides the paid army there was in most of the
states a militia force, certainly very deficient in constitution, but
by no means insignificant or uninfluential. At no time had the old
idea, that every one was bound to defend his own country, vanished from
the German life. The right of the rulers to employ their subjects in
the defence of their homes, was, according to the notions of the olden
time, entirely distinct from their other right of keeping soldiers.
They could not command their subjects to render military service for
their political struggles, nor for wars beyond the frontiers. Service
in war was a free work, for that, they were obliged to invite
volunteers, that is to say, to enlist, as they were unable to avail
themselves of their vassals. One of the greatest changes in the history
of the German nation was owing to the conviction being gradually
impressed upon the people, by the despotic governments in the former
century, that they were bound to furnish their rulers with at least a
portion of their soldiers. And it is not less instructive to find, that
in our century, after the old system was destroyed, the general idea of
defensive duty was imbibed by the people. It is worth while to
investigate the way in which this happened.

Already, towards the end of the sixteenth century, when the
Landsknechte had become too costly and demoralised, people began to
think of forming a militia of the men capable of bearing arms in the
cities and open country, which were to be employed for its protection
within its frontiers. After 1613, this militia was organised in
Electoral Saxony and the neighbouring countries, and soon after in the
other circles of the Empire, and companies established, which were
sometimes assembled and exercised in military drill. Their collective
number was fixed