30 MILITARY ORGANIZATION OF PRUSSIA. 



other advantages resulting, for with the perspective of obtaining 

 these situations, the nation retains under arms non-commissioned 

 officers and soldiers whom she would otherwise have lost, at the 

 moment when they were scarcely formed. Consideration is likewise 

 given to the profession of arms, and the army is attached to the 

 government by new ties, and a sort of fraternity is established be- 

 tween the military and civil services, instead of a spirit of jealousy 

 and rivalry. 



The officers of the landwehr are composed mostly of officers of the 

 line who have quitted the service to look after their own affairs, and 

 who are almost all landed proprietors in the circle in which their 

 battalion is recruited. When there is not a sufficient number of 

 officers of this class, the rank of sub-lieutenant is given to non-com- 

 missioned officers and soldiers of the landwehr who had previously 

 served as volunteers in the line, but they must undergo an examina- 

 tion, and be approved of by the officers of the corps. Seniority 

 regulates the promotion of all officers in this branch of the service. 



The Prussian army possesses most excellent cadres ; her officers 

 are attached to public life by the social position of their families, for 

 in the examination they undergo they must not only prove them 

 selves proficient in all the requisite branches of study, but also that 

 they possess a fortune to support the rank to which they aspire. The 

 Prussian officers are in point of education on a level with the highest 

 classes of society : in a military point of view this would be indif- 

 ferent, but in a political point of view it is of vast importance. Such 

 are the advantages of the Prussian system let us now contemplate 

 the reverse of the picture. 



The organisation of the Prussian army requires in the heads of this 

 army an unceasing surveillance, and in the officers of the line and of 

 the landwehr who receive pay an unrelenting vigilance. The sol- 

 diers of the army of the line are too young, totally unaccustomed to 

 the fatigues of the march and the privations of the " bivouac" full 

 a third of them must be looked upon in the light of recruits ; such a 

 state of things is of course highly prejudicial to the efficiency of the 

 special arms, especially of the artillery. The organization of the 

 landwehr is exempt from this inconvenience ; but the soldiers of 

 which it is composed have contracted on entering again into the 

 bosom of civil life, interests, habits, and customs, that render their 

 military duties extremely irksome ; again, they are almost all married, 

 and this circumstance alone is sufficient to prevent their becoming 

 good soldiers. Lastly, it is very difficult to maintain a strict dis- 

 cipline in corps that are only assembled during some weeks every 

 year, and composed of free citizens, who, during the remainder of the 

 year, have occupations and interests of their own. 



Should the conduct of the Prussian army in the war of 1813 and 

 1814 be cited in support of the goodness of these institutions, we shall 

 answer that in consequence of the astounding evils which Napoleon 

 heaped upon Prussia, that it was not only Prussia but every Prussian 

 who made war on him. Ages may elapse before the like occurs 

 again, and when the recollection of these evils shall have become ob- 

 literated, it will perhaps be difficult to mobilise the landwehr for any 



