factorily, because it was limited to a class who were neither
sufficiently numerous, nor sufficiently important politically, to
resist coercion. Meanwhile other factors had intervened to
render military service more popular. Famine was spreading,
political persecution was at its highest, and the ranks of the
army became almost the only refuge where men could escape
the terrors of secret denunciation. Moreover, experience in the
Netherlands and the Palatinate had shown that men could live
very comfortably at their enemy’s expense. All these causes
combined made an immense increase in the yield of the new law,
and, according to the careful estimate of the duc d’Aumâle (1867),
by the 1st of January 1794 there were no less than 770,000 men
under arms and available for active service. The tide of success
in the north of France now definitely turned against the Allies,
for they were powerless against the mobility and numbers
produced by hunger and political terrorism. Bonaparte’s
successes of 1796 were the highest expression of the “new
French” method thus developed.
But with the respite which his victories in Italy immediately secured, a reaction against the severity of the conscription soon made itself felt, and the obvious need for internal development gave the discontented a lever for extorting concessions from the government.
To the political economists of the period it seemed a deliberate waste of productive energy to take the young merchant or clerk from his work and force a musket into his hands, whilst other men already trained were willing to renew their contract to defend the state. To regulate this question and also to define more clearly the obligations of the citizen, Jourdan introduced before the Five Hundred a report calling for a reorganization of the army. This ultimately, in the autumn of 1798, became the law of the country and remained practically unaltered as the basis of the French military organization down to 1870. The law definitely laid down the liability of every able-bodied French citizen to serve from his twentieth to his twenty-fifth year, leaving it to circumstances to determine how many classes or what proportion of each should be called up for service. Finally, after much discussion the right of exemption by payment of a substitute was conceded, and therein lay the germ of the disaster of 1870.
Meanwhile, with the assumption of the imperial title by Napoleon, the era of conquest recommenced, and as each fresh slice of territory was absorbed the French law of conscription was immediately enforced. This still further swelled the numerical preponderance against which the other nations had to contend, and each in turn was compelled to follow the French example. Prussia, however, alone pursued the idea to its logical conclusion, and in the law of 1808 definitely affirmed the principle of universal service without distinction of class or right of exemption by purchase.
Under the restrictions as to numbers imposed on Prussia by Napoleon after Tilsit, and also as a consequence of exceeding poverty, this law found only partial fulfilment, and voluntary organization had to be called into existence to meet the demand for numbers during the Wars of Liberation; but when after 1815 peace was at length assured, the system came into full operation, and it is to this that Prussia owed her phenomenal recovery from the depths of exhaustion into which the catastrophe of Jena had plunged her.
Army expenditure became the fly-wheel which steadied her disorganized finance. The troops had to be fed, clothed, equipped and housed; and the several occupations and trades involved in these processes gave profitable employment both to intellect, which was required to invent, devise and control, and to capital, which would have shirked the risks attending any but government contracts, and remained in private hoards, to the detriment of the reproductive power of the nation. The compulsory intercourse of all ranks compelled the classes to educate the masses—using the term “education” in its broadest sense. Free book-education itself had been forced on the nation as a military necessity of the moment, for without a certain degree of intellectual development in the recruits it was impossible to make soldiers of them within the short time available. But the practical value and application of the book teaching had, in sheer self-defence, to be imparted by the better-class recruits to their social inferiors, and, in the unconscious exercise of these functions as teachers of one another, all found themselves strengthened in character and universal sympathies.
The intelligence of the men reacted on the officers, who could no longer exercise authority by mere word of command, but were compelled, if they wished to survive, to teach by intelligent methods; and they were compelled to struggle for survival because outside of the army absolute ruin and destitution awaited them.
The duration of service being limited to three years, it followed that each year brought with it an influx of recruits to each battalion beyond the power of a few specialists to cope with. Hence the work had to be delegated to the captains and subalterns, who thus were compelled to become the teachers as well as the leaders of their men. The results from a military point of view were incalculable.
Perhaps the greatest benefit Prussia derived from her system during the first two generations—i.e. from 1810 to 1860—of its continuance was the insensible fusion which took place between the aristocracy and the people as a consequence of their enforced co-operation in a common task. Freed from the fear of French oppression, the court and the older men of the nobility would have swung back to the full exercise of their old feudal privileges; for as they still retained the bulk of the executive power, all the legal reforms and restrictions initiated by von Stein would have proved but paper safeguards; but the army compelled the opposing classes to understand and appreciate one another better, and the younger generation, living always with the threat of invasion impending over them, learnt by emulation from their seniors, who had led their men in battle, the true secret of command, the art of awakening the higher instincts of the men entrusted to them. If it seems to British readers that their progress was slow and that much remains to be accomplished, their starting-point at the outbreak of the French Revolution must be recalled and contrasted with that of the British army; indeed, we must go back to the time of Henry VII. to find a fair parallel.
It must be remembered too that we are speaking of Prussia only. In the other states of Germany which retained conscription with paid substitutes progress was far slower. The whole of Bavaria, Württemberg, and the districts along the Rhine had been saturated with French socialistic theories, and here the task of regeneration fell into other hands, and freedom, of a relative kind, had to be extorted by revolutionary means. To these reformers—many of them both devoted and enlightened thinkers—the armies of their own little states necessarily appeared as merely authorized oppressors of the people; and they may well be pardoned for failing to appreciate the essential differences involved in the two systems.
As the years went by, the Prussian military machine was turning out year by year an ever-increasing number of men, who by reason of the physical and moral training they had undergone were head and shoulders above the class whence they had sprung. These men soon asserted their superiority in the labour market and drove their weaker comrades to the wall. The men thus displaced, being obviously less fitted to maintain wives and families, found themselves supplanted by their stronger rivals in the affections of the women, and jealousy being thus evoked, they became as it were a nidus for revolutionary bacilli. This partly explains the temporary recrudescence of revolutionary tendencies during the ’forties and ’fifties. But the growing wealth-producing power of the nation, due to the higher average physique and power of concentration (the consequence of the military training), began to attract the attention of capitalists, and an era of railway construction set in, distributing wealth and employment about the country. This for a time relieved the congestion of the labour market, and, long before the victories of 1866 and 1870 had definitely removed the
