for the spontoon. As soon as the boy was fourteen years old he wore the same coat of blue cloth as the King and his Princes; for as yet there were no epaulets or distinctions in the embroidery,—only the regiments were denoted by marks of distinction. Every Prince of the Prussian family had to serve and become an officer, like the son of the poorest nobleman. It was remarked by contemporaries that in the battle of Mollwitz ten princes of the King of Prussia's family were in the army. It had not previously been the custom anywhere, or at any time, that the King should consider himself as an officer, and the officer as on an equality with the princes.

By this comrade-training, the officers were placed in a position such as they had never had in any nation. It is true that all the faults of a privileged order were strikingly perceptible in them. Besides their coarseness, love of drinking and gluttony, the rage for duelling, the old passion of the German army, was not eradicated, although the same Hohenzollern, who had himself wished to fight with his Major, was inexorable in punishing with death every officer who killed another in a duel. But if such a "brave fellow" saved himself by flight, the King rejoiced if other governments promoted him. The duel was not then carried on in Prussia according to the usages of the Thirty Years' War: there were more seconds, and the number of passages was fixed; they fought on horseback with pistols and on foot with a sword. Before the combat the opponents shook hands—nay, they embraced each other, and exchanged forgiveness in case of death; if they were pious they went beforehand to confession and the Lord's Supper; no blow could be given till the opponent was in a position to use his sword; in case he fell to the ground or was disarmed, generosity was a duty; if anyone wished for a fatal result, he spread out his mantle, or, if like the officers after 1710 he wore none, he traced with his sword on the ground a square grave. After the reconciliation followed a banquet. Frequent and unpunished was the presumption of the officers toward the civilian officials, and brutal violence against the weak. Even the sensitiveness of officers for their honour, which then developed itself in the Prussian army, had no high moral authority; it was a very imperfect substitute for manly virtue, for it pardoned great vices and privileged meannesses. But it was an important step in advance for thousands of wild disorderly men.

Through it, was first brought forth in the Prussian army a devotion on the part of the nobles, perhaps too exclusive, to the idea of a State. It was first in the army of the Hohenzollerns that the idea penetrated into the minds of both officers and soldiers, that a man owed his life to his father-land. In no part of Germany have brave soldiers been wanting to die for their banner; but the merit of the Hohenzollerns, the rough, reckless leaders of a wild army, was, that while they themselves lived, worked and did good and evil for their State, with unbounded devotion, they also knew how to give to their army, besides respect for their flag, a patriotic feeling of duty. From the school of Frederic William I. sprang forth the army with which Frederic II. won his battles, which made the Prussian State of the last century the most terrible power in Europe, and by its blood and its victories excited in the whole nation the enthusiastic feeling that within the German frontiers was a fatherland, of which every individual might be proud, and to struggle and to die for which would bring the highest honour and the highest fame to every child of the country.

And this advance in German civilisation was contributed to, not only by the favoured men who, with gorgets and sashes, sat as comrades with the Colonel Frederic William on the stools of his "collegium," but also by the much tormented soldiers, who were constrained by blows to discharge their guns for their Sovereign's State.

But before speaking of the advantages of the government of a great King, we will give a narrative, by a Prussian recruit and deserter, of the sufferings occasioned by the old military system, in which the life of an insignificant individual is delineated.

The narrator is the Swiss Ulrich Bräcker, the man of Toggenburg, whose autobiography has been often printed,^[10] and it is one of the most instructive accounts that we possess of the life of the people. The biography contains, in the first part, an abundance of characteristic and pleasing features; the description of a poor family in a remote valley; the bitter struggle with poverty; the doings of the herdsmen; the first love of the young man; the cunning with which he was kidnapped by the Prussian recruiting officer; and his compulsory military service up to the battle of Lowositz; his flight home, and subsequent weary struggle for existence; the description of his household; and, finally, the resignation of a sensitive, enthusiastic nature which, partly by its own fault, was disturbed in the firm tenor of its own life, by a dreamy tendency and passionate ebullitions. The poor man of Toggenburg displays, throughout his detailed statement, a poetical and touching child-like spirit, a passionate desire to read, reflect, and form himself—in short, a sensitive organisation which was ruled by humours and phantasies.

Ulrich Bräcker was at his home in Toggenburg, with his father, occupied in felling wood, when an acquaintance of the family, a wandering miller, approached the workers, and advised the honest, simple Bräcker to go from the valley to the city, in order to make his fortune there. Amid the blessings of parents and sisters, the honest youth wanders with the friend of the family to Schaffhausen; there he was taken to an inn, where he made acquaintance with a foreign officer. When his companion accidentally absented himself for a short time, he agreed to remain with the officer as servant. The family friend returns, and is highly irate, not that Ulrich had entered into service, but that he had done this without his interposition; and had thus diminished his commission fee. It turned out afterwards that he himself had carried off the son of his countryman, in order to sell him, and that he had intended to ask twenty Friedrichsdor for him. Ulrich, dressed in a new livery, lived for a time very jovially as servant of his dissipated master—the Italian Markoni—without concerning himself particularly about the secret transactions of the latter. He felt comfortable in his new position, and wrote a succession of cheerful letters to his parents and his love. At last his master made use of a lie to send him further into the country, and finally to Berlin; he there discovered, with horror, that his beautiful livery and his jovial life had been nothing but a deceit practised on him. His master was a recruiting officer, and he himself a recruit. From this point he shall relate his own fate:—

"It was on the 8th of April that we entered Berlin, and I in vain inquired for my master, who, as I afterwards learnt, had arrived eight days before us. When Labrot brought me into the Krausenstrasse in Friedrichstadt, showed me to a lodging, and then left me, saying shortly: 'There, messieur! stay till you get further orders!' Hang it! thought I, what is all this? It is certainly not even an inn. As I thus wondered, a soldier came. Christian Zittermann, and took me with him to his room, where there were already two sons of Mars. Now there was much wondering and inquiring, who I was? why I had come? and the like. I could not well understand their language. I replied shortly: 'I come from Switzerland, and am lacquey to his Excellency Herr Lieutenant Markoni; the sergeants have shown me here; but I should like to know whether my master is arrived at Berlin, and where