by H M Hozier
This gives the strength of a corps d’armée as twenty-four battalions of infantry, twenty-four squadrons of cavalry, and sixteen batteries of artillery. Besides this, however, each corps has one battalion of rifles and one battalion of engineers, besides an engineer train for the transport of materials for making bridges, and a large military train, which carries food, hospitals, medicines, fuel for cooking, bakeries, and all the other necessaries of not only life, but of the life of an army, the members of which require not only the same feeding, clothing, and warming as other members of the human race, but who will not be denied bullets, powder, shot and shells, saddlery for their horses, and who from the nature of their life are more liable to require medicines, bandages, splints, and all hospital accessories than other men.
If we do not consider the train when we are calculating the number of combatants who actually fall in, in the line of battle, every battalion may be considered to consist of 1,002 men. Thus the force of infantry and engineers in a corps d’armée numbers over 26,000, and on account of men absent through sickness may in round numbers be calculated at this figure. Each squadron of cavalry may be calculated at 140 mounted men, which makes the whole cavalry force about 3,300 men. Each division of four batteries of horse artillery brings into the field 590 actual combatants, and each of field artillery the same, so that the whole artillery force of a corps d’armée is about 2,350 men. The actual number of combatants with a corps d’armée is in this way seen to be 31,650 men, which may be stated in broad numbers at 31,000. The Guard corps d’armée differs chiefly from the Line corps in having one additional rifle battalion, one additional Fusilier regiment, and two additional cavalry regiments, which increase its strength by about 5,150 actual combatants; the total number of combatants in this corps may be safely assumed as 36,000 men, in round numbers. (This paragraph is still correct, except that the squadron now always musters 150 mounted men).
If we turn, however, to the list furnished by the military authorities, we find that the army was said to consist of 335,000 men, with 106,500 horses, of which only about 70,000 belonged to the cavalry and artillery, and that it was accompanied by a waggon train of 8,950 carriages, of which only 3,500 belonging to the artillery performed any service on the field of battle.
What has then become of these 55,000 men, 36,500 horses, and 5,450 carriages which form the difference between the returns we find of an army on paper and the actual number of men engaged on the field of battle? This difference represents the moving power of the combatant branches; it is this difference that feeds the warriors when they are well, that tends them when wounded, and nurses them when struck down with disease. Nor are these the only duties of the non-combatant branches. An army on a campaign is a little world of itself, and has all the requirements of ordinary men moving about the world, besides having an enemy in its neighbourhood, who attempts to oppose its progress in every way possible. When the line of march leads to a river, over which there is either no bridge or where the bridge has been destroyed, a bridge must be immediately laid down, and, accordingly, a bridge train is necessarily always present with the army.
When a camp is pitched, field bakeries have to be immediately established to feed the troops; field telegraphs and field post-offices must be established for the rapid transmission of intelligence. A large staff must be provided for, which is the mainspring that sets all the works in motion. And these are only ordinary wants, such as any large picnic party on the same scale would require. When we consider that 200 rounds of ammunition can easily be fired away by each gun in a general action, that every infantry soldier can on the same occasion dispose of 120 rounds of ball cartridge, and that this must be all replaced immediately; that all this requires an enormous number of carriages, with horses and drivers; that outside of the line of battle there must be medical men, their assistants, and nurses; that within it and under fire there must be ambulance waggons, and men with stretchers to bear the wounded to them; and that forty per cent of the infantry alone in every year’s campaign are carried to the rear, we may understand how the large difference between the number of actual fighting men and of men borne upon paper is accounted for.
We have seen that each corps d’armé may be safely estimated at 30,000 combatants, and that of the Guard at 36,000, without taking into consideration those large artillery and engineer trains which would be requisite were the army to undertake the siege of any considerable fortress. It only remains now to consider whether this strength may always be reckoned upon as constant; and it appears that this may be done in consequence of the admirable system of Prussian organisation. By this system, as soon as a corps d’armée is put on a war footing, there is a depôt battalion formed for each regiment, a depôt company for each battalion of rifles, a depôt squadron for each cavalry regiment, (maintained in time of peace 1867), a depôt division for the artillery of each corps d’armée, a depôt company for each engineer battalion, and a depôt for the military train. These depôts remain in their barracks, and supply all vacancies made in the ranks of the corps to which they belong. Nor is it at all difficult for them to do so, because in consequence of the system of recruiting pursued in this country these depôts do not consist entirely of raw recruits, but partly of men who have served for some time in the army, and who have, after leaving the regular ranks, been annually put through a course of training.
In Prussia, with the exception of clergymen and a few others, every man in the year in which he becomes twenty years old is liable to military service for five years, three of which he spends in the regular army and two in the reserve. On completion of this service he is placed in the first levy of the Landwehr for seven years, and afterwards in the second levy of the Landwehr for seven years more. When it is necessary to raise the regular army to a war footing, the reserve is first draughted into the ranks, then the first levy of the Landwehr, and afterwards, if necessary, the second levy. (After 1866 the distinction between the two levies of Landwehr ceased). If the Landwehr is exhausted the landsturm is called out, and in this case every man between sixteen and fifty is liable for service.
Each corps d’armée of the line in time of peace is quartered in one of the eight provinces of the kingdom; its recruits are obtained from that province, and its Landwehr are the men in the province who have served five years and who have been dismissed from actual service, but are subjected to an annual course of training. The provinces to which the different corps d’armée in 1866 belonged were:—1, Prussia Proper; 2, Pomerania; 3, Brandenburg; 4, Prussian Saxony; 5, Posen; 6, Silesia; 7, Westphalia; 8, Rhine Provinces. The Guards are recruited from men of a certain stature from all the provinces, and the Landwehr of the Guard consists of the men who have formerly served in it.
Prussia, after the successes of Frederick the Great, was content to suppose that the military organisation which had served her so well in the Seven Years’ War was perfect, and required little or no modification to enable it to continue superior to that of other European Powers; but while she reposed complacently on the laurels of Rossbach and Leuthen, military science had rushed forwards, and she was rudely roused from her repose by the crushing defeat of Jena. Under enormous difficulties, and with the greatest secrecy, a new organisation was then introduced into the Prussian Army. The terms of peace dictated by Napoleon after the Jena campaign allowed the Prussian Army to consist of only 42,000 men, but no stipulation was made as to how long these men should serve.
In order to secure the means of striking for independence on the first favourable opportunity, General Scharnhorst introduced the Krümper system, by which a certain number of soldiers were always allowed to go home on furlough after a few months’ service, and recruits were brought into the ranks in their place. Those drilled were in their turn sent away on furlough and other recruits brought in for training. By means of this system at the beginning of 1813 not only could the existing regiments be filled up to proper war strength, but fifty-one new battalions were raised from prepared soldiers. This
force, however, was totally insufficient for the great struggle against Napoleon; so in February, 1813, volunteer Jäger detachments were formed which mustered together about 10,000 men, and in March the raising of a Landwehr was decreed, which in five months after the signature of the decree was able to take part in the war with a strength of 120,000 men.
Thus in August, 1813, Prussia possessed an army of 250,000 men, of whom 170,000 men were ready to take the field, while the remaining 80,000 formed reserve and depôt troops and supplied garrisons. This army fought in the war of independence, and formed the first nucleus of the existing military organisation of the kingdom,—an organisation which, dating from a terrible misfortune, the bitter experience of which has never been forgotten, has since been constantly tended, improved, and reformed, and with careful progress been brought to such a high pitch of excellence that in 1866 it enabled the Prussian troops to march and conquer with an almost miraculous rapidity, to eclipse in a few days the glories of the Seven Years’ War, to efface the memory of Jena by thundering on the attention of the startled world the suddenly decisive victory of Sadowa, and to spring over the ashes of Chlum into very possibly the foremost place among the armies of the world. (The events of 1870—71, have not belied this paragraph, written in 1867).
After Prussia had regained her position as a great power it was necessary that she should have an army of a strength similar to that of the armies of other great powers, and therefore with a muster-roll of about half a million of men. At this time the other great powers kept the greater part of their soldiery in peace, as in war, in the ranks, and only allowed a few trained veterans, who together amounted to about one-fourth of the total strength of the army, to be absent on furlough. But Prussia was then the smallest of the great powers, and had neither such a large population nor revenue as the others. Thus, she had, in the first place, not sufficient men; in the second place, not enough money to maintain an army on a similar system, and could in peace keep together only a much smaller portion of her soldiery than her possible enemies could. This portion of her army was organised on the following system:—
The country was required every year to grant 40,000 recruits, each of whom served for three years under the standards and for two years in the reserve; so the standing army amounted to 120,000 men, and by calling in the reserves could be raised immediately to 200,000 men. But, to complete the requisite number of 500,000 soldiers, 300,000 more were necessary, and in time of peace the kingdom could afford to maintain only very small depôts for these additional troops. The war of independence had shown that the Landwehr system, by which men were allowed to retire from service, but still remained liable to be called up for duty, was capable of effecting good service, and in case of need of supplying the men who could not be kept in time of peace in the regular army. Therefore this system was retained, and by the decree of the 3rd of September, 1814, the Prussian Army was organised definitively on the Landwehr system.
By this system every Prussian capable of bearing arms was without exception liable to military duty, and to serve from his 20th to his 23rd year in the standing army, from his 23rd to 25th in the reserve, from his 25th to 32nd in the first levy of the Landwehr, and from his 32nd to 39th in the second levy. The landsturm was to consist of all men capable of bearing arms between seventeen and forty-nine years of age who did not belong either to the standing army or to the Landwehr. From the Landwehr battalions and squadrons were raised which formed Landwehr regiments, and these were united for annual exercise or service in brigades and divisions with regiments of the line. Landwehr men who had belonged to Jäger battalions, to the artillery, or to the engineer service, were not formed into separate corps; but in case of being called up were to return into the ranks of the regiments in which they had formerly served.
By this system, with an annual supply of 40,000 recruits, Prussia was enabled to hold in readiness for war an army which consisted of three distinct parts.
1. The standing army of 120,000 men, raised in war by the recall of the reserves to 200,000 men, and with Landwehr-Jägers, artillerymen, and pioneers, to 220,000 men.
2. The first levy of the Landwehr, including only infantry and cavalry, of which, in peace, only small depôts, numbering together about 3,000 men, were maintained, but which, on the mobilisation of the army for war, supplied considerably over 150,000 men, even allowing liberally for deaths, sickness, emigration, and other causes of reduction.
The standing army and the first levy, after detaching 30,000 men to strengthen the garrisons of fortresses, formed together the field army of 340,000 men, and besides, from their surplus men and recruits, could leave at home a force of depôt troops amounting to about 50,000 men.
3. The second levy of the Landwehr, from which no exercise or training was required in time of peace, but which in war was called upon to furnish 110,000 soldiers, who, with the 30,000 above mentioned from the standing army and first levy, garrisoned the fortresses of the country, and could, in case of urgent necessity, be supported by the landsturm.
From these three sources—1, the field army; 2, depôt troops, formed by the standing army and first levy of the Landwehr; 3, garrison troops, formed by the surplus of the first levy, the second levy of Landwehr, and in case of need from the landsturm—Prussia could for war raise 530,000 men, of whom in time of peace hardly one-fourth were present with the standards. The standing army during the time that this organisation remained intact consisted of forty-five infantry regiments, ten light infantry battalions, thirty-eight cavalry regiments, nine artillery regiments, and nine divisions of engineers.
The great advantage of this system was that in peace it necessitated but a small expense, and required but few men to keep up an army which on the outbreak of war could be raised quickly to a large force. As it was arranged after the War of Independence it endured without alteration during the reigns of Frederick William III. and Frederick William IV.
But in the campaigns which the Prussian army undertook in 1848 and 1849, and again when the army was mobilised in 1850 and 1859, the disadvantages of an organisation so entirely based upon the Landwehr system became apparent in a high degree.
The energetic spirit with which the Prussian people rushed to arms against Napoleon I. can only, under very peculiar circumstances, agitate a whole nation, and make every individual willing and anxious to sacrifice his personal comfort and convenience in order to respond to the call of his government, and serve with alacrity in the ranks of the army. Such circumstances seldom occur, and are due either to the insupportable weight of a foreign domination—as was the case in Prussia from 1807-12—or to some strong patriotic stimulus such as has knitted the people of the same country together during the late campaign; but this spirit is seldom found at the outbreak of an ordinary war, engaged in for ordinary political reasons.
It was found on the mobilisation in 1848 that a great portion of the Landwehr soldiers obeyed only unwillingly the call to arms, because it interfered with their private occupations; that they sometimes, weaned by long ease from military ideas, showed a want of discipline, and that, thinking more for their wives and families than for their duty to the State, they did not always acquit themselves properly in action. Besides, there was this disadvantage that the Landwehr—therefore, about half of the field army, newly embodied—prevented the divisions from being immediately prepared to take the field, a delay which is terribly prejudicial to an army in these times, when troops are forwarded to the theatre of war by the rapid means of railway transport The officers and non-commissioned officers of the Landwehr were also little used to their duties, and at the very moment of mobilisation a great number of them were necessarily transferred to the line, and others brought from the regular army to supply their places. These numerous alterations of their leaders at such an important time were alone sufficient to impair materially the efficiency of the troops.
Besides these disadvantages, the existing system had brought about a great injustice in the distribution of mil
itary service, as in 1815 only 40,000 recruits were yearly called for to support the standing army of 140,000 men, while in the meantime the population had increased from 10,000,000 to 18,000,000; so that about one-third of the lads who should proportionately have entered the service were entirely free of duty, and those who did enter were liable to be recalled to the ranks for a longer period of their life than was really necessary; for if, instead of 40,000 recruits, 63,000 were, as easily could be, called up every year, men, instead of being liable to be put into the standing army on the outbreak of war for twelve years (from twenty to thirty-two), need only be liable for seven years (from twenty to twenty-seven). In direct ratio with the increase of population the national revenues had also increased from 50,000,000 to 93,000,000 thalers, and so admitted of an increase of the standing army and of the military expenses.
There were thus three grounds for a reform in the Landwehr system, and therefore King William I., while still Regent, introduced in 1859 and 1860 a reorganisation of the army, which up to 1865 formed a bone of contention between the Prussian Ministry and the Radical party in the Lower House, but the success of which in the war of 1866 completely silenced, if not thoroughly convinced, even its tax-paying opponents of its wonderful excellence and elasticity. By this reorganisation of 1859, as it is usually called, the first levy of the Landwehr was no longer, as a rule, to be sent into the field; and to attain this object the standing army, including the reserves, was to be increased by as many men as the first levy of the Landwehr formerly provided—in fact, to be nearly doubled.
The time of service in the Landwehr was diminished by two years, and that in the reserve in return to be lengthened by two years. The Landwehr still remaining in two levies, but composed only of men from twenty-seven to thirty-eight years old, was, as a rule, with its first levy alone to perform the duty which had hitherto been performed by the second levy,—namely, to garrison the fortresses. In case of necessity the government still, however, retained the power of calling up the second levy to aid in this duty.