From Munich, July 6, Thompson wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, to tell him that his Electoral Highness had been asked to become a Fellow of the Royal Society. He said:
I should have done myself the honour to have written to you upon this subject some time ago, but I waited for a favourable opportunity to speak to his Electoral Highness about it.
It was only a few days since I came into waiting as aide-de-camp to his Most Serene Highness. I shall continue about his person till September, when I purpose making a tour for a couple of months in the mountains of Tyrol, upon the confines of Bavaria, and the dominions of the Bishop of Saltzburg, a country extremely interesting in several points of view.
He gave his direction as ‘M. le Chevalier Thompson, colonel et aide-de-camp général au service de S.A.S. l’Élect. Palatin, Duc de Bavière.’
He ended, ‘I am, dear Sir, with sincere regard and respect, your most obedient and most humble servant.’
He again wrote to Sir Joseph Banks on July 24. He began by asking if he could have one of the two hundred medals for Cook’s voyages given to Fellows of the Royal Society, and he ended with a postscript:
I beg you would make my best compliments to Mr. Blagden when you see him, and tell him I hope he will not entirely forget an old correspondent who remembers him with great affection.
Cuvier, in his éloge of Count Rumford, says of the Electors of Bavaria:
Les souverains agrandis à l’époque des guerres de religion, par suite de leur zèle pour le catholicisme, avaient longtemps porté les marques de ce zèle bien au-delà de ce que réclame un catholicisme éclairé: ils encourageaient la dévotion et ne faisaient rien pour l’industrie; on comptait dans leurs états plus de couvents que de fabriques. L’armée y était à peu près nulle; l’ignorance et l’inertie dominaient dans toutes les classes de la société.
The first work in Bavaria of Sir Benjamin Thompson was to rearrange the military service and introduce a new system of order, discipline, and economy among the troops. In the execution of this commission he says: ‘I was ever mindful of that great and important truth that no political arrangement can be really good except in so far as it contributes to the general good of society. I have endeavoured to unite the interest of the soldier with the interest of civil society, and to render the military force, even in the times of peace, subservient to the public good.’ To make soldiers citizens, and citizens soldiers, the soldier was better paid, better clothed, better housed, better taught, better occupied, better amused, and, above all, allowed to earn money and to spend it as he pleased. Fixed garrisons were formed, and the army was used as a means of introducing useful improvements into the country. Thus military gardens were formed to introduce the culture of the potato. Workhouses for manufacturing clothing for the army were founded, first at Mannheim for the troops of the Palatinate and Duchies of Juliers and Bergen, and a few months afterwards at Munich for the fifteen Bavarian regiments. The greatest order and economy were used in the military manufactory and magazine, and after six years Sir B. Thompson wrote that the net profit on the various trades and manufactures in the Munich Workhouse up to that time was 100,000 florins; and he could refer to its growing reputation, its extensive connexions, which reached even to foreign countries, to the punctuality with which all its engagements were fulfilled, to its unimpeached credit, and to its growing wealth. The amount of orders executed in the sixth year of its establishment did not fall much short of half a million of florins.
Among the various measures that occurred to Sir B. Thompson by which the military of the country might be made subservient to the public good in time of peace, ‘none,’ he says, ‘appeared to me of so much importance as that of employing the army in clearing the country of beggars, thieves, and other vagabonds, and in watching over the public tranquillity.’