The King extended his generosity not only in individual cases, but all over the country. There was urgent necessity to awaken fresh life and secure prosperity once more for the exhausted provinces. The war, which had been conducted with great bitterness and sometimes barbarity, had not only greatly distressed Prussia, but had left all Germany in a wretched plight. An entire circuit of towns and villages had been destroyed. The luxuriant fields had been trodden down by hoofs of horses and were lying waste. Entire villages were destitute of men, for their former residents had either been killed or driven away by the enemy. The Prussian army alone lost over two hundred thousand men during the war, and its allies, England, Hanover, Hesse, and others one hundred and sixty thousand more. The losses of the enemy were still greater, for they amounted to more than half a million men. Austria lost one hundred and forty thousand, Russia, one hundred and twenty thousand, France twenty-two thousand, Sweden, twenty-five thousand, and the German Reich, twenty-eight thousand.
Under such circumstances, it is not strange there were not enough men left in the country to till the soil. Women had to do that work, and in some places there were not women enough. Consequently the King issued an order to take a hundred of the strongest boys from the Potsdam Orphan Asylum, and set them at work in these depopulated localities. He devised still other means to make up this lack of men. He released Prussians from the army, filled their places with foreign recruits, and then ordered that as few Prussians as possible should be enlisted until the deficiency was made good. The number thus released was thirty thousand seven hundred and eighty. Every effort was made to assist them in the habits of self-reliance and industrial life, and orders were also issued that soldiers in such districts should be allowed to marry without a license from the authorities. Many buildings abandoned by their owners were going to ruin, and more than thirteen thousand houses in Prussia were destroyed. Fertile fields after the war looked like a barren wilderness, for there was a lack of seed-corn and products, and implements of every kind needed to put them in good condition again.
Gentry and peasants alike had been plundered by so many armies, and had lost so much by contributions and confiscations, that they were utterly destitute. The enemy had left them nothing but their lives. The country was not the only sufferer. Prosperity was ruined and trade was dead in the cities. There was no longer any regard for habits of order, and the police administration was wretched. The courts of justice and financial institutions had been reduced to inaction by these frequent invasions of the enemy. The silence of the laws had made the people reckless and produced in them an uncontrollable greed of gain. Nobles, merchants, farmers, and laborers raised the prices of their commodities, and their demands were exorbitant beyond belief. The situation called for drastic remedies, and the King, who was greatly concerned over the country’s condition, did not hesitate to apply them in a practical way. He realized that the Provinces could not recover unaided, and so he decided to help them. By his orders Silesia had to contribute three million; Pomerania and Neumark, one million four hundred thousand; the Electorate, seven hundred thousand; the Duchy of Cleve, one hundred thousand, and the province of Prussia, eight hundred thousand thalers. Beside this, he distributed among the most needy localities twenty-five thousand bushels of rye and meal, and seventeen thousand bushels of oats taken from the public storehouses. He went even further than this. He reduced the army, and distributed thirty-five thousand horses among the peasants and gentry. In those parts of the country which had suffered most severely during the war, particularly Crossen, Hohenstein, and Halberstadt, the taxes were reduced one-half. In Silesia the payment of taxes was suspended for six months, and in Pomerania and Neumark for two years. The gentry also received considerable sums of money for the arrangement of their affairs and the payment of debts, for their resources had been so greatly impaired, money was so scarce, and credit so uncertain, that there was otherwise no hope for their recovery.[28]
It was not only cities and villages that were ruined during this war. The discipline of the army was so impaired by dissoluteness that more stringent regulations had to be adopted. The work, however, proceeded so slowly that permanent results were not apparent until 1775. From that time the army displayed the genuine military spirit. Everything except the regulations governing enlistments had been changed.
It was natural that by the reduction of the army many a deserving soldier found himself badly off. When the free battalions were organized, a blacksmith’s journeyman in a Silesian village enlisted in the one commanded by Quintus Icilius, became a corporal, and subsequently was promoted to the position of major and was given the decoration for merit. After the battalion was disbanded, he was left to shift for himself, and as he could find nothing better went back to the smithy, but still wore his decoration. Seydlitz found him at work, and inquired where he got that decoration. He told his story, and Seydlitz told it to the King. Quintus was in attendance upon the King, and, one day at table, he said to him:
“Quintus, you had some fine specimens of officers in your battalion. There is, for instance, a blacksmith journeyman who has decorated himself with a service badge. How did that Cyclops come by it?”
Quintus replied: “I remember the brave fellow. I wish Your Majesty had had more such smiths in the campaign. This one certainly did well, and Your Majesty recognized his service and gave him the decoration in Saxony.”
“Why have you not told me about him before?” said the King.
Quintus answered: “It has been done, but Your Majesty at the time was much prejudiced against the free battalions and struck the name of this brave fellow off the list.”
The King smiled and shaking his head, said: “He has had hard luck and I must help him some way. Now, listen, I will give the man a pension for service, but he must not wear his decoration when at work and he must keep quiet until I call him.”