Often has the German since then been animated by patriotic aims; but the gifts of that great year deserve a higher praise; for, excepting the great collection of the old Pietists for their philanthropic institution, it is the first time that such a spirit of self-sacrifice has burst forth in the German people, and more especially the first time that the German has had the happiness of giving voluntarily for his State.

The sums also which were produced were, as a whole, so far beyond what has since been collected from wider districts that they can scarcely be compared. The equipment of the volunteer riflemen alone, and what was collected in the old provinces for the volunteer corps, must have cost far more than a million, and it comprehends only a small fragment of the voluntary donations made by the people.[[51]] And how impoverished were the lower orders!

Near together on the Schmiedebrücke, at Breslau, were the two recruiting places for the volunteer rifles and the Lützow irregulars. Professor Steffens and a portion of the Breslau students were the first to set on foot the rifles, Ludwig Jahn spoke, gesticulated, and wrote concerning the Lützowers. Both troops were equipped entirely by the patriotic gifts of individuals. The contributions for the volunteer rifles were collected by Heun. Betwixt the Lützowers and riflemen there was a friendly and manly emulation; the contrast of their dispositions displayed itself; but whether more German or more Prussian, it was the same ray of light, only differently refracted. The old contrast of character in the citizens, which had been perceptible for a century, showed itself, firm, cautious, and vigorous; and enthusiastic feeling with loftier aspirations. The first disposition was mostly the characteristic of the Prussians, the last of the patriotic youths who hastened thither from foreign parts. Very different was the fate of the two volunteer bodies. From the 10,000 rifles who were distributed in every Prussian regiment, arose the vigour of the Prussian army; they were the moral element in it, the aid, strength, and supply of the body of officers; and they not only contributed a stormy valour to the Prussia army, but gave an elevation to the character of the nobles which was new in the history of the war. The irregulars under Lützow, on the other hand, experienced the rude fate that overtakes the inspirations of the highest enthusiasm. The poetic feeling of the educated class attached itself chiefly to them; they included a great part of the German students, of vehement and excitable natures; but owing to this they became such a large and unwieldy mass that they were scarcely adapted to the work of regular warfare, and their leader, a brave soldier, had neither the qualities nor the fortune of a daring partisan. Their warlike deeds did not come up to the high-raised expectations that accompanied their first taking arms. Later, the best portion of them were absorbed in other corps of the army. But among their officers was the poet who was destined, beyond all others, to hand down in verse to the rising generation the magical excitement of those days. Of the many touching, youthful characters that figured in that struggle, he was one of the purest and most genial in his poetry, life and death: it was Theodore Körner.

But even in the great city where the volunteers were preparing their equipments there was no noisy din of excited masses. Quickly and earnestly every one did his duty. Those who had no money were supported by comrades who had been strangers to them, and met them accidentally. The only wish of the new comer was to find his equipments. If he had two coats, as a Lützower he had one quickly arranged and coloured black; his greatest anxiety was as to whether his cartridge box would be ready. If he was deficient in everything, and the bureau would not supply him with what was necessary, he ventured, but this was rare, to beg through the newspapers. Otherwise, money was of as little importance to him as to his comrades. He made shift as he best could, what did it signify now? As to high-sounding phrases and patriotic speeches he had no time nor ear for them. All hectoring and braggadocio was despised. Such was the disposition of the young men. It was a great enthusiasm, a deep devotion without the inclination to a loud expression of it. The consequential ways and bombast of the zealous Jahn disgusted many, and this bad habit soon gave him the reputation of a coward.

In many there was a disposition to enthusiastic piety, but not in the greater part. All the better sort, however, had strongly the feeling that they were undertaking a duty which was superior to every other earthly object: from this arose their cheerfulness and a certain solemn composure. With this feeling they industriously, honourably, and conscientiously performed their duty, exercising themselves unweariedly in the movement and use of their weapons in their rooms. They sung among their comrades with energetic feeling some of the new war songs, but these only kindled them because they were earnest and solemn like themselves. They did not like to be called soldiers, that word was in ill-repute from the time when the stick had ruled. They were warriors. That they must obey, do their duty to their utmost, and perform all the difficult mechanism of the service, they were thoroughly convinced; and also that they must be a pattern and example for the less educated, who were by their side. They were determined to be not only strict themselves, but careful of the honour of their comrades. In this holy war there was to be none of the insolence and coarseness of the old soldiers, to disgrace the cause for which they fought. With their "brethren" they held a court of honour and punished the unworthy. But they would not remain in the army; when the Fatherland was free, and the French put down, they would return to their lectures and legal documents in their studies. For this wax was not like another; now they stood as common soldiers in rank and file, but if they lived they would another year be again what they had been.

Beside one of such volunteers was perhaps an old officer from the time of the rule of the nobles and the stick. He had done his duty in unlucky wars, had perhaps been a prisoner, plundered of all he had and dragged through the streets of Berlin, the people following him with jeering and curses, and shaking their fists at him; then after the peace a court-martial had been held upon him, he was liberated but discharged with a miserable pittance. Since that he had starved, and secretly gnashed his teeth when the foreign conqueror looked down on him as insolently as he had once done on the civilian. If he had no wife or child to maintain, he had lived for years with his companions in sorrow in a poor dwelling, with disorderly housekeeping, and some of the failings of his old officer class still clung to him; this time of deprivation had not made him softer or milder, the ruling feeling of his soul was hate, deep furious hatred against the foreign conqueror. He had long nourished an uncertain hope, perhaps a vain plan of revenge, now the time was come for retaliation. Even he had been altered by this time of servitude. He had discovered how unsatisfactory his knowledge was, and he had in moments of earnestness done something towards educating himself; he had learnt and read, he also had been inspired by the noble pathos of Schiller. Still he looked with mistrust and disfavour on the new-fashioned warrior who perhaps stood before him in the ranks. His old grudge against scribblers was still very active, and want of discipline, together with high pretensions, wounded him. The same antagonism showed itself in the higher as well as lower grades in the ranks. It is a remarkable circumstance in this war that he was so well restrained; the volunteers soon learnt military obedience, and to value the knowledge of service of those above them; and the officer lost somewhat of the rough and arbitrary way with which he used to treat his men. At last he listened complacently when a wounded rifleman contended with the surgeon whether the flexor of the middle finger should be cut through, or when one of his men by the bivouac fire discussed with animation—in remembrance of his legal lectures—whether the ambiguous relation in which a Cossack had placed himself with respect to a certain goose was to be considered culpa lata or dolus. On the whole, this intermixture answered excellently.

But far more important than the action of the volunteers, was the advantage to the government of Prussia, of learning for the first time, what was its duty to such a people. The grand dimensions which the struggle assumed, the imposing military power of Prussia, and the weight which this State, by the importance of its armies, acquired in the negotiations for peace, were mainly occasioned by the exalted feeling which took the world by surprise in the spring months of that year. Through it the government gained courage, and was able to expand the power of the country to the immense extent it did. East Prussia, besides its contingent to the standing army, by its own strength, and almost without asking the government, raised twenty battalions of Landwehr and a mounted yeomanry regiment, and nothing but this enormous development of power could have made the establishment of the Landwehr possible throughout the whole realm.

At the command of its King the nation willingly and obediently and in a regular way produced this second army; in the old provinces one hundred and twenty battalions and ninety squadrons of Landwehr were equipped and maintained, and this was only a portion of its exertions.

How faithfully had it obeyed the commands of its King!

The Landwehr of the spring of 1813 had little of the military aspect which it obtained by service and later organisation.[[52]] The men consisted of such as had not been drawn into the service of the standing army, and now would be taken by lot and choice up to forty years of age. As the youths of education, the first military spirits of the nation, had most of them either entered the volunteer rifles, or filled up the gaps of the standing army, the elements of the Landwehr would probably have been of less military capacity if a certain number of proprietors had not voluntarily entered the ranks. The solid masses of the war consisted of common soldiers, mostly country people; the leaders, of country nobles, officials, old officers on half-pay, and whoever else was selected as trustworthy by his district, also of young volunteers: a very motley material for field service, many of the officers as well as soldiers without any experience in war. The equipments also were in the beginning very imperfect; they were mostly provided by the circles. The coatee, long trowsers of grey linen, a cloth cap with a white tin cross; the weapons in the first ranks were pikes, in the second and third muskets; for the horsemen, pistols, sabres, and pikes. The men were put into ranks, exercised, and equipped in what was necessary in the principal town of the circle. In the great haste it sometimes happened that battalions were ordered to the army which as yet had no weapons and no shoes; the people went barefooted and with poles to the Elbe, resembling in appearance a band of robbers more than regular soldiery, but with cheerful alacrity, singing and giving vent to hurrahs which they had learned from the Cossacks. For some weeks the troops of the line, especially the old officers, looked contemptuously on this newly-established force, none with more wrath than the strict York. When the worthy Colonel Putlitz, at Berlin, begged for a Landwehr command,—he who had already fought valiantly in the French campaign, and in the year 1807 had collected a corps of sharpshooters in the Silesian mountains,—the staff officers asked him ironically, whether he thought of fighting with such hordes. After the war the valiant general declaimed, that the time during which he had commanded the Landwehr was the happiest of his life. In no part of the new organisation of the army did the power of the great year, and the capacity of the people, shine so brilliantly as in this. These peasant lads and awkward ploughboys became in a few weeks trustworthy and valiant soldiers. It is true that they had a disproportionate loss of men, and in their first encounter with the enemy did not always keep a firm front, and showed the rapid alternations of cowardice and courage which are peculiar to young troops; but called together from the plough and the workshop, badly clothed, badly armed, and little drilled as they were, they had in the very beginning to go through all the severe fieldwork of veteran troops. That they were in general capable of doing it, that some battalions already fought so bravely that even their opponent (York) saluted them by taking off his hat, is as well known as it is rare in military history. Soon they could not be distinguished from troops of the line; it was between them an emulation of valour.