The most important man of the company next to the Captain was the Sergeant; he was the drill-master and spokesman for the soldiers, and had to mark out with flags the position to be taken up by the troops of the Imperial batons, or Swedish brigades, to arrange the men, placing in the front and rear ranks and at the sides, the best armed and most efficient men, to mingle the halberds and short weapons, to lead and keep with the arquebussiers; he was the instructor of the company, and knew the proper and warlike use of his weapons.
As the "mob" who came together from for and near under a banner were difficult to keep in order, the greater part of them not to be depended on, and unskilled in the exercise of their weapons, the number of non-commissioned officers was necessarily very great, frequently indeed they formed more than a third of the troop. Any one who had military capacity or could be depended upon, was marked out by the subordinate commander for higher pay and posts of confidence. Amongst the numerous functions and manifold designations of the subalterns, some are particularly characteristic. In the beginning of the war every company had, according to the old Landsknecht custom, their "leader," who, in the first instance at least, was chosen by the soldiers. He was the tribune of the company, their spokesman, who had to lay their grievances and wishes before the Captain, and to represent the interests of the soldiery. It may easily be understood that such an arrangement did not strengthen the discipline of the army; it was done away with in time of war. Even the thankless office of quartermaster was of greater importance than now; the complaints of the soldiers, who quarrelled about the bad quarters he had provided for them, he met with defiance, and inspired them with fear of his usurious practices. When a company came to a deserted village, the serjeants threw their knives into the hat of the quartermaster; he then went from house to house, sticking the blades as they came to his hand in the door-posts, and every band (of six or eight men) followed their leader's knife. When poor members of the nobility, candidates for commission, of whom the number was often great, presented themselves, their names were inscribed on the list of lance-corporals. Old vagabonds full of pretension were designated in the military kitchen Latin by the title of "Ambesaten," and afterwards "Landspassaten;" they were orderlies and messengers receiving higher pay, representatives and assistants of the Corporals. There was a general endeavour to add a deputy to every office, as the Lieutenant to the Captain, an under Ensign to the Ensign, to the Serjeant an under Serjeant, and frequently with the infantry a vidette for the sentinels at out-posts; in the same way serjeants were deputies to the officers, and the "Landspassaten" to the Corporal, and the provost to the provost-general, &c., &c.
The army consisted, with few exceptions, of enlisted soldiers. The Sovereign empowered an experienced leader by patent to raise for him an army, a regiment, or a company; recruiting places were sought for and a muster place established where the recruits were collected. The recruits were paid their travelling expenses or bounty; at the beginning of the war this was insignificant, and sometimes deducted from their pay, but later the bounty increased, and was given to the soldiers. At the beginning of the war negotiations were carried on with every mercenary, about the pay, at the muster-place. The soldier in quarters received nothing but his pay, which in 1600, for the common foot soldier, amounted to from fifteen to sixteen gulden a month.[[8]] With this they had to procure for themselves weapons, clothing, and food. Garrisons were provided with stores by the quarter-master, the cost being reimbursed to him. During the great war, however, the arrangements about pay were often deviated from, the distribution of it to the soldiers was very irregular.
In the Imperial army the pay, exclusive of food, was nine gulden to the pikeman and six to the musketeer. In the Swedish army it was still lower, but was in the beginning more regularly paid, and there was more care about the provisions. The whole sustenance of the army was charged upon the province by a hard system of requisition, even on friendly territory. The maintenance of the upper officers was very high, and yet formed only a small share of their income. During the time of service the troops were entered on the muster-roll by a court of comptrol, the reviewing officer, or commissary of the Prince; in order to prevent the officers and commanders drawing too much pay, when they were assembled round the flag, the names of the deserters were written apart, and beside each name a gallows was painted. At the time of muster if any one was unserviceable or had served a long time, he was taken off the muster-roll, and declared free, given his discharge, and provided with a pass or certificate. Whoever wished for leave, obtained a pass from the Ensign. The soldier had to clothe himself, uniforms were only found exceptionally; the halberdiers of the life-guards, and the heavily armed cavalry, so far as armour was concerned, were generally furnished by the Sovereign; but before the war it was only occasionally done, and then pay was deducted for it, or the Colonel took back the armour after the campaign.
The military discipline of the Germans was, in the beginning of the war, in the worst repute. The German soldiers were considered by other nations as idle, turbulent, refractory bullies;[[9]] they had been not a little spoilt by service in half-barbarous countries, as Hungary and Poland then were, and against the barbarian Turks. When individuals had to chaffer about their pay, discontent began; when the Captain would not satisfy the claims of the enlisted mercenary, the malcontent threw his musket angrily at the feet of the former, and went off with the money for his travelling-expenses, there was no means of detaining him. Though the Ensign was bound by oath, the Captain only too frequently found advantage in favouring plunder and the nightly desertion of the banner, for he had his share of the soldier's booty; the worst thieves were the best bees.
The paymasters were always deeply hated, because they generally gave the regiments short pay and bad coin; they and other commissaries of the sovereign were exposed to much insult when they came to the camp. The worst things are related of the Commanders-in-chief, above all, that they received more pay than they distributed to the soldiers; still worse were the Generals. Frequently open mutiny broke out, and then the mutineers placed a Colonel or Captain in the middle of them, and chose him for their leader. The same thing took place in Hungary. Indeed it happened, during the armistice preceding the Westphalian peace, that in a Bavarian dragoon regiment, a corporal of the garrison of Hilperstein nominated himself Colonel of the regiment, and by the help of his comrades drove away the officers; the regiment was surrounded by loyal soldiers, the new Colonel with eighteen of the ringleaders were executed, the muskets were taken from the regiment, it was resworn and formed anew as a cavalry regiment. The arrears of pay were the usual cause of mutiny. In the year 1620, the regiment of Count Mansfeld mutinied. He began to pay, but meanwhile leaving his tent, struck down two of the soldiers with his own hands, severely wounding them; he then mounted his horse, sprang into the midst of the mutineers, and shot many of them. He alone with three captains subdued the insolence of six hundred men, after having slain eleven, and severely wounded six-and-twenty. If it was difficult to secure obedience to military commands whilst the banner was waving, still greater was the burst of resentment when it was furled and the regiment was disbanded. Then the provost, the prostitutes, and the soldiers' sons hid themselves; the Captain, Lieutenant, and other commanders were obliged to submit to abusive language and challenges, and to hear themselves thus accosted: "Ha, you fellow, you have been my commander, now you are not a jot better than I; a pound of your hair is of no more importance to me than a pound of cotton; out with you, let's have a scuffle!" Whenever punishment was administered, the commanders were in danger from the revenge of the culprit or his friends. The disbanded soldiers quarrelled amongst each other, as they did with their officers, and sometimes there were as many as a hundred parties in one place engaged in duelling. The most wanton death-blows were dealt, and murders perpetrated, such as have never been heard of since the beginning of Christianity. When the banner was unfurled, it was customary for the combatants to join hands and vow to fight out their quarrel when their term of service was ended, and till then to live together in brotherly love. When this disbanding took place, the most disorderly of the soldiers combined together and began an "armour cleaning" of those comrades to whom, during service, the officers had shown favour; that is to say, they robbed them of all, deprived them of their clothes, beat and almost killed them. All these crimes were tolerated, and the powerless commander-in-chief looked passively on these proceedings as a mere custom of war.
During the Hungarian campaigns the soldiers adopted the habit of only remaining by their banners during the summer months; they found their reckoning in serving a short time, and mutinying if more was desired of them; for during the autumn and winter they went with two, three, or more boys as "Gartbrüder"[[10]] through the country, a fearful plague to the farmers in eastern Germany. In the frontier countries, Silesia, Austria, Bohemia, and Styria, it was even commanded by the sovereigns to pay a farthing to every soldier who was roving about as "Gartbrüder." Thus by their refractory conduct they daily obtained a gulden or more; their boys pilfered where they could, and were notorious poachers. Wallhausen, whilst making other energetic complaints, reckons that the support of a standing army would cost less to the princes and states, and secure greater success against the enemy, than this old bad system.
More than once during the long war, these wild armies were brought under the constraint of strict discipline by the powerful will of individuals, and each time great military successes were obtained; but this was not of any duration. The discipline of the Wallenstein army was excellent in a military point of view; but what the commander permitted with regard to citizens and peasants was horrible. Even Gustavus Adolphus could not preserve for more than a year, the strict discipline which on his landing in Pomerania was so triumphantly lauded by the Protestant ecclesiastics. It is true that the military law and articles of war contained a number of legal rules for all soldiers, concerning the forbearance to be observed even in an enemy's land towards the people and their property. The women, invalids, and aged were under all circumstances to be spared, and mills and ploughs were not to be injured. But it is not by the laws themselves, but by the administration of them, that we can judge of the peculiar characteristics of a period.
The punishments were in themselves severe. With the Swedes,--for the embezzlement of money intended for the hospitals or invalid soldiers, the wooden horse with its iron fittings was awarded, or running the gauntlet (for this hardy fellows were hired to take upon them the punishment), or loss of the hand, shooting, or hanging. For whole divisions,--the loss of their banners, cleaning the camp and lying outside it, and decimation. In the beginning of the war many of the old Landsknecht customs were maintained, for instance, their criminal court of justice, in which the law was decided by the people through select jurymen. And before the war, together with this, court-martials had been introduced. During the war a military tribunal was organized according to the modern German method, under the presidency of the advocate-general, and the provost-marshal superintended the execution. But even in punishments there was a difference between the army and the citizens and peasants. The soldier was put in irons, but not in the stocks or in prison; no soldier was ever hanged on a common gallows, or in a common place of execution, but on a tree or on a special gallows, which was erected in the city for the soldiers in the market-place; the old form by which the delinquent was given over to the hangman was thus expressed: "He shall take him to a green tree and tie him up by the neck, so that the wind may blow under and over him, and the sun shine on him for three days; then shall he be cut down and buried according to the custom of war." But the perjured deserter was hanged to a withered tree. Whoever was sentenced to death by the sword, was taken by the executioner to a public place, where he was cut in two, the body being the largest and the head the smallest portion. The provost and his assistant also were in nowise dishonoured by their office; even the avoided executioner's assistant, the "Klauditchen" of the army, who was generally taken from among the convicts, and who was allowed to choose between punishment and this dishonourable office, could, if he fulfilled his office faithfully, become respectable when the banner was unfurled; he could then receive his certificate like any other gallant soldier, and no one could speak evil of him.
There was one circumstance which distinguished the armies of the Thirty years' war from those of modern days, and which made their entrance into a province like an eruption of a heterogeneous race of strangers: each soldier, in spite of his short term of service in the field, was accompanied by his household. Not only the higher officers, but also the troopers and foot-soldiers, took their wives, and still more frequently their mistresses with them in a campaign. Women from all countries, adorned to the utmost of their power, followed the army, and sought entrance into the camp, because they had a husband, friend, or cousin there. At the mustering or disbanding of a regiment, even respectable maidens were, through the most cruel artifices, carried off by disorderly bands, and when the money was all spent, left sometimes without clothes, or at some carousal sold from one to another. The women who accompanied the soldiers cooked and washed for them, nursed the sick, provided them with drink, bore their blows, and on the march carried the children and any of the plunder or household implements which could not be conveyed by the baggage waggons. It is known that the King of Sweden on his first arrival in Germany would not suffer any such women in the camp; but after his return from Franconia, this strict discipline seems to have ceased. Whoever peruses the old church records of the village parishes will find sometimes the names of maidens, who, having been carried off, returned at the end of a year to their village home, and submitted themselves to the severest Church penances in order to die amongst the ruined population of their birthplace. The women of the camp were also under martial law. For great offences they were flogged, and driven out of the camp; the soldiers too were hard masters, and little of what had been promised them in the beginning was kept.