We have referred to Frederick and his school rather to show the interest he felt in military education, than because his institution was very important. Military education was still very imperfect, and it completely languished in Prussia till Scharnhorst established it on its present footing.
Scharnhorst was himself an Hanoverian, but entered the Prussian service, and had seen by experience the defects of their system in the campaigns of 1792, 1793, and 1805. He had long devoted especial attention to military education and to all the scientific part of his profession. Along with Blucher and Gneisenau, he was considered one of the first generals of the army, and, on the exhaustion of Prussia after Jena, he was selected to remodel its whole system. He did not live to complete his work, having been killed early in 1812; but his statue near the bridge at Berlin, remarkable for its noble and thoughtful expression, records the gratitude of Prussia to its greatest scientific soldier.
“The perfection of the French military organization,” says Mr. Alison, appeared to him in painful contrast beside the numerous defects of that over which he presided. * * * * Boldly applying to the military department the admirable principles by which Stein had secured the affections of the burgher classes, he threw open to the whole of the citizens the higher grades of the army, from which they had been hitherto excluded. * * * * And every department of the public service underwent his searching eye.”
[The work began with the commission of 1807], of which both Stein and Scharnhorst were members. And the regulation of 1808 laid down the principle broadly, that the only claim to an officer’s commission must be, “in time of peace, knowledge and education; in war, courage and conduct.”
On these principles, during the next three years, Scharnhorst laid the foundations of the present education. He abolished most of the existing juvenile schools, with the exception only of the Cadet Houses, intended almost solely for the sons of officers. He changed the previous war school into a sort of school d’Elite, consisting of a senior and junior department, in which the younger soldiers of all arms were to be imbued with such knowledge as might give them a scientific interest in their profession, and in which senior officers (also of all arms) were to have a higher course of a similar nature, success in which was to form a recommendation for employment on the staff. He began the plan of the division schools, where all candidates for commissions, but not yet officers, might conduct their military studies along with the practice of their profession. Its idea was to make some military study necessary, and successful study honorable, in the army. Finally, he began the present system of careful examination on entering the army.
[The following historical notice] of the origin and successive changes of the division schools is taken from a communication by Col. Von Holleben, and a member of the General Inspection of Military Instruction to the English Commission.
The cabinet order of the 6th of August, 1808, laid the foundation of the present system of military education. It regulates the appointment of Swordknot ensigns and the selection of officers, and declares that the only title to an officer’s commission in time of peace shall be professional knowledge and education, and in time of war distinguished valor and ability.
The cabinet order of the 6th of August, 1808, could only come gradually into operation; the system of military examinations had to be created, and the educational institutions had to receive a new organization, under the superintendence of a general officer. Four provincial boards of examination were successively established, and on the 1st December, 1809, a body of instructions, still very vague and general, was issued for their guidance.
A cabinet order of the 3rd of May, 1810, remodeled the military schools, directing, in addition to the cadet schools at Berlin and Stolpe, the formation of three military schools for Swordknot ensigns, (Portepée-Fähnriche,) one at Berlin for the marches (Die Marken,) and Pomerania, a second at Königsberg, for east and west Prussia, and a third at Breslau, for Silesia; and the formation of a military school at Berlin for officers. All these institutions were placed under the general superintendence of Lieutenant-General Von Diericke, who had also the special superintendence of the boards of examination. A board of military studies was created and intrusted, under his control, with the task of carrying the regulations into effect.
Before, however, the new institutions attained to any stability the war years of 1813-14-15 intervened, and the operations of the board of examinations ceased.