331 FREDERICK AND WARlow deeds, and resume his father's trade unabashed' (Oeuvres, VI, 95;
see also Pauli, 1758-64, I, 230).
Otto Biisch (1962) indicates that the cantonal system introduced
stultifying military relationships into the countryside, by making
recruitment depend on the landowning aristocracy. Contempor-
aries, however, were much more alert to the opposite process - the
influence on the military ethos of rural life, which brought with it the
habit of command, a familiarity with the dangers of the hunt, and a
childhood influenced by the tales of past wars (Pauli, 1758-64, I,
228-9; Seidl, 1781, III, 386; Garve, 1798, 159-60; see also p. 11).
As some further justification of Frederick's military-social sys-
tem, we may point out that it was never as exclusive or as rigid as the
one which operated in France in the last years of the ancien rigime.
The documentary basis had been overset when the Heroldsamt had
been abolished in 1713, and Frederick was seldom entirely certain as
to who was, or was not, of noble blood. In Pomerania, for example,
many families availed themselves of the old Polish legal principle
which associated nobility with the simple ownership of land, and
which, in the celebrated case of the village of Czarn-Damerow, made
aristocrats out of all the community save the watchman and the
swineherd. For some pretentious folk (theNominaladel) nobility was
something that was acquired by attention to mannerisms, and a
judiciously timed insertion of the 'von' before the surname. Others,
more deserving, were awarded patents of nobility for valiant service
in the field. The former peasant Koordshagen, who became a captain
of hussars and a noble, was sitting at the royal table when Frederick
asked him from which aristocratic house he sprang. Koordshagen
replied: 'I come from no such line, Your Majesty. My parents are
simple country folk, and I wouldn't change them for any others in the
world!' Frederick was genuinely moved, and he exclaimed: 'That was
well said!' (Hildebrandt, 1829-35, IV, 124).
Altogether, the privileges of Frederick's nobility had their roots
in function rather than caste. The king would have rejected any
suggestion that the holder of a military commission had a right to
carry his authority into areas of civilian life (which establishes an
important distinction between the notions of Old Fritz and the
militarism of Wilhelmine Germany). For some time after the Seven
Years War, a number of the younger officers of the victorious army
got into the habit of swaggering about the provincial towns.
Frederick was determined not to allow this bumptious behaviour in
Berlin, and on the advice of Zieten he appointed the strict and
honourable Lieutenant-General Ramin as governor:
Ramin fulfilled the duties of his office with all the more rigour