Impact of Political and Industrial Revolutions 219
of 1813–14, when a hastily raised army, in which civilians in uniform
far outnumbered regular soldiers, participated in notable Allied vic
tories over the French.^63 But sentiment was not alone in sustaining the
ideal of a people in arms. The budgetary weakness of the postwar
Prussian state made it impossible to maintain a long-term service army
of a size to match what the Austrians, Russians, and French were able
to support. To count as a great power, even in potentia, the Prussians
had to rely on reserves, the Landwehr. This army of civilians had been
called suddenly into existence in 1813 to fight against Napoleon. Sub
sequently, in peacetime, it was replenished by assigning to it men who
had completed a three-year term of duty with the army. Reserve
officers came to be recruited from among students at the universities
who, by volunteering for a year’s active service in the regular army,
qualified as Landwehr lieutenants.
Even in its most reactionary moments, therefore, the Prussian army
managed to preserve into peacetime some of the revolutionary traits
that had surged to the fore in 1813–14. Although a strongly aris
tocratic bias again became dominant among the Prussian officers after
1819, a heightened professional competence, especially among staff
officers, and residual reliance on a civilian reserve remained as heri
tages from the age of reform when, for a while, partnership of king
and people had become a reality and the might of the Prussian state
had again ranked with that of the greatest powers of Europe, as in the
glorious days of Frederick the Great.^64
In other European armies, return to the principles of the Old Re
gime was much more thorough. Long-service professional troops were
everywhere preferred. France, Austria, and Russia kept armies of sev
eral hundred thousand men under arms in regular garrison duty. Edu
cation and learning were not in favor in these armies. Staff work was
held in comparatively low esteem. Technical branches—artillery and
engineers—continued to require a modicum of intellectual compe
tence, but retrenchment after the extraordinary military expenditures
- The Prussian army had been limited to 42,000 men by Napoleon’s fiat in 1808. In
1814 its field strength was 358,000 men with an additional 30,000 or so in the rear to
perform various service and supporting roles. Figures from Jany, Geschichte der Konig
lich Preussischen Armee, 4:114.
- The era of Prussian reform was long a favorite field for German patriots. The little
essay by Friedrich Meinecke, The Age of German Liberation, 1795–1815 (Berkeley and
Los Angeles, 1977; originally published 1906) is an elegant summary of mainstream
opinion. On military matters, in addition to Gordon Craig’s magistral book, already
referred to, William Shanahan, Prussian Military Reforms, 1786–1813 (New York,
- and Peter Paret, Yorck and the Era of Prussian Reform, 1807–1815 (Princeton,
1966), which corrects Shanahan on some minor details, are especially informative.
