Prussian Army Soldiers and the Seven Years’ War: The Psychology of Honour

Abstract

In his picaresque novel, The Luck of Barry Lyndon, William Thackeray depicted a Prussian army in the Seven Years War whose soldiers were lashed into subordination. This popular image of the ferocious discipline of Old Regime armies is deeply ingrained and its roots stretch back to the eighteenth century itself. It found expression in the writing of American and French revolutionaries who contrasted the valour of citizen-soldiers fighting in defence of their nation and home with the wretched conscripts and mercenaries commanded by their monarchical opponents. A number of recent works have, however, challenged the view that the soldiers of eighteenth-century armies were brutalized automatons herded into combat by officers who wielded fearful disciplinary powers. Ilya Berkovich, in particular, has pointed to the positive reasons that underpinned combat motivation and performance among Old Regime soldiers. Honour was chief amongst these motivations and it plays a central role in this volume on the Prussian Army during the Seven Years War. Based on a range of soldiers’ autobiographical writings, the authors argue that, far from being unfeeling automatons, Prussian soldiers drew on a complex range of coping mechanisms to manage their experience of battle. Honour (individual and regimental) and religiosity were key to mastering fear and performing in combat. Kantonisten, those recruited from the Kanton assigned to each regiment, made up between 50 and 70 per cent of the Prussian Army and the authors suggest that they were members of ‘two communities of honour’—the village and the regiment. There was, thus, a reciprocal relationship between the soldiers’ military and civilian social standing. Cowardice in battle diminished a soldier’s status not only amongst his military peers, but also within his community.