The Beginnings of the Standing Army in Prussia

Abstract

N o factor has been more fateful, both for good and evil, in the history of modern Germany, than the Prussian Its development runs parallel, step by step, with the development of the Prussian state, of which it is both a cause and a result. In its history there are two decisive epochs. The first is the establishment and maintenance by the Great Elector of a miles perpetuus, or standing army. This was a permanent, active field army kept on foot in time of peace as well as war, and was composed of well-disciplined and well-trained professional, paid soldiers in the direct service and control of the sovereign. Being an army of paid professionals, as distinct from a civilian militia, it was necessarily limited in numbers by the revenues available for its support, and was in fact relatively small in comparison with the total population-a great contrast to modern armies based on the principle of universal military service. It may be compared in many respects with the English army of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or with the regular army of the United States. It was the outgrowth of the danger threatening Prussia from the aggressive plans of Charles Gustavus of Sweden during the first Northern War. The second decisive epoch was the great liberalizing and nationalizing reform movement of Stein and Scharnhorst at the opening of the nineteenth century, which resulted in the establishment of a national Prussian army based on the principle of universal military service. It was the outgrowth of Napoleon's conquest of Prussia and of his boomerang-like decree which attempted to limit the Prussian army to 42,000 men. It needs no discussion here, not only because of the admirable account of it which Professor Ford gave