The Prussian Army under Frederick William I (1713 - 40) - Chapter 10 - The military replacement system - the canton system

The replenishment of the Prussian army took place—as already evident from the previous chapter on recruitment—by voluntary recruitment at home and abroad and by the levying of local conscripts, the latter method initially developing in practice over the years and only later being formally recognized by the king. Foreign recruitment, however, had always been only an auxiliary means in the earlier history of the Prussian army; primarily the army was supplemented by recruiting locals. Under the Great Elector the army was not a people's army, “but an army of professional soldiers, who were not levied but recruited, though mostly local lads”¹. The Great Elector was aware that the service of locals within the framework of a national armament was the better and above all the cheaper form of army replenishment than the recruitment of foreign mercenaries. Efforts to reorganize the feudal and provincial levy of the nobility and estates failed due to the regular resistance of those affected. Although the Great Elector repeatedly called the people to arms, the result was unsatisfactory because of the estates’ and population’s lack of commitment to compulsory service. The provincial levy was used only in the war against Sweden (1674/75), but without support from regular troops it had no effect. The provincial levy was also called to arms during the Swedish invasion of East Prussia. Frederick III, later I, did not initially change the replacement mode, but attempted to place a territorial militia alongside the standing army. The so‑called territorial militia was introduced in 1701 on the Schatull estates, in 1703 in the Amt villages, and in 1705 (07.05.) in the towns. The knightly estates were not touched by this, since the nobility successfully invoked their feudal obligations. Those enrolled in the territorial militia were exempt from quartering, marching duties, running messages, participation in wolf hunts and similar corvée services and public burdens, and were not allowed to be recruited by the regiments. Only young, strong unmarried men were enrolled, though also married men without property and sustenance. The term of service lasted 5–6 years. The territorial militia was intended to create a reserve army and was based on the still valid conscription duty of the subjects. In wartime the standing army was to be relieved from service in the country by the territorial militia; however, the militia soldiers received only poor training, so their military value was rather low. Before the introduction of the territorial militia voluntary recruitment was supplemented by internal levies, whereby voluntariness was increasingly suppressed during the long war periods under Frederick III/I. From 1688 recruits for the standing army were to be provided by the provinces and estates, and from 1691 recruitment was again carried out by the regiments. Both methods of replenishment had disadvantages: recruits provided by the provinces and districts often were of poor quality, with the lower social strata overrepresented. Recruitment by the regiments often paid little heed to the personal circumstances of those levied; violence and arbitrariness unsettled the population and harmed the economy. The “Interim regulation and constitution, as it shall be observed with the recruitment of the regiments both mounted and foot” of 1693 (20.11.) finally standardized replenishment on the basis of a territorial system. From then on the regiments reported their need for replacement men to the state administration, which distributed the requirement among the various provinces and districts that were assigned to the regiments as fixed recruitment districts. The recruits had to be provided by the provinces and districts at a specified time, otherwise the regiments could complete themselves.

Frederick William I systematically expanded the army numerically, which resulted in an enormous demand for recruits. The king pursued the ideal of an army composed solely of local lads and was at first undeterred in this aim by criticism from military figures. Thus Field Marshal Count von Wartensleben presented to the king in the first weeks after his accession the idea that he wanted an army of 60,000 men made up entirely of local lads². To fill the existing gaps in the regiments and to promote the desired expansion of the army, the king initially unilaterally annulled all concluded capitulations; thus, for example, an order of 15.03.1713 to the commander of D III (Colonel von Bornstedt) states: “that those who once were recruited shall serve as long until His Royal Majesty shall graciously decide to release them from their service, and also that all capitulations which any one of the common soldiery may presently have with his captain shall from now on be cashiered and annulled. Therefore you shall make this, Your Most Gracious Determination, known to Colonel von Bornstedt, as commander of his subordinate regiment of dragoons, hereby in grace by most gracious command, to inform the captains of said regiment likewise and to insist that the same be observed with all due submissive obedience and that no soldier under pretence of having a capitulation be dismissed”³.

Subsequently the Prussian army consisted of both nationals and foreigners. The nationals were levied within the framework of the canton system in the military replacement districts assigned to the individual regiments. The canton system developed under Frederick William I over many years, although its underlying territorial system had its first form already under Frederick I, when in 1708 he assigned each troop a specific district and the units thereafter had to be supplemented from these. Under Frederick William I recruitment initially took place by recruiting at home and abroad, but domestic recruiting often had the character of forced conscription of native recruits. Due to numerous abuses by the military there were flight movements of the population. On 17.10.1713 an “Edict that subjects and young men should not leave the country for fear of recruitment” reacted to this⁴. Accordingly, subjects who had left the country for fear of forced recruitment were to be “regarded and held forthwith as actual deserters from the militia, arrested where possible, and punished in body and life as deserters from the said militia.” Punitive provisions followed also for parents and authorities who allowed the flight. Since appealing to the “natural duty owed to the King and Lord of the Land” and corresponding threats of punishment apparently had little effect, a royal ordre of 03.04.1714 abolished domestic recruitment⁵. From then on all recruitments were to “cease entirely in Your lands, and none other than those who voluntarily and without coercion present themselves for military service shall be accepted by Your regiments and battalions...” Officers who secretly or even openly continued domestic recruitment and thereby obtained recruits by force now faced immediate cashiering. However, on 22.01.1716 domestic recruitment was again approved. The regiments were to submit lists of their recruit needs to the commissariats in the districts and towns and agree on the proportional provision of the required recruits, whereby it was expressly emphasized that “they shall be altogether good and fit men for war service, whom His Royal Majesty, when He inspects them, shall not have cause to reject...”⁶.

Given the strong increase in the army and the heightened demands on recruit quality, exclusive foreign recruitment proved insufficient and, moreover, too costly; therefore the regiments were forced to recruit again at home. Around 1720 they began to record fit young men in lists (to enroll) in the vicinity of their peacetime garrisons to ensure them when they reached military age and sufficient physical fitness⁷. This, however, led to numerous jurisdictional disputes between the different regiments, and the military took little account of private and public concerns during the enrollments. Already in the 1726 regulation the practice of enrollment used before 1713 for the territorial militia and now transferred to the standing army was recognized: “Since the regiments enroll the young able-bodied men: under no pretext shall violent recruitment be enacted: whereof the commanders of the regiments shall be held responsible. The regiments may enroll the young men according to their preference, but the captain shall not send an enrolled young lad to the colours before he has been to the Holy Communion, so that the oath is not profaned” (Infantry Regulation of 1726, p. 550).

Because of irregularities in practice, this form of army replacement required comprehensive regulation. This was effected by royal orders of 01.05., 18.05. and 15.09.1733, which officially introduced the canton system. Each regiment was now assigned a fixed levying district, called cantons. The cantons were divided into ten or five equal parts and contained on average about 5,000 hearths for the infantry and about 1,800 for the cavalry. In practice, however, canton sizes varied depending on population density. Artillery was also assigned its own cantons. In the Rhineland-Westphalian possessions the canton obligation was transferred by order of 30.10.1735.

The canton system was based on the idea of conscription, yet from the beginning a number of exemptions breached this principle. Early on, for economic reasons entire occupations—such as wool workers, carpenters and journeymen (who intended to go to Prussia and Lithuania), manufactory workers, etc.—were exempted. For corporative‑political reasons certain social groups were also excluded from the canton obligation; in particular the nobility and the bourgeois strata essential for trade and crafts in the towns were exempt. With a view to population growth, colonists and incoming foreigners were protected from service in the army, and entire towns and provinces were privileged by exemption out of consideration for the local population or for economic motives. Ultimately, therefore, the duty to serve rested on the shoulders of the lower social strata.

In the recruitment districts assigned to the regiments the young male population was entered in lists and, when needed and considering physical fitness, called up. Until actual enlistment in ranks the enrolled wore red neckbands and hat plumes in the colors of the responsible regiment, to which they were obliged. The cantonists were now no longer subject to civilian but to military jurisdiction; later this was limited to those cantonists actually enlisted. However, the practically unrestricted authority of company commanders over the enrolled in the cantons opened numerous possibilities for arbitrariness and abuse. Relief was only to be achieved by the change in the enrollment and levying procedure in the years after 1763.

Frederick William I, however, found himself in the tension between the demands of the military and the economic needs of the state. The canton system represented a serious intrusion into the rights of the nobility, since for the first time it deprived a large portion of estate subjects of the lord’s control and created a direct link between the king and the subjects; this promoted the legal unity of the subjects and permanently changed the social structure of the state. Above all for this reason the estates vehemently opposed the canton system even in 1740. In the literature the militarization of society caused by the canton system is especially criticized. However, Heinrich already counts this theory “among the legends that have been continued to this day” (History of Prussia. State and Dynasty. Propyläen, Frankfurt et al. 1981, p. 233).

In this context it was assumed that the class of estate owners and the officer corps were identical in personnel, i.e. that lordship was basically the school for military service or that in the regiment or company the relationship between estate owner and serf was continued in the relationship between officer and private, and not only in principle but in practice as well. This appealing thesis long shaped the historical view of the old Prussian state, but it proved on historical scrutiny to be too one‑dimensional or an inadmissible generalization.

Against the basic assumption of a coincidence of interests between estate owners and officers already speaks the estates’ criticism of the canton system (see especially Götz von Selle, Zur Kritik Friedrich Wilhelms I., in: Forschungen zur Brandenburgischen und Preußischen Geschichte, 1926, p. 56 ff.). Hans Bleckwenn vehemently contradicted Otto Büsch’s original thesis. Recent research likewise could “find no functional connection between lordship and the canton system” (Harnisch). This applies both to the provinces east of the Elbe and to the western territories (Kloosterhuis). This condition apparently solidified during the 18th century. For the turn of the 18th to the 19th century it is reported, for example for the province of Silesia, that “military service ... increasingly became hereditary from generation to generation in certain unendowed military families (reduced)” (Eichendorff, cited in Ziekursch, 100 Years of Silesian Agrarian History, 1915, p. 43). Martiny (The Nobility Question in Prussia before 1806, Halle/Saale 1938, p. 65 ff.) notes an overcrowding of public offices by the nobility around 1800 for the example of the Mark Brandenburg nobility, but at the same time points out that officers on average served only up to lieutenant or cavalry captain and captain and supposes propertyless impoverished nobles above all in the officer corps.

Overall, the canton system represented a compromise between the interests of the military and the needs of the state and the economy. A consequence of this compromise were the steadily growing exemptions. These reduced the recruitment base and diluted the basic idea of universal conscription. It is indisputable that the canton obligation therefore rested predominantly on the shoulders of the lower strata of society. However, the numerical demand was not very large except in wartime and the burden was greatly mitigated by extensive leaves of absence. Ultimately the canton system produced a closer connection between the people and the standing army. By providing a better and cheaper form of replacement procurement it allowed the relatively poor Prussian state to maintain a population‑heavy army. The combination of levying locals within the canton constitution and recruiting foreigners by voluntary obligation upon acceptance of an enlistment bounty at a public drumbeat furthermore created the heterogeneous structure of the army and gave it a distinctive character through a mixture of elements of militia and professional soldiering. Frederick the Great adopted this form of army replenishment and introduced the canton system in Silesia in 1742 and in West Prussia in 1772. After 1786 the canton system was finally regulated by the regulation of 12.02.1792 and remained in this form the essential element of army replenishment until the army’s downfall in 1806/07. As a modified form of universal conscription it proved, unlike the recruitment of foreigners, to be the only viable model for the future.

Bleckwenn, Hans, Bauernfreiheit durch Wehrpflicht - ein neues Bild der altpreußischen Armee, in: Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (ed.), Frederick the Great and the Military of His Time, Herford - Bonn 1987.

Büsch, Otto, Military System and Social Life in Old Prussia 1713-1807. The Beginnings of the Social Militarization of Prussian‑German Society, Berlin 1980.

Göse, Frank, Between Garrison and Manor. In: Pröve, Ralf (ed.), Klio in Uniform? Military and Society in the Early Modern Period, Cologne 1997.

Harnisch, Hartmut, Prussian Canton System and Rural Society. The Example of the Middle Chamber Departments, in: Kroener, Bernhard/ Pröve, Ralf (eds.), War and Peace. Military and Society in the Early Modern Period, Paderborn et al., 1996.

Jany, Curt, History of the Prussian Army from the 15th Century to 1914, Vols. I - IV., Osnabrück 1967.

Kloosterhuis, Jürgen, Between Uprising and Acceptance. On the Formation and Integration of the Canton System into the Economic and Social Structures of Prussian Westphalia, in: Kroener, Bernhard/ Pröve, Ralf (eds.), War and Peace. Military and Society in the Early Modern Period, Paderborn et al., 1996.

Winter, Martin, Subject Spirit through Military Duty? The Prussian Canton System in Brandenburg Towns in the 18th Century, Bielefeld 2005.