The Prussian Army under Frederick William I (1713 - 40) - Chapter 9 - The Military Replacement System - Recruitment.

Numerous abuses are associated with recruitment at home and abroad, and the excesses connected with the intense hunt by Prussian recruiting detachments for tall recruits permanently damaged the image of the Prussian state in the eyes of contemporaries and posterity. However, the use of foreigners for army replacement was a problem for all armies of the 18th century and characteristic of the age of mercenary armies. A contemporary reports: „The recruitments both within and outside the country were under King Frederick William incessantly pursued with the utmost severity. No school was exempt from this, only the universities. As long as the student remained at the university and within its walls, he was considered in a free city. The Dessau infantry regiment was quartered in Halle, and it captured before the gates, in the villages, and sometimes even in the town at night many a student. They hurried with them to Dessau until the clamor and tumult that was sent there subsided among the students. As soon as one left the university, one was safe nowhere; even the candidates, when they traveled to ordination in Magdeburg, Stendal, Berlin, etc., were in danger of being stopped at the gate and taken away. For only the actual preachers were safe from the recruiters, but no candidate iam vocatus, nor any school servant, was safe from the recruiters. Here in Atzendorf a detachment of soldiers occupied the school at night and dragged the organist Franken from his bed and led him to Calbe. But because he had described the officer to be much larger than he actually was, the inspector Theune, who followed him, immediately brought him back from there. The Prussian officers and non-commissioned officers sent abroad for recruitment did no better. Every regiment selected for this purpose the most cunning and deceitful heads. If these could not persuade a big fellow to enlist and take the bounty, they sought by cunning and force to seize him. Nothing was too difficult for them, nothing too dangerous; they risked everything and let it come to what would happen. They broke in, dragged the big fellow from his bed, often bound and gagged him in his nightshirt, put him on a ready wagon and hurried with team horses to reach the border and our provinces“¹. The abuses in domestic and foreign recruitment are also explained by the enormous performance pressure weighing on the responsible officers. The regulations of 1726 spoke clearly on this point: „If the captains recruit handsome men without complaints and acts of violence with good manners, the colonels good regiments, and the captains good companies present men in good order; then they will recommend themselves best to His Royal Majesty; on the contrary those who have bad regiments and companies will recommend themselves in the worst possible manner“.

Foreign replacement business was conclusively regulated for the time of Frederick William I by the “Disposition and Orders, according to which the Royal Prussian infantry regiments from the date of 13 Sept. 1732 are to conduct themselves with regard to recruitment.” Accordingly, violent recruitment abroad was expressly prohibited, but special rules applied in cases of exceptional physical height of the aspirant. The regiments were not allowed to outbid each other within the scope of recruitment. The aforementioned disposition set exact requirements for a good company regarding physical stature and stipulated that “the regiments which are not in a position according to the norm shown below, as His Royal Majesty desires, shall apply all effort and diligence to improve themselves in such a manner in a short time, namely the very poor regiments within 3 years and the half-poor within 2 years”. In case of satisfaction with the condition of the regiments, the king promised promotions, pensions and other favors. Thus the Prussian colonel Johann Anton Franz Baron von Buttlar was on 18 May 1719 made a Knight of the High Order of the Black Eagle also because he repeatedly supplied particularly “tall fellows” from Hesse². Complaints about excessive recruitment costs the king would not accept, but referred to the need for good housekeeping. The increase in enlisted men was to be used to improve the companies. To increase the leave quota and augment the recruitment budget the required strength of the guards was reduced - except in the major garrisons Berlin, Magdeburg and Königsberg - however, the men on leave were not to be granted leave farther than 20 miles from the unit's station. Non-commissioned officers were not to be on leave longer than 12 days, drummers not at all. The drill period was set as the time from 01.04. to 30.06.

for the first time on foreign recruitment to Poland and in particular to Danzig“⁴. On 04.04.1728 the express prohibition was issued “that no men from Poland nor from Saxony shall be engaged by force, much less fetched out of the country“⁵. Frederick the Great, as Crown Prince and regimental chief of Infantry Regiment No. 15 in the years 1732–40, wrote letters to a Prussian recruiting officer stationed in Schaffhausen (Switzerland) (at the time of Ulrich Bräker - 1755 - there were simultaneously five Prussian recruiting officers in Schaffhausen). In the imperial hereditary lands recruitment by Prussian recruiting detachments was partly forbidden; thus on 27.02.1733 the following order was issued to the East Prussian regiments: “I make known to you hereby, that henceforth none of My regiments under My highest displeasure and severe punishment shall presume to recruit any people in the Imperial hereditary lands without having obtained a pass from the Field General Count von Seckendorff; you shall therefore immediately order back any recruiters found there, if you cannot obtain the aforesaid pass“⁶. The recall was repeated on 26.01.1736 and Prussian recruiting detachments were tolerated in Silesia and Bohemia only temporarily. On 01.02.1734 the Crown Prince asked Count von Seckendorff “...to do me the favor to give my ensign von Plöz, whom I want to send to Neapolis for recruitment, a letter of recommendation to the local vice-regent, because I am convinced that in this way he will succeed all the more readily“⁷. Frenchmen were to be recruited only if they measured at least 10 inches (circular order of 05.07.1734)⁸. Overall, in 1732 the king complained that he always found few recruiters abroad despite issuing so many recruiting passes.

Company owners who did not meet their quotas were to go on recruitment themselves; otherwise, recruiters were to be frugal and good stewards. “And if His K. Majesty notices that housekeeping here and there was not properly observed in recruitment, they shall seriously desire that every officer who goes recruiting shall avoid all unnecessary expenses on food and drink, gambling, chambered clothing and similar useless trifles, because an officer does not go recruiting for pleasure, but it is a command matter and belongs to the royal service; thus a subaltern officer on recruitment shall not have more than 10 Rthlr. monthly allowance for his quarters and maintenance, with which he must get by.“ Fixed allowance rates applied to those detached; a subaltern officer received 12 Rthlr. monthly, postage and transport allowances were accounted separately. Non-commissioned officers, who were to be capable men of good conduct, received a monthly allowance: 4 Rthlr. monthly and musketeers 2 Rthlr. 12 Gr. monthly. Violations of official duties during the recruiting detachment and embezzlement of recruitment funds were severely punished. Staff officers were to inquire about the conduct, especially of the subaltern officers; control was demanded. Recruits were only clothed and equipped upon arrival at the regiment.

Recruitment abroad was associated with many difficulties and high risk, especially when recruiting detachments resorted to illegal means. Conflicts occurred repeatedly. When in 1733 Captain von Kamiensky (D III.) was lured by a citizen's tip in Gelnhausen into an inn on Electoral Mainz territory because of a large fellow, the Prussian officer was arrested and only released after intervention by the Berlin cabinet with the addition: “that he now hopefully will pay better attention in future and will not so easily go to an uncertain and unsafe place on mere suggestion“⁹. In the same year, when a young officer of K 4 in Augsburg was detained by the local magistrate due to riots, the king wrote to Friedrich Leopold von Geßler: “You shall order the cornet von Wachholz of your regiment that, after his arrest in Augsburg has been lifted, he shall report in Berlin to Generalmajor von Kalckstein and justify his conduct in Augsburg before the commission assembled there. If, however, he does not present himself there before the end of this month, he shall immediately be cashiered and you shall then propose another in his place“¹⁰. On 06.05.1733 the Crown Prince wrote to his father: “Furthermore I must most humbly report to my most gracious father that Lieutenant Fink of my regiment, who by permission of the Duke of Lorraine is on recruitment there, and as he passed through a Lorraine-French village on his business, without attempting the least thing from the French, was arrested and imprisoned and carried to Metz; I beg my most gracious father most humbly to take him up, for I know for certain that he attempted nothing in France, but rather pursued a recruit who had deserted through the French Lorraine into the German lands to take him by the ears ...“¹¹. The shooting of the Prussian recruiting officer Michael Georg von Wollschläger in 1733 led to a serious conflict with the Netherlands¹². Already in 1728 there had been diplomatic difficulties with Holland due to increasing Prussian recruitment. Frederick William I wrote to General von Heyden (No. 9): “My dear infantry general von Heiden, I wish to make known to you hereby that I again forbid violent recruitment from Dutch territory under cassation of the officers,“

The prohibition of violent recruitment, however, applied only with limitations. There were also recurring conflicts between Prussian regiments. Already the regulation of 1726 (p. 551) stated: “His Royal Majesty has come to learn that the officers sent out to recruit in foreign countries make recruitment difficult for themselves, in that one regiment outbids another for men, and a fellow sometimes stands in capitulation with officers of different regiments; wherefore His Royal Majesty seriously forbids this, and at the same time commands that as soon as a fellow has been spoken to by an officer of one regiment no officer of another regiment shall presume to engage him and to make him estranged; unless the first officer has entirely given up on such a fellow and cannot obtain him.“ Despite this regulation, corresponding disputes occurred again and again, so great was the performance pressure on company owners and ultimately on the recruiting officers. On 19.09.1728 Frederick William I ordered the regimental chief of D III.: “My dear Major General von Schulenburg. As I learn that a recruit of Thiel's regiment, named Motte, whom the non-commissioned officer intended to bring to his said regiment, was taken by force by four grenadiers of your regiment, I order you to extradite the mentioned fellow immediately to Thiel's regiment. I am etc.“¹³.