in the first ranks were
pikes, in the second and third muskets; for the horsemen, pistols,
sabres, and pikes. The men were put into ranks, exercised, and equipped
in what was necessary in the principal town of the circle. In the great
haste it sometimes happened that battalions were ordered to the army
which as yet had no weapons and no shoes; the people went barefooted
and with poles to the Elbe, resembling in appearance a band of robbers
more than regular soldiery, but with cheerful alacrity, singing and
giving vent to hurrahs which they had learned from the Cossacks. For
some weeks the troops of the line, especially the old officers, looked
contemptuously on this newly-established force, none with more wrath
than the strict York. When the worthy Colonel Putlitz, at Berlin,
begged for a Landwehr command,--he who had already fought valiantly in
the French campaign, and in the year 1807 had collected a corps of
sharpshooters in the Silesian mountains,--the staff officers asked him
ironically, whether he thought of fighting with such hordes. After the
war the valiant general declaimed, that the time during which he had
commanded the Landwehr was the happiest of his life. In no part of the
new organisation of the army did the power of the great year, and the
capacity of the people, shine so brilliantly as in this. These peasant
lads and awkward ploughboys became in a few weeks trustworthy and
valiant soldiers. It is true that they had a disproportionate loss of
men, and in their first encounter with the enemy did not always keep a
firm front, and showed the rapid alternations of cowardice and courage
which are peculiar to young troops; but called together from the plough
and the workshop, badly clothed, badly armed, and little drilled as
they were, they had in the very beginning to go through all the severe
fieldwork of veteran troops. That they were in general capable of doing
it, that some battalions already fought so bravely that even their
opponent (York) saluted them by taking off his hat, is as well known as
it is rare in military history. Soon they could not be distinguished
from troops of the line; it was between them an emulation of valour.

Justly do the sons of that time boast of the men of the Landwehr who
readily answered to the call; but not less was the zeal with which the
people at home laboured after the command was given for the war. People
of every calling, every citizen, the smallest places, the moat di