Prussia--Character and importance of the movement of
1813--Napoleon's flight--Expedition of the French to Russia in
1812, and return in 1813--The Cossacks--The people rise--General
enthusiasm--The volunteer Jaegers and patriotic gifts--The Landwehr
and the Landsturm--The first combat--Impression of the war on the
citizens--The enemy in the city--The course of the war--The celebration
of victory

CHAPTER XII.

Illness and Recovery (1815-1848).--The time of reaction--Hopelessness
of the German question--Discontent and exhaustion of the
Prussians--Weakness of the educated classes in the north of
Germany--The development of practical activity--The South Germans and
their village tales--Description of a Village School by Karl Mathy

CONCLUSION.--The Hohenzollerns and the German citizens

PICTURES OF GERMAN LIFE.

Second Series.

CHAPTER VII.

AWAY FROM THE GARRISON.
(1700.)

A shot from the alarm-gun! Timidly does the citizen examine the dark
corners of his house to discover whether any strange man be hid there.
The peasant in the field stops his horses to consider whether he would
wish to meet with any fugitive, and earn capture-money, or whether he
should save some desperate man, in spite of the severe punishment with
which every one was threatened who enabled a deserter to escape.
Probably he will let the fugitive run away, though in his power, for in
his secret soul he has a fellow feeling for him, nay, even admires his
daring.

There is scarcely any sphere of earthly interest which stamps so
sharply the peculiarities of the culture of the time, as the army and
the method of carrying on war. In every century the army corresponds
exactly with the constitution and character of the state. The
Franconian landwehr of Charles the Great, who advanced on foot from
their _Maifeld_ to Saxony, the army of the noble cuirassiers who rode
under the Emperor Barbarossa into the plains of Lombardy, the Swiss
and Landsknechte of the time of the Reformation, and the mercenary
armies of the Thirty Years' War, were all highly characteristic of the
culture of their time; they sprang from the social condition of the
people, and changed with it. Thus did the oldest infantry of the
proprietors take root in the old provincial constitution, the moun