ted
chivalry in the old feudalism, the troops of Landsknechte in the rise
of civic power, and the companies of roving mercenaries in the increase
of royal territorial dominion; these were succeeded in despotic states,
in the eighteenth century, by the standing army with uniform and pay.

But none of the older forms of military service were entirely displaced
by those of later times, at least some reminiscences of them are
everywhere kept. The ancient landfolge (attendants on military
expeditions) of the free landowner had ceased since the greater portion
of the powerful peasantry had sunk into bondsmen, and the strong
landwehr had become a general levy, of little warlike capacity; but
they had not been entirely set aside, for still in the eighteenth
century all freeholders were bound at the sound of the alarum to hasten
together, and to furnish baggage, horses, and men to work at the
fortifications. In the same way the knights of the Hohenstaufen were
dispersed by the army of free peasants and citizens, at Sempach,
Grunson, Murten, and the lowlands of Ditmarsch, but the furnishing of
cavalry horses remained as a burden upon the properties of the
nobility; it was after the end of the sixteenth century--in Prussia,
first under Frederic William I.--that it was changed into a low
money-tax, and this tax was the only impost on the feudal property of
nobles.[1] The roving Landsknecht also, who provided his own equipments
and changed his banner every summer, was turned into a mounted
mercenary with an unsettled term of service; but in the new time the
customs of free enlistment, earnest money, and entering into foreign
service, were still maintained, although these customs of the
Landsknecht time were in strange and irreconcilable contrast to the
fearful severity with which the new rule of a despotic state grasped
the whole life of the recruit.

The defects of the standing army in the eighteenth century have been
often criticised, and every one knows something of the rigorous
discipline in the companies with which the Dessauer stormed the
defences of Turin, and Frederic II. maintained possession of Silesia.
But another part of the old military constitution is not equally known,
and has been entirely lost sight of even by military writers. It shall
therefore be introduced here.

The regiments which the sovereigns of the eighteenth century led to
battle, or leased to foreign potentates, were not the only armed
organisation o