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of exaggerating the brutality under which he lived, but there are other eyewitness accounts, such as John Moore, author of the novel "Mordaunt" (p 11), who remarked that the Prussian soldiers were worse treated than Negro slaves in America, and James Boswell, who witnessed "running the gauntlet" in 1764 (p 80), and says in so many words that it made him sick.
While stationed in Berlin, desertion was in any case next door to impossible; surveillance was strict and the peasants of the surrounding countryside would receive a cash bounty for capturing a deserter. On campaign the conditions of service were somewhat different. Camps were closely guarded, not so much to defend the soldiers from the enemy but to prevent them from escaping, but all the same some hoped to profit from chance while on the march, as "Brother Bachmann" did. But the soldiers were also better fed, they had two pounds of bread and two pounds of meat a day free, and could supplement this by buying from the sutlers who followed the army, or, as Bräker makes clear, by extortion from the local peasants. In the 18th century it was by no means unknown for soldiers to plunder even in their own countries. In fact the arrival of soldiers on the march was generally bad news - as Bräker was to discover when, still wearing the Prussian uniform, he reached home and his brothers and sisters ran from him screaming.
**********************************************************************************************************************47. And so the dance begins:
In the second week I had to present myself every day at the drill-ground, where I unexpectedly encountered three of my fellow-countrymen, Schärer, Bachmann and Gästli, who like myself were all enrolled in the Itzenblitz regiment, and the two first-named were in the same company as myself, that of Lüderitz. There I had nothing to do but learn to march, under a surly crooknosed corporal by the name of Mengke. I could not for the life of me stand this fellow; when he went so far as to strike me on the feet, the blood rushed to my head. In his hands I would never in all my days have learnt anything. One day Hevel observed this, as he was drilling his men on the same ground, he exchanged me for another man and took me into his own platoon. This made my heart rejoice. Now I understood more in an hour's time than in ten days before. From this good man I soon learned also where Markoni dwelt, but he asked me for God's sake not to betray him.
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After a little searching I found out the house. It was indeed one of the smallest in all Berlin. I knocked, a little, lean boy with fox-red hair opened the door to me, and led me upstairs to my master's room. As soon as he saw me he came to me and pressed my hand, and addressed me with his face so full of innocent affection that in the twinkling of an eye all my wrath was disarmed and tears rose to my eyes. "Ollrich, my dear Ollrich! Do not reproach me. You are still as dear to me as ever, and always will be. But I was constrained to act according to my circumstances. Be content, you and I now both serve the same master." - "Yes, your honour." - "Not 'your honour'," he said, "in the regiment it's just 'Herr Lieutenant!'" Now I complained to him as fully as I could my present dire poverty. He assured me of his sympathy. "But," he continued, "you still have all manner of things that you can sell, for instance the flintlock that I gave you, your travelling-cap that Lieutenant Hofmann gave you in Offenburg, and so on. Bring them to me and I'll pay you for them, no matter what they are worth. Then like the other recruits you could ask an increase in your allowance from the Major" ."By Heaven", I broke in: "no, I saw him once and never again!" Thereupon I recounted to him how that gentleman had treated me. "Ha", replied he, "idiots like him think that on recruiting one can live on air, and catch men in a net." "Yes", said I, "if I had known, I would at least have put a little by for a rainy day, while I was in Rottweil". "All in good53
See note to ch.39.
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