The Call-Up of the Army Reserve in Prussia

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This article written by Engels for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was not published and has survived as an unfinished manuscript.

The article was occasioned by the Prussian Government’s measures to call tip the army reserve. Among the pretexts for this was the war with Denmark resumed in Schleswig-Holstein. The Prussian ruling circles were obviously preparing the armed suppression of the revolutionary-democratic movement in Prussia and the rest of Germany.

The army reserve (Landwehr) appeared in Prussia during the struggle against Napoleon. “Landwehr-Ordnung” defining the rules of enrolment, recruitment and service was adopted on November 21, 1815. In the 1840s, those to be enrolled in the army reserve had to he under 40 and go through three-years active service and be not less than two years in reserve. In contrast to the regular army, enlistment to the army reserve took place only in case of extreme necessity (war, or threat of war).

Cologne, April 3. In Posen the whole army reserve of the Grand Duchy has been called up and has already been marched off to Schleswig-Holstein.

In the area of Cleves the army reserve has similarly been called up and sent to Schleswig-Holstein.

And now — we hear — the whole Eighth (Rhenish) Army Corps is to be mobilised and all army reserves in the Rhine Province are to be called up. It is reported that the Eighth Army Corps is to move to the French border. It is quite impossible to understand what purpose it will serve there.

However, the reason for the army reserve on the Rhine being called up at all can most certainly be understood. In all those provinces whose loyalty to the House of Hohenzollern and to the Royal Prussian Monarchy by God’s Grace is suspect they intend to render harmless all young men capable of bearing arms by placing them in rank and file under the command of Prussian officers and throwing them amongst troops of the line in an army corps. They then intend to send these suspect army reserves, which are thus being kept in check by martial law and other royal Prussian measures, together with other more reliable troops into foreign provinces in order to use them as need arises for suppressing the spirit of recalcitrance, which has recently been gaining ground.

By law the army reserve is only to be used against external enemies. To make this very law provide the excuse for the Government to trample it into the dirt, the Danish war has been expressly invented. Once the army reserve has been transported to Schleswig-Holstein, then the means will very soon be found to transport it even further, to East Prussia or to Silesia. Our Rhenish young men are to perform the same honourable services there for which the Silesian army reserves were used in Posen last April and May.

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