[p. 487]
|487| other the drum, and so on; that, because of the multitude of estates that send contingents together, there is inequality in arms, in drill, and so on, and the common soldiers are unacquainted with the officers; that every estate actually has the right to provide for its own victualling, so that the greatest disorder in the service and an obstructive overloading with civilians and baggage-train prevail, besides the unnecessary costs. According to the legal theory, a detached picket of twenty men of different estates in fact requires twenty separate commissaries of provisions, bakers, and so on. That the Imperial Register is several hundred years old, and so no longer corresponds to the present proportion of the size and power of the estates, and so occasions dissatisfaction, complaints and perpetual arrears; that territories occur in it whose geographical situation cannot even be ascertained any longer; and a hundred other circumstances are too well known not to be tedious if one cites them.
If now the insignificance of the military of the smaller estates already disappears when they assemble and concresce into an army of the Empire, the disadvantages mentioned and innumerable others nevertheless set the usefulness of this army in war below all the armies of the rest of Europe, not even excepting the Turkish, and the very name of an army of the Empire formerly had a peculiar misfortune. As the name of other armies, foreign ones too, awakens the thought of bravery and formidableness, so the name of the army of the Empire, when pronounced in a German company, rather cheered every face, awakened all the humours witty in accordance with station and propriety, and everyone dipped into the purse of his anecdotes about it, in order to contribute something. And when the German nation is held to be
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