Justly do the sons of that time boast of the men of the Landwehr who readily answered to the call; but not less was the zeal with which the people at home laboured after the command was given for the war. People of every calling, every citizen, the smallest places, the moat distant districts, bore their part in the work, often undergoing the greatest labours and sufferings, especially those on the frontiers. A simple arrangement sufficed for the business in the circles; a military commission was formed of two landed proprietors, one citizen and one yeoman, the landrath of the circle, and the burgomaster of the capital of the circle, were almost always the almost zealous members of it. It was undoubtedly an occupation for simple men which was adapted to awaken extraordinary powers. They had to deal with the remains of the French army, with their hunger and typhus, with the thronging Russians who for many months were in a doubtful position, with two languages, that of their new friends being more strange to them than that of their retreating enemies; and, added to this, the coarseness and wildness of their new allies, whose subaltern officers were for the most part no better than their soldiers, lusting after brandy, and at least as rapacious and more brutal than irregular troops. Soon did the commissioners learn how to deal with the wild people; tobacco chests stood open, together with clay pipes, in the office room: it was an endless coming and going of Russian officers, they filled their pipes and smoked, demanded brandy, and received harmless beer. If ever the coarseness of the strangers broke out, the Prussian officials at last learnt to punish the ill-behaved with their own weapons, the kantschu, which perhaps a Russian officer had left him, that he might more easily manage his people. The last typhus sufferers of the French still filled the hospitals of the city, the Baschkirs bivouacked with their felt caps in the market-place; the inhabitants quarrelled with the foreigners quartered on them; every day the Russians required the necessaries of life and transport, couriers; Russian and Prussian officers demanded relays of horses, the cultivators and peasants of the neighbouring villages complained that they had been deprived of theirs, that no ploughboys were to be found, and that the cultivation of the land was impossible. In the midst of all this hurly-burly came the orders of their own government, strong and dictatorial, as was required by the times, and not always practical, which was natural in such haste; the cloth-makers were to furnish cloth, the shoe-makers shoes, the harness-makers and saddlers cartouche-boxes and saddles; so many hundred pair of boots and shoes, so many hundred pieces of cloth, and so many saddles, all in one short week, without money or secure bills of exchange. The artisans were for the greater part poor people without credit; how was the raw material to be obtained, how was the workman to