BlackHat's Journal: Voices ring and echo psycho show memories flow/ Now sing low

I ran across a nice historical overview of Comics[lots of pics]. bugpowder. Not that I will be continuing on that thread today. As for today... more bile about the nature of Nationalism.

Quote:
In the eighteenth century individuals of all ranks of society passed with almost untrammelled freedom from the service of one master to that of another. Many of Frederick's 'Prussians' were in fact Italians, Frenchmen, or Swiss like the compatriots whom private Ulrich Braker found in the regiment of Itzenplitz:

As soon as drill was over we used to fly to Schottmann's beer cellar. There we would down a mug of Ruhin or Gottwitz beer, smoke a pipe, and warble one of our songs from Switzerland. The Brandenburgers and Pomeranians were fond of hearing us, and on occasion some of these gentry used to ask us to an eating house expressly to have us sing our herdsmens' songs. Mostly our reward was just some cloudy soup. (Braker, 1852, 125-6)

The hire or formation of foreign units as integral bodies was another characteristic feature of military interchange. The British used to go shopping on a big scale in Germany, and hire whole contingents of auxiliaries for the duration of their wars. The French practice was to maintain regiments of foreign troops as permanent parts of the royal army. Thus, in the Seven Years War, the establishment of foreign troops in the French service stood at nearly 50,000 men, and comprised thirteen or fourteen regiments of Germans, between ten and thirteen of Swiss, five or six of Irish, two of Scots, two of Italians, and five of 'Hungarian' hussars.

The foreigners came in a variety of types. Braker and his friends were recruited (or kidnapped) as individuals. The Irish, Scots and Hungarians had more the character of religious or political refugees. The Swiss, German and Walloon regiments had a greater resemblance to private commercial enterprises, while the contingents which were hired out by the German states were used to raise money for the sovereign and sometimes also as an indirect instrument of policy.

This 'trade in human beings' (Menschenhandel) came under attack from humanitarian writers like Friedrich Carl von Moser, but the ethics and justification of the thing had been worked out in some detail. States like Britain, France, the Dutch Republic, Spain and the other Mediterranean countries undoubtedly paid very heavily for their foreign troops. As the saying went, point d'argent, point de Suisse. On the other hand a hired foreign soldier not only added to the strength of the state, but he freed a native subject for productive labour and he deprived the enemy of a potential recruit. Thus one man became the equivalent of three. Schertel von Burtenbach added that it was misleading to talk about hired soldiers lacking genuine love, loyalty or zeal for their paymaster, for they were bound to him by something more reliable, namely 'their own advantage and welfare' (Schertel von Burtenbach, 1779, 183. See also General von Estorf, quoted in Jahns, 1889-91, III, 2, 165; Saxe [1748] quoted in Corvisier, 1963, 260).

This contention is borne out by the record of the Walloons in the Spanish employ at Piacenza (1746), and the Swiss regiment of Diesbach which fought so well in the ranks of the French at Rossbach (1757). The Hessian knew that he was

Born to be a soldier; from his youth he hears of nothing else. The farmer who bears arms tells his son his adventures, and the lad, eager to tread in the footsteps of his elder, trains his feeble arms early to the use of formidable weapons; so when he has reached a size necessary to take a place in the valiant ranks, he is quickly formed into a soldier. (Quoted in Atwood, 1980,20)

Altogether the employer of foreign soldiers seems to have received a good return for his money.

The sovereign who hired out his troops was not necessarily a heartless monster. Indeed Friedrich II, who became Landgraf of Hesse in 1762, was a model ruler after the pattern of his time. He reformed justice and the administration, and as an enlightened and cultivated prince he promoted learning and opened the first public museum in Central Europe. By placing his troops at the disposal of foreign powers, a sovereign like this could win friends, raise money for useful objectives, and keep up military values among his people.

Eventually, through the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth century, mercenary activity was confined to formations of the Foreign Legion type. More immediately the character of some of the most celebrated foreign units was threatened by processes of internal disintegration. The Swiss regiments, wherever they were found were accustomed to running affairs according to their own rules, which gave rise to abuses like plural or hereditary companies, some of which were actually passed on by way of a female line. Moreover it became common for regiments that were nominally Swiss, German or Irish to be filled in the course of time with criminals and international riff-raff. The Baron de Beseval claims to have restored professional standards when he became Inspector of Swiss troops in France after the Seven Years War (Besenval, 1827-8, I, 21), but elsewhere many of the units of the Swiss were in unmistakable decline. --Christopher Duffy

The character of the units may have changed over the years... but... much of the framework described above still exists today. And so do the problems. More on that in the next JEs. Until then.

News probed in the rear:
Lurching to victory? The balloons have gone up? But not down? The Bell. The bells.

I will crush them like bugs with my magic white painted fist. But first I'm gonna wizz... on the Iraqis. Renewed clashes overnight in the flashpoint Iraqi city of Falluja have left at least nine Iraqis dead and several injured, local doctors say. US forces called in air support after insurgents attacked a joint patrol of US marines and Iraqi troops, an American military spokesman said. Juan too tree wad har day fi tin faux.

A court in Vietnam has sentenced a veteran pro-democracy activist to more than two years in prison for undermining the communist system. Dr Nguyen Dan Que is the third Vietnamese dissident to be convicted this month for using the internet to swap information and criticise Hanoi. He was detained in March last year while on his way to an internet cafe.

So has anyone kept score? I think this will make it ~122 arrests. Spanish police have arrested another man they believe has links to the Madrid train bombings in March. Meanwhile the former Spanish Foreign Minister, Ana Palacio, has defended her decision to urge ambassadors to blame the attacks on Basque militants Eta.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is considering stepping down after the November election, telling colleagues he is worn out from the massive reorganization of government and needs to earn money in the private sector to put his teenage children through college, officials said. What? Did you actually expect to continue your little farce? Yeah, sure you did. Paint it-- red, orange, green, yellow and blue-- and then hump it.

Naomi Klein gets the last words before the toon today. Last month, I reluctantly joined the Anybody But Bush camp. It was "Bush in a Box" that finally got me, a gag gift my brother gave my father on his 66th birthday. Bush in a Box is a cardboard cut-out of President 43 with a set of adhesive speech balloons featuring the usual tired Bushisms: "Is our children learning?" "They misunderestimated me" - standard-issue Bush-bashing schlock, on sale at Wal-Mart, made in Malaysia.

Texttoon:
Fumetti : Stock photo of Susan Sheybani cut into a porn photo of a girl being buggered. Half out of the frame is the usual middle age white male. Beer belly and prison tattoos are seen on the hand holding her ass. Caption, in a Balloon & Clown Font-face, at the bottom; "Ms Sheybani, I am just kidding. Take a Cheney'ing pill... in the ass ...sideways."