The mid-18th century was the heyday of enlightened absolutism, the concept of promoting public welfare from the top down through the application of reason and method. The optimistic belief that it was possible to improve humans and their institutions alike encouraged rulers to think of themselves as servants, or at least custodians, of the state and its people. In countries the size of Spain or the Habsburg Empire, where central authority eroded in direct ratio to its remoteness, enlightened absolutism tended to evolve toward window dressing. In smaller states—the size of Hesse-Kassel—central oversight enabled the establishment of regimes strongly prefiguring the modern bureaucratic welfare state.

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The government’s position as a primary source of funding encouraged cooperation on the part of the diet. “Corruption” is a harsh word; “patronage” a gentler one. In Hesse-Kassel one spoke of mutually acceptable arrangements among gentlemen. The necessary administrative apparatus was at hand. Military taxation and recruitment, to be effective, required increasingly meticulous records, increasingly comprehensive enforcement of the increasingly comprehensive laws regulating military service and its ramifications, and increasingly large numbers of bureaucrats to keep the paperwork in order.

Hesse-Kassel’s subsidy-fueled recovery from the Seven Years’ War was impressive. The administration sought to expand the state’s economic base by underwriting everything from trade fairs to road and river transportation. Hesse largely produced its own uniforms and weapons, increasing the number of craftsmen and skilled workers. Government experts improved peasant agriculture, particularly by encouraging potato cultivation and sheep raising. The rural population grew apace, providing a larger pool of potential soldiers. Increased wool production expanded the textile industry to a point that workers were described as being able to eat meat and drink wine on a daily basis. Kassel, the capital city, became a showplace of public works and buildings. Subsidy money built and maintained schools, hospitals and—pragmatically—a combined maternity hospital for unwed mothers and orphanage. All of this provided architects and construction workers with steady, profitable work. Taxes even shrank, by about a third overall between the early 1760s and 1784.

Present-day taxpayers can only marvel.

The army on which this social edifice depended began taking definitive form in 1762. As casualties mounted, keeping thousands of men under arms became an immense human burden for a state whose population was no more than 275,000. Frederick II responded by dividing Hesse-Kassel into cantons, each responsible for maintaining a field regiment for the subsidy army and a garrison regiment for home defense. Some towns were exempt. So was a spectrum of what similar American legislation a century later called “deferred occupations.” In practice, those owning more than 250 thalers in property fulfilled their obligation with money instead of blood. Craftsmen, apprentices and servants, workers in military-related industries and men essential to the prosperity of their farms or the support of their families were also exempt. All other men between 16 and 30, over 5-foot-6 when fully grown, were listed as available for military service, to be inducted and assigned as needed.

Hesse-Kassel thus became, in numbers and percentages, the most militarized state in Europe. Its army stabilized at a strength of 24,000 men: a 1-to-15 soldier-civilian ratio, twice that of Prussia. In contrast to Prussia, while foreigners could enlist in the Hessian army, it consisted overwhelmingly of native sons. One household out of four was represented in its ranks. In Prussia the ratio was 1-to-14. Both travelers and military inspectors consistently remarked on the size and fitness of the Hessian regulars, qualities frequently credited to their austere upbringing on hardscrabble smallholdings. No less remarkable was their apparent acceptance of military life, despite a term of service totaling 24 years.

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