the Austrians have him listed as "Rittmeister" (cavalry captain - so basically he skipped ranks hen joining the Austrian army?)
Hmmm, yeah. Looks like he skipped right over second lieutenant and first lieutenant.
I want to know what exactly he contributed to the Austrian cause more than ever.
Circumstantial evidence is certainly damning!
Schell, the guy who leaves Trenck's door in Glatz unlocked and deserts with him, whom I suspect of having been gangpressed into Prussian service due to him not having been a Prussian, is a Lieutenant.
I don't know enough about impressment practices: were foreign noblemen impressed as officers? He is a von Schell and he is a lieutenant. I could be wrong, but it strikes me as dangerous to have your officers serving involuntarily, and impressing noblemen is probably going to cause a hue and cry that impressing lower and middle classes isn't.
Googling around, I'm not finding evidence that noblemen and officers were impressed, and am finding statements that press gangs worked the lower and middle classes, and that noblemen were exempt. I remember Duffy saying that Prussian recruiters would trick people into enlisting voluntarily by telling them they would be officers, and then when they signed up, they were forced into service as common soldiers and not allowed to leave. But if you know of any examples where nobles were impressed as officers, let me know. It's hard to prove a negative after a few minutes of googling.
While googling, I ran across something else that backed up my sense that pardons for desertion were common: "Desertion was to be punished by death. Yet, most deserters were in fact not executed but often enough pardoned and re-admitted to the service if they requested a pardon." This is from Prussian Army Soldiers and the Seven Years' War: The Psychology of Honour, a scholarly volume that was published in 2019, costs $80, and has something like 12 footnotes per page. This particular line has a footnote citing a 1996 scholarly volume. So it looks legit. Again, the book is about the Seven Years' War, but this particular page seems to be talking about practices in general, including peacetime practices. The citation is Disziplin und Desertion: Strukturprobleme militàˆrischer Organisation im 18. Jahrhundert (Historische Forschungen), page 288, which would probably tell us everything we ever wanted to know about how exceptional Trenck's pardon offer was (my sense without reading it is: not enough to warrant concluding that he slept or at least flirted with one of the royal siblings).
Btw, Google is giving me MĂ¼ncherode as an acceptable alternate spelling for Rot_an_der_Rot Abbey in Swabia, and Wikipedia tells me the town developed out of the abbey, so I'm guessing Schell's from the town called Rot an der Rot today.
Re: Trenck discussion
Hmmm, yeah. Looks like he skipped right over second lieutenant and first lieutenant.
I want to know what exactly he contributed to the Austrian cause more than ever.
Circumstantial evidence is certainly damning!
Schell, the guy who leaves Trenck's door in Glatz unlocked and deserts with him, whom I suspect of having been gangpressed into Prussian service due to him not having been a Prussian, is a Lieutenant.
I don't know enough about impressment practices: were foreign noblemen impressed as officers? He is a von Schell and he is a lieutenant. I could be wrong, but it strikes me as dangerous to have your officers serving involuntarily, and impressing noblemen is probably going to cause a hue and cry that impressing lower and middle classes isn't.
Googling around, I'm not finding evidence that noblemen and officers were impressed, and am finding statements that press gangs worked the lower and middle classes, and that noblemen were exempt. I remember Duffy saying that Prussian recruiters would trick people into enlisting voluntarily by telling them they would be officers, and then when they signed up, they were forced into service as common soldiers and not allowed to leave. But if you know of any examples where nobles were impressed as officers, let me know. It's hard to prove a negative after a few minutes of googling.
While googling, I ran across something else that backed up my sense that pardons for desertion were common: "Desertion was to be punished by death. Yet, most deserters were in fact not executed but often enough pardoned and re-admitted to the service if they requested a pardon." This is from Prussian Army Soldiers and the Seven Years' War: The Psychology of Honour, a scholarly volume that was published in 2019, costs $80, and has something like 12 footnotes per page. This particular line has a footnote citing a 1996 scholarly volume. So it looks legit. Again, the book is about the Seven Years' War, but this particular page seems to be talking about practices in general, including peacetime practices. The citation is Disziplin und Desertion: Strukturprobleme militàˆrischer Organisation im 18. Jahrhundert (Historische Forschungen), page 288, which would probably tell us everything we ever wanted to know about how exceptional Trenck's pardon offer was (my sense without reading it is: not enough to warrant concluding that he slept or at least flirted with one of the royal siblings).
Btw, Google is giving me MĂ¼ncherode as an acceptable alternate spelling for Rot_an_der_Rot Abbey in Swabia, and Wikipedia tells me the town developed out of the abbey, so I'm guessing Schell's from the town called Rot an der Rot today.