Part I: Freikorps Background and Recruitment

Active Service

Once these arrangements were complete, Glasenapp finally set out on July 7th for Stuttgart, accompanied by Captain Gross, sent by Carl Eugen to ensure that the unit did not cause trouble in any of the principalities it had to cross to reach Wurttemberg. For the unfortunate Gross, the journey was the beginning of a nightmare.

First, the corps had to dodge a party of Palatine soldiers lying in wait to reclaim the deserters who had enlisted with Glasenapp. Then, as they neared the city of Cologne, Glasenapp managed to have Gross sent to Bonn to arrange for supplies, leaving him free to settle an old score.

The year before he had agreed to sell his other main possession, the village of Gross-Bullersheim, to the 82-year old Johan Peter Vryheer van Rosenfeld, the distinguished head of the government of the Principality of Cleve. Rosenfeld, however, had never paid him.

Very conveniently, Gross-Bullersheim lay on Glasenapp's route to Stuttgart. On hearing that Rosenfeld and two companions were in the vicinity, he immediately ordered his hussars to saddle up and set off to find him. According to Rosenfeld's testimony, when Glasenapp caught up with his coach, "he rode forward at once and hurled the worst abuse at me (of which thief, canaille and the like were the least).

Then he drew two loaded pistols and said 'You dog! Your money or your life!' " Faced with such a choice, Rosenfeld reluctantly signed a letter instructing his banker to pay. With this in his pocket, Glasenapp and his hussars; rode off at speed before the local authorities could be alerted.

The rest of their march was almost as eventful. A string of complaints about unpaid bills, extortion and the like followed their every movement. However, Glasenapp was always ready with a plausible excuse and always contrived to have Gross sent off on a mission and thus be conveniently out of the way. Finally, on August 4th, he neared Wurttemberg territory. The Duke had already departed with 11,000 of his men for Saxony, having concluded an agreement to act in conjunction with the Austrians for that year's campaign (1760). Instructions were left behind for Glasenapp to follow as quickly as possible.

Before moving on, Glasenapp decided to spend the night at the small town of Neckarsulm, just north of Wurttemberg. Cornet Weider and two hussars were sent ahead to ask for quarters for the corps, which had now grown to 220 men with 150 horses.

As they were unable to produce identification, they were immediately arrested by the suspicious townfolk, who closed the gates and sounded the alarm. Incensed by this affront, the other hussars laid waste to the crops outside the walls, until the terrified inhabitants let them in. Glasenapp later claimed that the fields had been trampled by people from the city of Heilbronn, who rushed to the scene thinking that the bells were ringing because of a fire in the town. Having thus made themselves thoroughly unpopular, the corps set off, finally joining the Duke's army at Schmalkalden on August 18, 1760.

Carl Eugen's idea of a campaign was somewhat akin to Glasenapp's. He wanted to make as impressive a show as possible, without actually taking any risks, and to extract the maximum financial reward for himself. Thus his troops marched about Saxony, demanding huge "contributions" to the Austrian war effort, and assiduously avoiding combat with the fearsome Prussians. As a party of these had been reported in the rear of the Duke's forces, Glasenapp's first task was to help escort the Wurttemberg artillery, which was still moving to the front.

Once this was safely accomplished, Carl Eugen instructed Johnson to take part of the corps and see if he really could find the buried Prussian treasure he claimed to know of. By this time, Glasenapp had fallen out with his estwhile financier and was so glad to see Johnson go that he let him take 75 of the best men.

However, to be on the safe side, he sent his loyal representative, Jaunis, to keep an eye on Johnson. These two did not get along, to the point that Johnson wrote to Carl Eugen that he intended to shoot Jaunis or "hack him to pieces" the next time he saw him. Johnson seems to have resented Glasenapp's attempts to hide from the Duke that he had really paid for the corps.

Needless to say, the "buried treasure" turned out to be a myth. Having ridden across Hessian and Prussian territory, plundering the peasants as they went, Johnson and Jaunis finally received the order to rejoin the Duke's army. By this time (October), Carl Eugen was in full retreat before a superior Prussian force, ironically commanded by his younger brother, a distinguished Prussian general. By this time also, Glasenapp's past had caught up with him as, faced with a storm of complaints about his behavior, Carl Eugen had him placed under arrest on October 5th until he could answer charges against him. Johnson decided it was time to salvage what he could for himself. Ignoring the order to return, he rode directly to Holtmuhle and consfiscated Glasenapp's castle on the grounds that the money he had loaned had not been repaid. The Baroness and her son were sent packing and promptly flied a court case against him.

Meanwhile, disaster had struck the rest of the corps. Attached to the Wurttemberg "light brigade" of the Hussar Regiment and the Jagerkorps under Colonel von Bouwinghausen, the Frelkorps had been posted at the little town of Rothenberg-an-der-Saale to help cover the Duke's retreat.

There, on October 25th, it was surprised by a larger Prussian force and virtually destroyed. Prangen was captured and the remaining 60 men of the corps were entrusted to the temporary command of Bouwinghausen.

Disbandment and Subsequent Fate

Dissatisfied with the treatment he had received from the Austrians, Carl Eugen withdrew from the war at the end of the year. Now he had no need for such a large army, which he could not afford in any case. First to go was the Freikorps, which ws formally disbanded on February 7, 1761. Glasenapp's pay was stopped on the grounds that he had failed to honor his side of the agreement.

Glasenapp had clearly seen this coming, for in early January 1761 he absconded from his arrest and fled to northern Saxony. There he was welcomed by the Duke's former enemy, Frederick the Great, who appointed him commander of a new regiment of dragoons, entitled Frei Dragoner von Glasenapp. It was previously thought that this unit was Glasenapp's former hussar unit which had entered Prussian service with him.

In fact, it was an entirely new unit formed from foreigners at Nordhausen and Stolberg. Very few, if any, of the hussars appear to have joined it. Totaling five squadrons, the regiment saw uneventful service for the rest of the war before being disbanded in 1763 and forcibly incorporated into the regular Prussian cavalry regiments. Glasenapp's subsequent fate cannot be determined, nor is it known whether he had the opportunity during his Prussian service to cross swords with his enemy, Johnson, who had gone on to raise a Saxon Freikorps with the proceeds from Glasenapp's estate.

Uniforms and Equipment

Like most aspects of the study of Wurttemberg uniforms, very few details are available as to how the Freikorps was clothed and equipped. The original agreement specified that it was to be uniformed as the Wurttemberg Hussar Regiment (described in the Seven Years War Association Newsletter, Volume 5, No. 1, March 1990, page 76).

Gross reported that the unit was fully equipped, but "not completely according to the Duke's intention". We can take this to mean that not all the hussars wore the true Wurttemberg uniform. This is confirmed by a report from Neckarsulm which describes the hussars as dressed in a variety of uniforms and as not having the Ducal cipher on their saddle cloths.

Indeed, many may have lacked other, more important items, as Johnson claimed that his detachment was without trousers, sabretaches and other pieces of clothing until he had new uniforms made while on the raid into Prussian territory.

It is possible that this new uniform was entirely different as there is a contemporary painting of a man said to be a "Glasenapp Hussar" wearing a red, rather than green pelisse, and medium blue dolman and breeches. The braid on this figure is white rather than the Wurttemberg regulation yellow, while the saddle cloth and sabretache were both medium blue trimmed with red. A brown fur hat (kolpak) with red cloth bag and cords, and white plume, completed the uniform. All buttons and metal fittings to the sword and scabbard were of white metal. Given Glasenapp's straightened financial circumstances and the fact that new recruits were joining the unit right up until August, it seems safe to conclude that the corps wore a diverse collection of regulation uniform, civilian clothing, looted garments and pieces of equipment from other armies brought along by the many former deserters. Thanks to the exhaustive research of Dr. Hans Bleckwenn, we know more about the uniform of Glasenapp's second unit, which was modelled closely on that of the regular Prussian dragoons.

Bibliography

This article is based on papers in the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart, chiefly packet numbers A8:13u.250 and 251; A202:13u.2279 and G230:13u.52. [Editor.- note that there should be umlauts over the "u's" in these numbers]

A very interesting, if somewhat jaundiced account of Gschray's extraordinary career is to be found in Der gluckliche Bayerische Eisenamtmann, oder merkwurdige Lebensgeschichte des ... Herm. v. Gschray.. by Johann Caspar von Thurriegel, published in 1766 and reprinted Osnabruck 1974.

Illustrations of the Frei Dragoner von Glasenapp can be found in Hans Bleckwenn's Die friderizianischen Uniformen 1753-1786 , volume 4 (Dortmund, 1984) pages 161-162.

Part I: Freikorps Background and Recruitment

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