Half pay
Half-pay or half the wages (Engl. Half-pay ) meant that soldiers (and officers or navy personnel) only half the wages paid because either straight no war was or they were not used despite the war.
The term "half-pay" first appeared in Samuel Pepys ' diary in 1664 . Between the Napoleonic Wars , large parts of the British Navy were decommissioned in this way. In France, soldiers who were still employed in peacetime or who were unfit for regular field service and who were deployed as garrisons were referred to as "Mortes-payes".
On October 21, 1780, the American " Congress of the Revolution " passed a pension-like payment of half-salary for life for officers who have left the service, provided that they were in regular service until the end of the war. The subsequent congress of the states converted this half-salary on March 22, 1783 into a five-year full pay from the end of the war and disbanded the army on October 18 .
literature
- JC Prager: The Prussian military medicinal being in its present form . Verlag August Hirschwald, Berlin 1864 ( Volume 2 )
Individual evidence
- ^ Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon , Volume 14 . Leipzig 1908, p. 162.
- ↑ Heinrich August Pierer (Ed.): Universal-Lexikon , Volume 11 . Altenburg 1860, p. 468.
- ^ Friedrich Kapp : Life of the American General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1858.