Cantonist

Russian cantons of the Uhlans and the military settlers around 1820

Cantonist was a term commonly used in the 18th century for conscripts in the military who could not be assigned to either the group of volunteers or that of mercenaries . The term was first coined by the Polish colonel R. Pastetzky in 1713.

The term is directly related to the canton system (also cantonal regulations), which was introduced by Friedrich Wilhelm I , King of Prussia , in 1733. This compulsory service of all subjects was in fact a kind of conscription .

In Russia , cantonists ( Кантонисты ) were child soldiers who had been conscripted for military service in the Russian army every year since 1758 and were raised at state expense from the age of eight. This facility was abolished after the Crimean War in 1856 with the coronation manifesto Alexander II . The military personnel then settled in their garrison locations.

Unsafe cantonists were conscripts who evaded military service in a way that did not comply with the (serious) criminal offense of desertion . Meyer's Konversationslexikon from 1889 defines it as: “Young people who evade presentation without being guilty of desertion; lose the right of slogan and can be hired outside of an appointment, whereby their service time counts from the next appointment date . "

While the term cantonist can be considered historical, the insecure cantonist has survived outside of the original military context. Today he describes as a phrase a less reliable to unreliable person.

literature

• Christhardt Henschel: Cantonists. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 3: He-Lu. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02503-6 , pp. 316-318.

swell

1. ↑ Kurt von Schweinitz: Foray through the military language . Biblio, Osnabrück 1992, ISBN 978-3-7648-2412-9 .
2. ↑ Alexander Issajewitsch Solzhenitsyn : Two hundred years together. Russian-Jewish history 1795–1915 . Herbig, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-7766-2287-3 .