He was a learned man, but necessity brought him into the foot soldiers of the Prussian army. After studying theology, he was unable to obtain a pastorate and his academic career in Halle failed. His colleagues had gotten wind of a still unpublished novel in which he had described the inner workings of the universities in Halle and Jena rather cheekily and made some appear all too recognizable.
He was notorious as a free spirit and polemicist anyway. His dissertation on Giordano Bruno was of little help to him. Anyone whose license to teach was drastically curtailed in the 18th century felt it immediately in their wallets. Christian Friedrich Laukhard, born in the summer of 1757 as the son of a – also insubordinate – pastor in Wendelsheim in the Electoral Palatinate, enrolled at Christmas 1783 as a musketeer in the von Thadden infantry regiment.
For almost twelve years he was a soldier and an author at the same time. When in 1792 the first two volumes of “FC Laukhards, Magister der Philosophie, life and destinies described by himself” were published, he had to go to war. He was one of the 80,000 men who mobilized Prussia, Austria and French émigrés to conquer Paris and restore the rights of the king who had been overthrown in the French Revolution. Rarely has an invading army failed more thoroughly than this one.
Friedrich Christian Laukhard: Laukhard’s campaign in France. Furnished by Reinhard Kaiser, Wolfgang Hörner, Tobias Roth and Stefan Reiserer. Verlag The Cultural Memory, Berlin 2022. 400 pages, 26 euros.
After a short advance through Longwy and Verdun, they had to retreat after the cannonade at Valmy, far from Paris. “From here and today a new epoch of world history begins, and you can say you were there”. This turning point has remained alive in the general consciousness, above all through this statement by Goethe, who took part in the campaign as a companion of the Weimar Duke Karl August.
Whether Goethe formulated the sentence on site in June 1792 is uncertain, it is only included in the “Campagne in France”, written decades later, which first appeared in 1822, not yet under this title, as a continuation of the autobiographical work “Dichtung and truth”. It happened to be the year that Laukhard, one of the radical enlighteners in Germany who were constantly being persecuted by the censors, died in poverty in Bad Kreuznach.
Laukhard and Goethe did not meet during the campaign, but both incorporated it into their autobiographical projects. The third part of Laukhard’s “Life and Destiny”, “which describes his events, experiences and remarks during the campaign against France from the beginning to the blockade of Landau” was published in Leipzig in 1796. It is easy to find on the Internet, the publishing house “Kulturelles Gedächtnis” has now published it as a printed book with a detailed, informative afterword by Wolfgang Hörner and many commentaries on the passages under the title “My Campagne in France”.
Even the chapter headings leave little doubt that the riot act is being read to one’s own army
This is of course an ingredient of the current editors, but posterity can actually read Laukhard as a reply to Goethe, who incidentally used Laukhard’s report as a source. Here someone writes from the immediate events, takes on the current prince-friendly journalism, makes no secret of the fact that he can gain much more from the French Revolution, against which he is campaigning, than from the failing project, by means of an invading army restore the old regime.
He lashes out at the French emigrants in harsh words, even the titles of his chapters leave little doubt that his own army is being read the riot act here: “Invasion of France. Beginning of all misery” or “Paterable departure from France”. Above all, he blames the emigrants for the illusions with which the invading army set out: that they would meet with a friendly welcome and little resistance everywhere on the way to Paris.
The political reasoning that Laukhard weaves into his text includes the idea that a people has the right to put their king on trial, as happens in France. But that is not the core of his report. The core is the description of everyday life in the army from the procession to the return to Germany, where Laukhard stops in his homeland in the Palatinate and witnesses the siege of Mainz and the merciless hunt for the “club members” and “patriots”, the supposed or actual supporters of the French Revolution.
He speaks of feces much more frequently than in the novels of the time
A basic pattern of all invading armies emerges from Laukhard in drastic concreteness. The army to which he belongs expends much of his energy on self-preservation, advancing or retreating. Laukhard is a war correspondent but not a battle painter. Even the cannonade at Valmy was not a pitched battle, the capture of Verdun and the smaller skirmishes remain episodes in the face of the chronic misery of self-preservation.
The weather at Laukhard is bad for a longer period of time and even more intense than at Goethe’s, the dysentery takes hold of the soldiers sooner. The hunger, the stagnant supply, the dead horses and soldiers along the way are encountered in dense, vivid descriptions. Anyone who wants to get an idea of the misery in the field hospitals of this army should read, Laukhard, if he or she has good nerves. Much more frequently than in the novels of the time, he talks about feces, stench and decay. The rapporteur does not hide the fact that he himself takes part in looting, albeit reluctantly.
Foot soldiers pay close attention to their footwear, as does Laukhard. “Our gentlemen had calculated for themselves that the whole war could only last a quarter of a year”, and so supplies of shoes were not provided. “It was disgraceful to see the Prussians dragging through the mud without shoes and tearing their feet bloodthirsty on the sharp stones. … The gentlemen who had emigrated had to slap around barefoot, too.”
Laukhard can communicate in Latin with the pastors, can converse politely with the senior officers and nobles in the army, but his account of the failed anti-revolutionary invading army is that of a musketeer, a common man. The infantry found a mouthpiece in him.