Page:The American encyclopedia of history, biography and travel (IA americanencyclop00blak).pdf/517

 important than I could have expected. The soldiers, from being the most indolent of mortals, and from having very little knowledge of gardening, became industrious and skillful cultivators, and grew so fond of vegetables, particularly potatoes, that these useful and wholesome productions began to constitute a very essential part of their daily food. These improvements began also to spread among the farmers and peasants throughout the whole country. There was hardly a soldier that went on furlough that did not carry with him a few potatoes for planting, and a little collection of garden seeds; and I have already had the satisfaction to see little gardens here and there making their appearance in different parts of the country.'

After reforming the army, the next subject which occupied the attention of the Bavarian statesman was one of universal and perpetual interest—the condition of the poor. In order, however, not to be interrupted in our narrative of his measures for the relief of the poor of Bavaria, we shall note a few of the principal events in his personal history during the period of his residence in that country. In 1784, when he commenced his residence in Bavaria, he was thirty-one years of age. The titles which were then conferred on him were, as we have already informed our readers, those of aid-de-camp and chamberlain. Soon afterwards, however, he received the appointments of member of the council of state, and major-general in the army; the elector at the same time procuring him the decorations of two orders of Polish knighthood, in lieu of the Bavarian order, which the rules of German knighthood prevented him from bestowing. The scientific part of the community also showed their esteem for him by electing him a member of the academies of Munich and Manheim. All this took place not long after Thompson had settled in Munich. Every year of his subsequent stay brought him fresh honors. In 1787, when on a visit to Prussia, he was chosen a member of the Academy of Sciences at Berlin; in Bavaria, to follow the list of dignities given by his American biographer, 'he attained the military rank of lieutenant-general, was commander-in-chief of the general staff, minister of war, and superintendent of the police of the electorate; he was for a short time chief of the regency that exercised sovereignty during the absence of the elector; and in the interval between the death of the Emperor Joseph and the coronation of his successor Leopold, the elector becoming vicar of the empire, availed himself of the prerogatives of that office to make him a Count of the Holy Roman Empire.' When this last dignity was conferred on him, Thompson chose the title of Count of Rumford, in memory of the American village where he had once officiated in the humble capacity of schoolmaster. Although it was not till the year 1790, that this title was bestowed on him and the measures we are about to detail were for the most part matured before that time, we shall consult our convenience by henceforth calling him Count Rumford.

The condition of the poor, and the mode of treating them, are questions which every country on earth must incessantly be occupied with; but in few countries, probably, was the necessity of coming to some decided practical conclusion on the subject more glaring, more imperious, than in Bavaria at the time when Count Rumford undertook the social survey of that state. Beggary had there become an enormous and apparently ineradicable evil—a weed overgrowing the whole field. The beggars almost ate up the industrious part of the community. 'The number of itinerant beg