The original spelling of my last name is Rausch with the signifying ‘umlaut’ over the a. My ancestor, the man who moved from Heidelberg (or Darmstadt, I’ve heard different accounts) to Virginia in 1740 was Johan Adam Rausch, and credited ‘too much fighting’ as the reason for his departure. The fighting he was referring to would have surely been the Wars of the Reformation when the Catholic Church was challenged by the Protestants. There was no Germany at the time, though there was the German language and culture. Heidelberg was part of a region referred to as the Palatinate and was ruled by a powerful Prince.
By the time the American Revolution rolled around, Johan had become the father to several sons, one of which was named Jonas. Jonas Roush fought for the Americans and was present at the formal British surrender where General Cornwallis handed his sword to General George Washington. Jonas fought for his homeland, and he fought under a revised name, Roush instead of Rausch.
What motivated this change in spelling? The Roush family history book makes no specific mention, but one possible motive was the practice the British had of using German mercenaries to maintain control in colonial America, and Rausch was a very German looking name. The German mercenaries went by the name Hessians because many were drawn from the Hesse-Cassel region of what was to become Germany in time. Mercenary forces were specifically mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. Referring to the wrongs committed against the colonies by King George the 3rd, Thomas Jefferson wrote:
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
https://founding.com/he-is-at-this-time-transporting-large-armies-of-foreign-mercenaries-to-complete-the-works-of-death-desolation-and-tyranny-already-begun-with-circumstances-of-cruelty-perfidy-scarcely-parallele/
Mercenaries over the centuries have been known for being comprised of men who will fight for money, and not national need or honor, and further, being that kind of man, they will do things regular armies won’t or are forbidden to so, such as slaughter civilians. Mercenaries are a common feature of most brutal military dictatorships.
This week, the long serving leader of Russia, Vladimir Putin, suffered one of the most unusual fates any authoritarian leader could endure; his mercenary forces, called The Wagner Group, went into open rebellion over the deplorable state of the Russian military, and in a turn of incredible irony, began a march on Moscow. The group is said to be named after the German composer, Richard Wagner, because Wagner was Adolf Hitler’s favorite composer and many of the founding members of The Wagner Group were ardent admirers of the Third Reich. The last soldiers who came close to marching into Moscow were the Wehrmacht soldiers of that very same Reich.
The irony of Putin relying on a mercenary group named in honor of the last army to invade Russia, and then finding them, in turn, invading Russia, would be hilarious if it wasn’t so typical and tragic. Both The Wagner Group and the Russian military have been working hand in glove to subdue Ukraine, and the invasion of Ukraine has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Russian and Ukrainian men. The carnage resembles the most destructive elements of the early 20th century but further enabled by modern innovative weapons, like drones, and broadcast around the world on the internet. This conflict comes at a time when the population of both countries was falling anyway. The demographic degradation of Eastern Europe was well underway before Wagner and the Russian military crossed into Ukraine, and now the demographic death spiral is further along. Wagner exists in part because, like other mercenary armies, it can recruit from places normal militaries will not, such as prison and other facilities full of dangerous men. These are often the only men left for the fighting. Vladimir Putin unleashed these forces on Ukraine and now, they have turned on him.
Why is Wagner doing this? It’s bombastic leader, a former caterer and small-time thief, is highly agitated by losing battles and men. He blames those loses on the incompetence and corruption of the Russian regular army. That army, he says, fails to provide supplies and support, and has failed because the Russian generals and administrative bureaucracies pocket the money allocated for military supplies. His many public statements are damning towards the Russian military in Ukraine, and that one also answers to Putin.
This situation is a sober reminder of why our civilization in the United States is so vital and worthwhile. There is no equivalent of Wagner in any part of US military history. The closest thing to Wagner would be the ‘rebels’ the US has armed in other counties, but that is quite different than maintaining two armies, one public and one private, and then setting them lose on a former US state. Wagner, it should be noted, operates on behalf of Russia in many other parts of the world, while the US maintains standing and legitimate bases and operations in other countries, operated openly and within some framework of rules.
What happens to the assets in Wagner control, in the Middle East and Africa, for example, remains to be seen. Might Russia be sent back to the beginning by ceding authority to an illegitimate mercenary group? One can only hope. This is what Putin gets for subbing out his military to friends and toadies. It appears to me that the US strategy is to let the poor Ukrainians drain the Russians white and reveal their military to be weak and incompetent. Hopefully, we won’t find out if their nuclear weapons will work.
None of what has happened recently should be a surprise, really. The Russians were the subject of a particular quote attributed to Winston Churchill. They are, he noted, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” and national cultures change very little. Russia is an ancient culture, and what is happening there now has happened in a different guise at other times.
The dictator of the world’s largest collection of nuclear weapons, the leader of the largest country by landmass, and the ruler of one of the most prolific oil producers in the world is in a very hard place. From the Persians comes this saying: “Either the throne or the grave.” Putin can’t just step away from power or lose the next election. In Russia, it doesn’t work that way. He has king-like powers and thus is subject to the rules of being the king.
In Shakespeare’s King Richard IV, in part 2, act 3, scene 1, we find this:
How many thousand of my poorest subjects
Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,
And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,
And lulled with sound of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds and leavest the kingly couch
A watch-case or a common ’larum bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy ⟨mast⟩
Seal up the shipboy’s eyes and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian ⟨billows⟩ by the top,
Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them
With deafing clamor in the slippery clouds
That with the hurly death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep, give ⟨thy⟩ repose
To the wet ⟨sea-boy⟩ in an hour so rude,
And, in the calmest and most stillest night,
With all appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then, happy low, lie down.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/henry-iv-part-2/read/3/1/
Joseph Stalin, the cruelest of the Soviet dictators, died in his sleep. Putin may wish for the same fate, but his path to a peaceful death has narrowed, and his mercenary forces are the ones who have restricted his restful slumber.
TomRoushOnline 