Landwehr

Landwehr, or Landeswehr, is a German language term used in referring to certain national armies, or militias found in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe.

In German, the word means "defence of the country"; but the term as applied to an insurrectional militia is very ancient, and lantveri are mentioned in Baluzii Capitularia, as quoted in Henry Hallam's Middle Ages, i.

[3] In 1887, Archduke Albert wrote that Landwehr units were not ready, in terms of training or discipline, for use in the first two weeks of a war.

A royal edict of 17 March 1813 first established the Prussian Landwehr, which called up all men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five capable of bearing arms and not serving in the regular army, for the defense of the kingdom.

After the peace of 1815 this force became an integral part of the Prussian Army, each brigade being composed of one line and one Landwehr regiment.

The Baltic state was designed to be established from territories that were ceded by Imperial Russia in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in 1918, but collapsed in the Estonian War of Independence in 1919.