Jews begged from door to door to collect a sufficient sum of money for a
guild certificate in order to save their children from military service.
The more or less well-to-do were exempted from conscription either by
virtue of their mercantile status or because of their connections with
the Kahal leaders who had the power of selecting the victims.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 23, n. 1.]


4. THE POLICY OF EXPULSIONS

In all lands of Western Europe the introduction of personal military
service for the Jews was either accompanied or preceded by their
emancipation. At all events, it was followed by some mitigation of their
disabilities, serving, so to speak, as an earnest of the grant of equal
rights. Even in clerical Austria, the imposition of military duty upon
the Jews was preceded by the _Toleranz Patent_, this would-be Act of
Emancipation. [1]

[Footnote 1: Military service was imposed upon the Jews of Austria by
the law of 1787. Several years previously, on January 2, 1782, Emperor
Joseph II. had issued his famous Toleration Act, removing a number of
Jewish disabilities and opening the way to their assimilation with the
environment. Nevertheless, most of the former restrictions remained in
force.]

In Russia the very reverse took place. The introduction of military
conscription of a most aggravating kind and the unspeakable cruelties
attending its practical execution were followed, in the case of the
Jews, by an unprecedented recrudescence of legislative discrimination