s.

In Brandenburg the great Elector, immediately after his entrance on the
government, reformed the connection between the regiments and the
Sovereign; the enlistment was from thenceforth in his own name; he
appointed the Colonel and the officers, who could no longer buy their
commissions. Then first did the paid troops become a standing army,
clothed, armed, and equipped alike, with better discipline, obedient
instruments in the hands of the princes. This was the greatest advance
in the military system since the invention of fire-arms; and Prussia
owes to the early and energetic introduction of this new system its
military preponderance in Germany. The commissariat, also, was
reorganised; the men received, at least in war, their daily food in
rations, and the provisions were supplied from great magazines. Through
the efforts of Montecuculi, and later of Prince Eugene, Austria also,
shortly before 1700, acquired a better disciplined standing army.

The whole complement of these troops could, up to 1700, be procured
almost exclusively by free enlisting; for long after the great war the
people continued in a state of restlessness, and had imbibed an
adventurous spirit, to which military work was very enticing. This
altered gradually. During the war-like period of Louis XIV., and from
the increase of the French army, the German princes were compelled to a
greater increase of their paid armies, and the loss of men occasioned
by the incessant war had carried off many of the useless and bold
rabble that collected round the banners. Even before the great war of
succession the deficiency of men began to be felt; voluntary enlistment
could nowhere any longer be obtained; complaints of the deeds of
violence of the recruiting officers became at last troublesome. The
military ruler, at last, began to scrutinize the men who seized under
him, and sometimes had them exercised in companies. To use the militia
for his warlike expeditions was impossible; they were too little
trained, and, what was more important, they consisted more especially
of respectable residents, whose labour and taxes could not be dispensed
with by the State, as the nobility, and, in Catholic countries, the
ecclesiastics, contributed nothing to his income. Besides this, it was
an unheard-of thing for the people to be compelled by force into
military service. However much he might feel himself the master, this
was an innovation too much against the general feelin