s no martial spirit should exist.
Unwillingly did they form regiments from five, ten, or more
contemptible contingents; soldiers and officers in the same regiment
often quarrelled; the uniforms were scarcely the same colour, nor
the word of command. The citizens despised their soldiers; it was
told jeeringly that the Mainz soldiers at their post cut pegs for
the shoemakers; that the guard at Gmuend presented arms to every
well-dressed foot-passenger, and then stretched out their hats and
begged for a donation; that a man in uniform was despised and excluded
from every society; that the wives and mistresses of the officers took
the field with children and ninepins; that the weapons and discipline
were miserable, and all the material of war imperfect. This was
undoubtedly a great misfortune, and apparent to everybody. The worst
troops in the world were to be found in the Imperial regiments, but
there were some better companies among them, and some officers of
capacity. Even out of this bad material a foreign conqueror was able
afterwards to make good soldiers; for the Germans have always fought
bravely when they have been well led. Besides the Prussians, there were
some other small _corps d'armee_, in well-deserved estimation--the
Saxon, Brunswick, Hanoverian, and Hessian.

On the whole, then, the military power of Germany was not altogether
unsatisfactory; it could well bear some occasional bad elements, and
still, in point of number and valour, cope with any army in the world.
The cause of decay in the army was not the composition of the army
itself, but discord and bad leading.

After 1790, destruction burst upon the Empire--wave upon wave broke
over it from west to east.

First came into the country the white Petrels of the Bourbons,
precursors of the storm--the emigrants. There were many valiant men
among them, but the larger number, who gave character and repute to the
whole, were worthless, reckless rabble. Like a pestilence, they
corrupted the morals of the cities in which they located themselves,
and the courts of small, simple Sovereigns, who felt themselves
honoured by receiving these distinguished adventurers. Coblentz, the
seat of government of Electoral Treves, was their head-quarters, and
that city was the first where their immorality brought ruin into
families, and disunion into the State, They were fugitives enjoying the
hospitality of a foreign country, but with knavish impudence, wherever
they were