. Under the hard
pressure of service, under rough officers and among still rougher
comrades, ran the course of his life; the first years in ceaseless
drilling, the following ones with occasional relaxation which
allowed him to seek for some small service in the neighbourhood, as
day-labourer, or some little handicraft. If he was considered secure,
he would have leave for months, whether he wished it or not; then the
captain kept his pay, and he had meanwhile to provide for himself. The
citizens regarded him with distrust and aversion; the honesty and
morals of the soldiers were in such bad repute, that civilians avoided
all contact with them, if a soldier entered an inn, the citizen and
artisan immediately left it, and the landlord considered it a
misfortune to have visits from soldiers. Thus he was in his hours of
recreation confined to intercourse with comrades and profligate women.
Severe was the usage that he met with from his officers; he was cuffed
and kicked, punished with flogging for the slightest cause, or placed
on the sharp pointed wooden horse or donkey, which stood in the open
place near the guard-house; for greater misdemeanors he was confined in
chains, put on wooden palings, or if the crime was great, he had to run
the gauntlet of rods cut by the Provost, till he died.

If in Prussia the predilection of the King for uniforms, and under
Frederic the Great the glory of the army reconciled the Brandenburg
conscript to the King's coat, this was far less the case in the rest of
Germany. To the citizen and peasant's son in Prussia who had to serve,
it was a misfortune, but in the rest of Germany a disgrace. Various
were the attempts made to evade it by mutilation, but the chopping off
a finger did not exempt, and was besides as severely punished as
desertion. In 1790, a rich peasant lad in Lower Saxony, who by the
hatred of the bailiff had been forced into service, was ashamed to
enter his native village in uniform. Whenever he obtained leave, he
stopped outside the village and had his peasant's dress brought to him,
and a maid carried the uniform through the village in a covered basket.

Desertions, therefore, did not cease; they were the common evil of all
armies, and were not to be prevented by running the gauntlet the first
and second time, nor even the third with shot. In the garrisons the
roll-call, which was incessant, and quiet espionnage of individuals,
were insufficient means. But when the cannon g