ere the
first soldiers that marched with equal step, the whole line raising and
setting down their feet like one man. This innovation had been
introduced by Dessau; the pace was slow and dignified, and even under
the worst fire was little hastened: that majestic equal step, in the
hottest moment at Mollwitz, carried confusion among the Austrians. The
music also struck them with terror. The great brass drums of the
Prussians (they have now, alas, come down to the insignificant size of
a bandbox), raised a tremendous din. When in Berlin, at the parade of
the Guards, some twenty drums were beaten, it made the windows shake.
And among the hautboys there was a trumpet, equally a novel invention.
The introduction of this instrument, created everywhere in Germany
astonishment and disapprobation, for the trumpeters and kettle drummers
of the holy Roman Empire formed a guild, which was protected by
Imperial privileges, and would not tolerate a military trumpeter not
belonging to it. But the King cared little for this. When the soldiers
exercised, loaded, and fired, it was with a precision similar to
witchcraft;[4] for after 1740, when Dessau introduced the iron ramrod,
the Prussian shot four or five times in a minute,--afterwards he learnt
to do it quicker; in 1773, five or six times; in 1781, six or seven
times. The fire of the whole front of the battalion was a flash and a
crack. When the salvos of the troops, exercising early in the morning
under the windows of the King's castle, roared, the noise was so great
that all the little Princes and Princesses were obliged to rise.

But anyone who would have wished to form a right estimate of the
soldiery should have gone to Potsdam. It had been a poor place,
situated betwixt the Havel and a swamp; the King had made it into an
architectural camp; no civilian could carry a sword there, not even the
minister of state. There, round the King's castle, in small brick
houses, which were built partly in the Dutch style, were stationed the
King's giants,--the world-renowned Grenadier regiment. There were three
battalions of 800 men, besides 600 to 800 reserves. Whoever among the
Grenadiers was burdened with a wife, had a house to himself; of the
other Colossuses, as many as four lodged with one landlord, who had to
wait upon and provide food for them, for which he only received some
stacks of wood. The men of this regiment never had leave, could carry
on no public work, and drink no brandy;