hem a choice. Such soldiers were naturally
not to be depended on; they gladly took the first opportunity to desert
to their former colours, where they had left their women, children,
booty, and arrears of pay. Distinguished prisoners were sometimes
bought from the common soldiers by the colonels of their regiments;
they were treated with great consideration in the enemy's quarters, and
almost every one found there either an acquaintance or a relative.

Booty was the uncertain gain for which the soldier staked his life, and
the hope of it kept him steadfast in the most desperate situations. The
pay was moderate, the payment insecure; plunder promised them wine,
play, a smart mistress, a gold-laced dress with a plume of feathers,
one or two horses, and the prospect of greater importance in the
company and of advancement. Vanity, love of pleasure, and ambition,
developed this longing to a dangerous extent in the army.

The success of a battle was more than once defeated, by the soldiers
too soon abandoning themselves to plundering. It often happened that
individuals made great booty, but it was almost always dissipated in
wild revelry; according to the soldier's adage: "What is won with the
drum will be lost with the fifes." The fame of such lucky hits spread
through all armies. Sometimes these great gains brought evil results on
the fortunate finders.[24] A common soldier of Tilly's army had won
great booty at the capture of Magdeburg, it was said to be thirty
thousand ducats, and was immediately lost in gambling. Tilly caused him
to be hanged after thus accosting him: "With this money you might have
lived all your life like a gentleman, but as you have not understood
how to make use of it, I cannot see of what use you can be to my
Emperor." At the end of the war a man in Koenigsmark's troop had
obtained a similar sum in the suburbs of Prague, and played it away at
one sitting. Koenigsmark wished in like manner to despatch him, but the
soldier saved himself by this undaunted answer: "It would be unfair for
your Excellence to hang me on account of this loss, as I have hopes of
acquiring still greater booty in the city itself." This answer was
considered a good omen. In the Bavarian army a soldier in the Holtz
infantry was famed for a similar lucky hit. He had been for a long time
musketeer, but shortly before the peace had sunk to be a pikeman, and
was ill-clad; his shirt hung behind and before out of his hose. This
fello