gallant
soldier, and no one could speak evil of him.

There was one circumstance which distinguished the armies of the Thirty
years' war from those of modern days, and which made their entrance
into a province like an eruption of a heterogeneous race of strangers:
each soldier, in spite of his short term of service in the field, was
accompanied by his household. Not only the higher officers, but also
the troopers and foot-soldiers, took their wives, and still more
frequently their mistresses with them in a campaign. Women from all
countries, adorned to the utmost of their power, followed the army, and
sought entrance into the camp, because they had a husband, friend, or
cousin there. At the mustering or disbanding of a regiment, even
respectable maidens were, through the most cruel artifices, carried off
by disorderly bands, and when the money was all spent, left sometimes
without clothes, or at some carousal sold from one to another. The
women who accompanied the soldiers cooked and washed for them, nursed
the sick, provided them with drink, bore their blows, and on the march
carried the children and any of the plunder or household implements
which could not be conveyed by the baggage waggons. It is known that
the King of Sweden on his first arrival in Germany would not suffer any
such women in the camp; but after his return from Franconia, this
strict discipline seems to have ceased. Whoever peruses the old church
records of the village parishes will find sometimes the names of
maidens, who, having been carried off, returned at the end of a year to
their village home, and submitted themselves to the severest Church
penances in order to die amongst the ruined population of their
birthplace. The women of the camp were also under martial law. For
great offences they were flogged, and driven out of the camp; the
soldiers too were hard masters, and little of what had been promised
them in the beginning was kept.

The children accompanied the women. In the Swedish army military
schools were established by Gustavus Adolphus, in which the children
were instructed even in the camp. In these migratory schools strict
military discipline prevailed, and a story, which cannot be warranted,
is told of a cannonball having passed through a school in the Swedish
camp, and having killed many of the children, but the survivors
continued their sum in arithmetic.

Some soldiers maintained one or more lads, a crafty, stubborn set of
goo