ch deserters, and a
considerable portion of the remaining hundred thousand were deserters
from the Austrian army, in which desertion was punished in the same
manner with death. The dread of this punishment if they quitted his
ranks, enabled him to keep up that state of discipline that improved
so much the efficacy of his regiments, at the same time that it made
every individual soldier his 'irreconcilable enemy'. Not relying
entirely upon this dread on the part of deserters to quit his ranks
under his high-pressure system of discipline, and afraid that the
soldiers of his own soil might make off in spite of all their
vigilance, he kept his regiments in garrison towns till called on
actual service; and that they might not desert on their way from one
garrison to another during relief, he never had them relieved at all.
A trooper was flogged for falling from his horse, though he had
broken a limb in his fall; it was difficult, he said, to distinguish
an involuntary fault from one that originated in negligence, and to
prevent a man hoping that his negligence would be forgiven, all
blunders were punished, from whatever cause arising. No soldier was
suffered to quit his garrison till led out to fight; and when a
desertion took place, cannons were fired to announce it to the
surrounding country. Great rewards were given for apprehending, and
severe punishments inflicted for harbouring, the criminal; and he was
soon hunted down, and brought back. A soldier was, therefore, always
a prisoner and a slave.

Still, all this rigour of Prussian discipline, like that of our navy,
was insufficient to extinguish that ambition which is inherent in our
nature to obtain the esteem and applause of the circle in which we
move; and the soldier discharged his duty in the hour of danger, in
the hope of rendering his life more happy in the esteem of his
officers and comrades. 'Every tolerably good soldier feels ', says
Adam Smith, 'that he would become the scorn of his companions if he
should be supposed capable of shrinking from danger, or of hesitating
either to expose or to throw away his life, when the good of the
service required it.' So thought the philosopher-King of Prussia,
when he let his regiments out of garrison to go and face the enemy.
The officers were always treated with as much lenity in the Prussian
as any other service, because the king knew that the hope of
promotion would always be sufficient to bind them to their duties;