scribe, is undoubtedly one of the finest shows that can be exhibited: but when a spectator of sensibility reflects on the means by which these poor fellows are brought to this wonderful degree of accuracy, he will pay a severe tax for this splendid exhibition.-The Prussian discipline on a general view is beautiful; in detail it is shocking.

When the young rustic is brought to the regiment, he is at first treated with a degree of gentleness; he is instructed by words only how to walk, and to hold up his head, and to carry his firelock, and he is not punished, though he should not succeed in his earliest attempts :they allow his natural awkwardness and timidity to wear off by degrees :—they seem cautious of confounding him at the beginning, or driving him to despair, and take care not to pour all the terrors of their discipline upon his astonished senses at once. When he has been a little familiarized to his new state, he is taught the exercise of the firelock, first alone, and afterwards with two or three of his companions. This is not intrusted to a corporal or serjeant it is the duty of a subaltern officer. In the park at Berlin, every morning may be seen the lieutenants of the different regiments exercising, with the greatest assiduity, sometimes a single man, at other times three or four together; and now, if the young recruit shows neglect or remissness, his attention is roused by the officer's cane, which is applied with augmenting energy, till he has acquired the full command of his firelock.-He is taught steadiness under arms, and the immobility of a statue; he is informed, that all his members are to move only at the word of command, and not at his own pleasure-that speaking, coughing, sneezing, are all unpardonable crimes; and when the poor lad is accomplished to their mind, they give him to understand, that now it is perfectly known what he can do, and therefore the smallest deficiency will be punished with rigour. And although he should destine every moment of his time, and all his attention, to cleaning his arms, taking care of his clothes, and practising the manual exercise, it is but barely

VOL. 1.

possible for him to escape punishment; and if his captam happens to be of a capricious or cruel disposition, the illfated soldier loses the poor chance of that possibility.

As for the officers, they are not indeed subjected to corporal punishment, but they are obliged to bestow as unremitting attention on duty as the men. The subalterns are almost constantly on guard, or exercising the recruits; the captain knows, that he will be blamed by his colonel, and can expect no promotion, if his company be not as perfect as the others; the colonel entirely loses the king's favour if his regiment should fail in any particular: the general is answerable for the discipline of the brigade, or garrison, under his immediate command. The king will not be satisfied with the general's report on that subject, but must examine every thing himself; so that from his majesty, down to the common sentinel, every individual is alert. And as the king, who is the chief spring and primum mobile of the whole, never relaxes, the faculties of every subordinate person are kept in constant exertion: the consequence of which is, that the Prussian army is the best disciplined, and the readiest for service at a minute's warning, of any now in the world, or perhaps that ever was in it. Other monarchs have attempted to carry discipline to the same degree of perfection, and have begun this plan with astonishing eagerness. But a little time and new objects have blunted their keenness, and divided their attention. They have then delegated the execution to a commander in chief, he to another of inferior rank, and thus a certain degree of relaxation having once taken place, soon pervades the whole system; but the perseverance of the king of Prussia is without example, and is perhaps the most remarkable part of his extraordinary character.

That degree of exertion which a man of a vigorous mind is capable of making on some very important occasion, the king of Prussia has made for thirty years at a stretch, without permitting pleasure, indolence, disgust, or disappointment, to interrupt his plan for a single day. -And he has obliged every person through the various

departments of his government to make, as far as their characters and strength could go, the same exertions.-I leave you to judge in what manner such a man must be served, and what he is capable of performing.

LETTER LXVI.

Berlin.

No condition in life can be more active, and at the same time have less variety in it, than that of a Prussian officer in the time of peace. He is continually employed in the same occupation, and continually occupied in the same place. There is no rotation of the troops as in the British service. The regiments which were placed in Berlin, Magdeburg, Schweidnitz, and the other garrisons at the conclusion of the war, remain there still. It is dreaded, that if they were occasionally moved from one garrison to another, the foreigners in the service, who are exceedingly prone to desertion, might then find opportunities, which according to the present plan they cannot : for however desirous a Prussian soldier may be to desert, the thing is almost impossible. The moment a man is missing, a certain number of cannons are fired, which announce the desertion to the whole country. The peasants have a considerable reward for seizing a deserter, and are liable to severe penalties if they harbour, or aid him in making his escape, and parties from the garrisons are sent after him in every direction.

As none of the soldiers are ever allowed to go without the walls of the town, it requires great address to get over this first difficulty; and when they have been so far fortunate, many chances remain against their escaping through the Prussian dominions; and even when they arrive safe in any of the neighbouring states,

Nunc eadem fortuna viros tot casibus actos
Insequitur.*

The same fate awaits them there, after all the dangers they have escaped.

For there they will probably be obliged to inlist again as soldiers: so that on the whole, however unhappy they may be, it is absurd to attempt desertion in any other way than by killing themselves, which method, as I am told, begins to prevail.

In consequence of their remaining constantly in the same place, conversing always with the same people, and being employed uniformly in the same business, the Prussian officers acquire a staid, serious appearance, exceedingly different from the gay, dissipated, degagé air of British or French officers. Their only amusement, or relaxation from the duties of their profession, seems to be walking on the parade, and conversing with each other. The inferior officers, thus deprived of opportunities of mixing in general society, and not having time for study, can have no very extensive range of ideas. Their knowledge, it must be confessed, is pretty much confined to that branch of tactics in which they are so much employed; and many of them at length seem to think, that to stand firm and steady, to march erect, to wheel to the right and left, and to charge and discharge a firelock, if not the sole use of human creatures, is at least the chief end of their creation.

The king, as I have been informed, has no inclination that they should reason on a larger compass of thought, which might possibly lead them to despise their daily employment of drilling soldiers, counting the buttons of their coats, and examining the state of their spatterdashes and breeches. For as soon as men's minds become superior to their business, the business will not be so well performed. Some application to other studies, and opportunities of mixing with a more general society, might make them more agreeable men, but not better captains, lieutenants, and adjutants.

His majesty imagines he will always find a sufficient number of men of a more liberal turn of mind, and more extensive notions, for officers of great trust and separate commands, where the general must act according to emergencies, and the light of his own understanding. He be

lieves also, that this general system will not deprive him of the advantage of particular exceptions, or prevent genius from being distinguished, when it exists in the humblest spheres of his service. As often, therefore, as he observes any dawnings of this kind; when any officer, or even soldier, discovers uncommon talents, or an extensive capacity, he is sure to be advanced, and placed in a situation where his abilities may have a full power of exertion; while those must stand still, or be moved by a very slow gradation, who have no other merit to depend on for promotion but assiduity alone, which, in the Prussian service, can never conduct to that rank in the army, where other qualifications are wanted.

As to the common men, the leading idea of the Prussian discipline is to reduce them, in many respects, to the nature of machines; that they may have no volition of their own, but be actuated solely by that of their officers; that they may have such a superlative dread of those officers as annihilates all fear of the enemy; and that they may move forwards when ordered, without deeper reasoning or more concern than the firelocks they carry along with them.

Considering the length to which this system is carried, it were to be wished that it could be carried still further, and that those unhappy men, while they retained the faculties of hearing and obeying orders, could be deprived of every other kind of feeling.

The common state of slavery in Asia, or that to which people of civil professions in the most despotic countries are subject, is freedom in comparison of this kind of military slavery. The former are not continually under the eyes of their tyrants, but for long intervals of time may enjoy life without restraint, and as their taste dictates; but all the foreign soldiers in this service, and those of the natives, who are suspected of any intention to desert, and consequently never allowed furloughs, are always under the eye of somebody, who has the power, and too often