promotion was small. He expected to do the work of his life in that
company, among those soldiers, with perhaps his younger brother, or, in
time, his son, as his lieutenant. It would seem that in the years
immediately preceding the French Revolution these kindly relations were
in some measure dying out. The captain was no longer so closely
connected with his company as he had been. Officialism was taking the
place of those personal connections which had characterized the feudal
system. The gulf between soldiers and officers, if not harder to cross
for the ambitious, separated the commonplace members of each group more
widely from those of the other.[Footnote: Babeau, Vie militaire, i. 43,
189. Montbarey, ii. 272. Moore's View, i. 365.]

The private soldiers of King Louis XVI., who stood in long white lines
on parade at Newport, while their many colored flags floated above and
the officers brandished their spontoons in front, or who rushed in
night attack on the advanced redoubt at Yorktown, were not, like
modern European soldiers, brought together by conscription. They were,
nominally at least, volunteers. Unruly lads, mechanics out of work,
runaway apprentices, were readily drawn into the service by skillful
recruiting officers. Thirty years before, it had been the custom of
these landsharks to cheat or bully young men into the service. The raw
youth, arriving in Paris from the country, had been offered by a
chance acquaintance a place as servant in a gentleman's family, and
after signing an engagement had found himself bound for eight years to
serve His Majesty, in one of his regiments of foot. The young
barber-surgeon had waked from a carouse with the king's silver in his
pocket. Such things were still common in Germany. In France some
effort had been made to regulate the activity of the recruiting
officers. Complaints of force or fraud in enlistment received
attention from the authorities. The soldiers of Louis XVI., therefore,