things on; and if a pebble got in through a button-hole, the soldier was
tempted to leave it in his shoe, until it had made his foot sore.
Uniforms were seldom renewed. The coat was expected to last three years,
the hat two, the breeches one.[Footnote: Babeau, _Vie militaire_,
i. 93. _Encyc. meth. Art milit._ i. 589 (_Chaussure_) ii. 179.
Susane, ix. (_Plates_). See also a very interesting little book by
a great man, Maurice de Saxe, _Les Reveries_.]

All parts of the soldier's uniform were tight and close fitting. I think
that this was learned from the Prussians. The ideal of the army as a
machine seems to have originated, or at least to have been first worked
out in Germany. Such an ideal was a natural consequence of the military
system of the age. Of the soldiers of Frederick the Great only one-half
were his born subjects. Other German princes enlisted as many foreigners
as they could. In the French army were many regiments of foreign
mercenaries. Nowhere was the pay high, or the soldier well treated.
Desertion was very common. Under these circumstances mechanical
precision became an invaluable quality. The soldier must be held in very
strict bands, for if left free he might turn against the power that
employed him.

The connection between a rigid system in which nothing is left to the
soldier's intelligence or initiative, and a tight uniform, which
confines his movements, is both deep and evident. If a man is never to
have his own way, his master will inevitably find means to make him
needlessly uncomfortable. As the modern owner of a horse sometimes
diminishes the working power of the animal by check-reins and
martingales, so the despot of the eighteenth century buckled and
buttoned his military cattle into shape, and made them take unnatural
paces. But even under these disadvantages the French soldiers