To the countryfolk, on the other hand, the King looked for his army. They were divided into two great classes; the nobles, who alone might become officers, and the peasants, who were still serfs tied to the estates of their lords. The nobles enjoyed exemption from ordinary taxes and paid only a small feudal rent to the Crown. Upon the shoulders of the peasants fell the heavy burden of the “Contribution,” a direct payment in money. Neither they nor the nobles might become craftsmen or engage in commerce. The barrier which separated the two classes of countryfolk was as firm as that which separated both from the dwellers in towns. New patents of nobility were rarely granted by the King, but all the children of a noble were nobles. Even the soil was divided into noble-lands and peasant-lands, and neither class might acquire the portion of the other. It is easy to see that this system of rigid class division was unlikely to ensure to every Prussian the career for which he was best fitted. In Frederick’s eyes, however, it possessed two supreme merits, and for the sake of these he was willing to make it eternal. It provided a gigantic army and it contained no germ of opposition to the Crown. Prussia under Frederick was practically one vast camp. Every social class had a military function to perform. The King was commander-in-chief and paymaster-general. The nobles formed the corps of officers. Some of the peasants were called on to bear arms while the rest laboured in the fields to produce the necessary supplies of food. The burghers, who have been styled the commissariat department of the army, armed and clothed the troops, and helped to provide funds with which to hire the foreigners of whom half the army was composed. It was possible to entrust to foreigners so great a share in Prussian wars because the framework of the army was of iron. The native half of each regiment was drawn from a particular locality. It consisted of peasants led by the lords whom they had been accustomed from infancy to obey. The regiment was ruled in a fashion almost patriarchal by a commander who gave it his own name. Under this system _esprit de corps_ became a passion, and none knew better than Frederick how to turn it to good account. To the army “Prussia” was a name which within the memory of their fathers had been arbitrarily assigned to the dominions of the elder branch of the House of Hohenzollern. Where national patriotism was in its infancy, local patriotism was all the more intense, and it was by playing upon this that Frederick, the Father of all his lands, called forth many marvellous feats of arms.