But the King, though he fostered profitable sentiment, was far too wary to trust to it over much. He had other expedients for attracting nobles to the colours and for keeping the ranks full. He withdrew his royal favour from those of noble birth who were so unpatriotic as either to avoid his service or to leave it in a few years. The social arrangements which have been outlined above were yet more powerful in securing a supply of officers. The nobles were numerous, poor, and brave. They must find some career, and what other lay open to them? When Frederick’s father began to impress cadets, many parents even tried to prove that they were not of noble birth. But with them, as with many other classes of the discontented, firm government in the long run brought cheerful obedience. “The King’s bread is the best,” became their maxim. Frederick marked his appreciation of their worth by rarely giving commissions to men of lower rank. It was not the least of his gains that he thus acquired military authority over the most influential class in his dominions. He made sure of the common man by stern discipline. Although the Prussian members of each regiment were bound together by social and local bonds, by no means all of them were willing to fight for the King. They were conscripts, not volunteers, and they were released only when they became unfit to serve. Not a few deserted to the enemy under stress of war. The foreigners who were their comrades under arms were a varied host. Some were mercenaries, some deserters from the enemy, some keen fighting men who were glad to serve in the finest army in the world. Many had been kidnapped or pressed or tempted into the Prussian service by false promises or admitted when their own countries were too hot to hold them. Frederick’s directions to Prussian commanders for the march are based on the assumption that many of the men will desire to run away. When in time of war some of the peasants volunteered, the astonished King asked what finer deed the Romans of old had performed. His standing remedy against disintegration was “to make the discipline so stern and the punishments so severe that the men would learn to fear their own superiors more than the enemy.” “The punishments were barbarous,” writes Professor Martin Philippson. “Thrashing was customary. Imprisonment, sharpened by all kinds of chastisement and torment, was not rare. The most terrible of all was running the gauntlet, in which the offender was stripped to the waist and forced to run from twenty to thirty times through a living lane of hundreds of soldiers armed with rods, while the officers looked to it that every man laid on lustily. Hundreds of wretched men gave up the ghost under these tortures.” Yet of the rank and file it may be said with more confidence than of any other section of Frederick’s subjects that they loved the King.