In rusty inaction however neither could Dörfling nor his sword ingloriously lie. To cut throats was accounted a more honourable occupation than to cut cloth, and the “General” was not at all disposed to retire as yet from business; particularly as his renown increased with the number of his fields. He was absent from scarcely one, if from one, of Frederick William’s great battles, fought up to the year 1695, against Swedes, Poles, and French. As he grew old He grew less nice as to the complexion of the quarrel in which he was engaged; nor would the circumstances of the time admit of this. At the best a soldier is but a legalized and hired _bravo_, bound to sustain all the quarrels of the master whose livery he wears. Such servants must serve and be silent; strike hard, and speak little, except to the purpose in hand. To do Dörfling justice, he performed this sort of duty after a most exemplary fashion. He preferred feeling that the cause in which he fought was a good one; and if it were not, he threw the responsibility on his employers, and took his share of the plunder with an easy conscience. His share was often to a very considerable amount; and long before he died, he was accounted as rich as all the retired tailors and living field-marshals in Europe put together. As morality then went, he had fairly earned it all; and truth to tell, it had not all been won on the battle-field, or in towns given up to plunder, or at hearths devoted to devastation. He gained no inconsiderable portion by diplomacy; that is, not by mendacity in courteous phrases and elegant circumventing of the truth, but by serving the monarch by whom he was accredited with honest fidelity, irrespective of how he might offend those _to_ whom he was commissioned.