Paul came to the throne ambitious of signalizing himself as a reformer, but his mind was far too confined to perform so hard a task successfully. In the civil department, he did little but reverse all that his mother had done; in the military, his attention was confined to insignificant details. His great object was to conform the dress and exercise of the whole army to the model which he had been so long and anxiously forming at Gatschina. The very morning after his accession he commenced this important task by establishing what he called his Wachtparade, to which every morning he devoted three or four hours. However severe the cold, he was still there, dressed in a plain green uniform, with thick boots and a large hat, for he placed his pride in bearing a Russian winter without furs; stamping about to warm himself, with his bald head bare and his snub–nose turned up to the wind, one hand behind his back, and the other beating time with his cane, and crying _Raz, dwa_—_Raz, dwa_, one, two—one, two—surrounded by gouty old generals, who dared neither to absent themselves nor to dress warmer than their master. The old Russian uniform was handsome, suited to the climate, and could be put on in an instant: it consisted merely of a jacket and large trousers, which enabled the wearer to protect himself by any quantity of interior clothing, without injury to uniformity of appearance. The hair was worn long, and falling round the neck, so that it defended the ears from cold. Paul introduced the old–fashioned German uniform, which every true Russian hated for its own sake, and despised as holding the Germans in supreme contempt; he encased their legs in long tight gaiters, made them powder and curl their hair, and hung false pigtails from their necks. Marshal Suvarof, on receiving orders to introduce these changes, together with the measure of the men’s curls and pigtails (for everything under Paul was done by measure), observed that “hairpowder was not gunpowder, nor curls cannon, nor pigtails bayonets;” and this witticism is said to have cost him his recall.