Nakhtusiti had been unable to drive them out, and Ramses had not ventured on the task immediately after his accession. The military institutions of the country had become totally disorganised after the death of Minephtah, and that part of the community responsible for furnishing the army with recruits had been so weakened by the late troubles, that they were in a worse condition than before the first Libyan invasion. The losses they had suffered since Egypt began its foreign conquests had not been repaired by the introduction of fresh elements, and the hope of spoil was now insufficient to induce members of the upper classes to enter the army. There was no difficulty in filling the ranks from the fellahin, but the middle class and the aristocracy, accustomed to ease and wealth, no longer came forward in large numbers, and disdained the military profession. It was the fashion in the schools to contrast the calling of a scribe with that of a foot-soldier or a charioteer, and to make as merry over the discomforts of a military occupation as it had formerly been the fashion to extol its glory and profitableness. These scholastic exercises represented the future officer dragged as a child to the barracks, "the side-lock over his ear.--He is beaten and his sides are covered with scars,--he is beaten and his two eyebrows are marked with wounds,--he is beaten and his head is broken by a badly aimed blow; he is stretched on the ground" for the slightest fault, "and blows fall on him as on a papyrus,--and he is broken by the stick." His education finished, he is sent away to a distance, to Syria or Ethiopia, and fresh troubles overtake him. "His victuals and his supply of water are about his neck like the burden of an ass,--and his neck and throat suffer like those of an ass,--so that the joints of his spine are broken.--He drinks putrid water, keeping perpetual guard the while." His fatigues soon tell upon his health and vigour: "Should he reach the enemy,--he is like a bird which trembles.--Should he return to Egypt,--he is like a piece of old worm-eaten wood.--He is sick and must lie down, he is carried on an ass,--while thieves steal his linen,--and his slaves escape." The charioteer is not spared either. He, doubtless, has a moment of vain-glory and of flattered vanity when he receives, according to regulations, a new chariot and two horses, with which he drives at a gallop before his parents and his fellow-villagers; but once having joined his regiment, he is perhaps worse off than the foot-soldier. "He is thrown to the ground among thorns:--a scorpion wounds him in the foot, and his heel is pierced by its sting.--When his kit is examined,--his misery is at its height." No sooner has the fact been notified that his arms are in a bad condition, or that some article has disappeared, than "he is stretched on the ground--and overpowered with blows from a stick." This decline of the warlike spirit in all classes