If in Prussia the predilection of the King for uniforms, and under Frederic the Great the glory of the army reconciled the Brandenburg conscript to the King's coat, this was far less the case in the rest of Germany. To the citizen and peasant's son in Prussia who had to serve, it was a misfortune, but in the rest of Germany a disgrace. Various were the attempts made to evade it by mutilation, but the chopping off a finger did not exempt, and was besides as severely punished as desertion. In 1790, a rich peasant lad in Lower Saxony, who by the hatred of the bailiff had been forced into service, was ashamed to enter his native village in uniform. Whenever he obtained leave, he stopped outside the village and had his peasant's dress brought to him, and a maid carried the uniform through the village in a covered basket. Desertions, therefore, did not cease; they were the common evil of all armies, and were not to be prevented by running the gauntlet the first and second time, nor even the third with shot. In the garrisons the roll-call, which was incessant, and quiet espionnage of individuals, were insufficient means. But when the cannon gave the signal that a man had escaped, the alarm was given to the surrounding villages, mounted foresters and troopers trotted along all the roads, detachments of foot and horse scoured the country as far as the frontiers, and information was given to the villages. Whoever brought in a deserter received in Prussia ten thalers, but whoever did not stop him, had to pay double that sum as a punishment. Every soldier who went along the high road, was obliged to have a pass; in Prussia, by the orders of Frederic William I., every subject, whether high or low, was bound to detain every soldier he met on the road to inquire after his papers. It was a terrible thing, for a little artisan lad to be brought to a standstill in a lonely street by a desperate six-foot grenadier, with musket and sword, who could not be passed. Still worse was it when whole troops prepared for flight, like those twenty Russians of the Dessauer regiment at Halle, who, in 1734, obtained leave to attend the Greek service at Brandenburg, where the King kept a patriarch for his numerous Russian Grenadiers. But the twenty were determined to make a pilgrimage back to the golden cross of the holy Moscow; they passed with great staves through the Saxon villages, and were with difficulty caught by the Prussian Hussars, brought back by Dresden to their garrison, and there mildly treated. But yet more grievous was it to the King, that even among his own Potsdamers a conspiracy broke out, when his tall Servian Grenadiers had sworn to burn the town, and to desert with arms in their hands. There were people of importance at the bottom of it; the executions, cutting off of noses, and other modes of punishment, occasioned the King a loss of 30,000 thalers. In the field, also, a system of tactical regulations were necessary to restrain