Prussians (they have now, alas, come down to the insignificant size of a bandbox), raised a tremendous din. When in Berlin, at the parade of the Guards, some twenty drums were beaten, it made the windows shake. And among the hautboys there was a trumpet, equally a novel invention. The introduction of this instrument, created everywhere in Germany astonishment and disapprobation, for the trumpeters and kettle drummers of the holy Roman Empire formed a guild, which was protected by Imperial privileges, and would not tolerate a military trumpeter not belonging to it. But the King cared little for this. When the soldiers exercised, loaded, and fired, it was with a precision similar to witchcraft;[4] for after 1740, when Dessau introduced the iron ramrod, the Prussian shot four or five times in a minute,--afterwards he learnt to do it quicker; in 1773, five or six times; in 1781, six or seven times. The fire of the whole front of the battalion was a flash and a crack. When the salvos of the troops, exercising early in the morning under the windows of the King's castle, roared, the noise was so great that all the little Princes and Princesses were obliged to rise. But anyone who would have wished to form a right estimate of the soldiery should have gone to Potsdam. It had been a poor place, situated betwixt the Havel and a swamp; the King had made it into an architectural camp; no civilian could carry a sword there, not even the minister of state. There, round the King's castle, in small brick houses, which were built partly in the Dutch style, were stationed the King's giants,--the world-renowned Grenadier regiment. There were three battalions of 800 men, besides 600 to 800 reserves. Whoever among the Grenadiers was burdened with a wife, had a house to himself; of the other Colossuses, as many as four lodged with one landlord, who had to wait upon and provide food for them, for which he only received some stacks of wood. The men of this regiment never had leave, could carry on no public work, and drink no brandy; most of them lived like students at the high school, they occupied themselves with books, drawing and music, or worked in their houses.[5] They received extra pay, the tallest from ten to twenty thalers a month: all these fine men wore high plated grenadier caps, which made them about four hand breadths taller; the fifers of the regiment were Moors. Whoever belonged to the Colonel's own company of the regiment had his picture taken and hung up in the corridor of the castle of Potsdam. Many distinguished persons travelled to Potsdam to see these sons of Anak at parade or exercising. But it was remarked that such giants were scarcely useful for real war, and that it had never occurred to any one in the world to seek for extraordinary height as advantageous to soldiers; this wonder was reserved for Prussia. But anyone who staid in the country did well not to express this too openly. For the Grenadiers