Besides these there were rope-dancers, fire-eaters, jugglers, acrobats, and numerous ballad singers and vendors. But what gave the greatest feeling of independence to the citizen in 1618 was his martial aptitude--almost every one had some practice in the use of weapons. Every large city had an arsenal; even the heavy artillery on the fortifications were served by the citizens, who, as a body, were under ordinary circumstances superior to the young companies of besieging soldiers. Magdeburg would have made a stronger resistance, if feeling of duty and discipline had not already become weaker among the citizens than in former sieges, in one of which the maiden of the City Arms so valiantly defended her garland. Besides the city train bands, there was in most of the Circles of the Empire a regular militia for the defence of the country. About every tenth man in the city or country was drawn, regularly armed, paid during service, and appointed for the internal defence of the frontiers of the country. The beginning of the Landwehr dates from the sixteenth century. This regulation was recommended by military theorists as most efficient, and from time to time it was renewed. It was introduced by the States in Saxony in 1612, and renewed in 1618; there were to be altogether in the Electorate nine thousand men. The privates were to receive a daily pay of four groschen, and the serjeants ten and a half, and the cost was distributed among the houses. But this militia was found very useless in the war. The discipline was much too lax; the industrious citizen endeavoured to withdraw himself when danger did not threaten his own city; the consequence was, that many unsettled people were scouring the country in arms. If they were required by the community to defend the ploughs in the field against roving marauders, they demanded a special gratification, or they evaded it, and very soon they became more a plague than a benefit to their own country.