was generally taken from among the convicts, and who was allowed to choose between punishment and this dishonourable office, could, if he fulfilled his office faithfully, become respectable when the banner was unfurled; he could then receive his certificate like any other gallant soldier, and no one could speak evil of him. There was one circumstance which distinguished the armies of the Thirty years' war from those of modern days, and which made their entrance into a province like an eruption of a heterogeneous race of strangers: each soldier, in spite of his short term of service in the field, was accompanied by his household. Not only the higher officers, but also the troopers and foot-soldiers, took their wives, and still more frequently their mistresses with them in a campaign. Women from all countries, adorned to the utmost of their power, followed the army, and sought entrance into the camp, because they had a husband, friend, or cousin there. At the mustering or disbanding of a regiment, even respectable maidens were, through the most cruel artifices, carried off by disorderly bands, and when the money was all spent, left sometimes without clothes, or at some carousal sold from one to another. The women who accompanied the soldiers cooked and washed for them, nursed the sick, provided them with drink, bore their blows, and on the march carried the children and any of the plunder or household implements which could not be conveyed by the baggage waggons. It is known that the King of Sweden on his first arrival in Germany would not suffer any such women in the camp; but after his return from Franconia, this strict discipline seems to have ceased. Whoever peruses the old church records of the village parishes will find sometimes the names of maidens, who, having been carried off, returned at the end of a year to their village home, and submitted themselves to the severest Church penances in order to die amongst the ruined population of their birthplace. The women of the camp were also under martial law. For great offences they were flogged, and driven out of the camp; the soldiers too were hard masters, and little of what had been promised them in the beginning was kept. The children accompanied the women. In the Swedish army military schools were established by Gustavus Adolphus, in which the children were instructed even in the camp. In these migratory schools strict military discipline prevailed, and a story, which cannot be warranted, is told of a cannon-ball having passed through a school in the Swedish camp, and having killed many of the children, but the survivors continued their sum in arithmetic. Some soldiers maintained one or more lads, a crafty, stubborn set of good-for-nothings, who waited upon their masters, cleaned their horses, sometimes bore their armour, and fed their shaggy dogs; nimble spies who prowled about far and near on the traces of opulent people, and on the look-out for concealed money.