The Swiss, it is well known, furnished troops to several European powers, according to certain treaties or capitulations, as they were called, agreed upon between those powers and the various cantons. The chief power having Swiss troops in its service was France, who had retained them ever since the treaty made between the Swiss and Louis XI. Under Louis XIV the number of Swiss troops in the French service amounted to 28,000 men; but, in 1790, at the beginning of the French Revolution, there were not more than 15,000, who were divided into twelve regiments. Six Swiss regiments were in the service of Holland, four were serving in Piedmont, four at Naples, and four in Spain: the pope had also a small body guard of Swiss. There has been considerable misconception abroad upon this subject; the cantons have been represented as selling their countrymen as if they were cattle, while the truth is that the men were not sold, but enlisted of their own accord for a certain period of time, receiving the bounty money.[d] Agriculture was advanced by the cultivation of clover and of other artificial grasses, and by the consequent increase of pasturage and manure. Many districts which had formerly been regarded as unfruitful were thus rendered remarkable for fertility. The processes of manuring, and many other processes in Swiss cultivation, became a model for foreign agriculturists. Arts and manufactures were extended more and more widely. In the canton of Bern, in the Thurgau, and elsewhere, industry was employed on native materials in the linen manufacture; in Zurich, St. Gall, and Appenzell, in working up imported wool in spinning, weaving, and cotton printing. Silk manufactures occupied Zurich and Bâle, and the latter town enriched itself by its riband manufacture. Trade in all its branches throve at Geneva; where a wholesale watch manufacture was conducted, and from whence watchmaking was soon spread through the district of Neuchâtel, where it suggested many other mechanical processes.