But still the old jealousy of, and objection to, a large standing army was always recrudescing. On the accession of George II., the cadres only amounted to 17,760 men; and even this small body Mr. Pulteney, M.P., and “downright” Shippen in the House of Commons wished to be reduced to 12,000! The threat of war in 1739 stopped this; but the army was still at the mercy of political partisans, as the Duke of Argyll in his masterly attack on Sir Robert Walpole in the House of Lords conclusively proves. Another hundred years, too, had to pass by before “political services ceased to form the foundation of a claim for military preferment.” Flogging, long recognised, and rattan punishment, copied, like the absurd uniform and rigid drill, from much-admired Prussia, now became a permanently recognised institution, and so remained until 1878. It is always a wonder that a free country, such as England, ever permitted the correctional system of the crudest of all military despotisms, that of the so-called Frederick the Great, to live so long. But in this, as in uniform and drill, our army has always been more of a copyist of foreign methods than an originator. CHAPTER VII THE ARMY IN AMERICA--TO 1793 The period through which the army passed in the second part of the eighteenth century was distinguished by a marked change in the causes which led to the wars culminating in the separation of the American Colonies from the mother country. There were still Continental troubles in which English forces and others were engaged, where political, balance of power, or dynastic influences were as heretofore the primary causes of such campaigns. Minden is one of these; and, without entering into the whole of the military history of the time, the battle is especially noteworthy as adding additional laurels to those the army had already gathered. It may be well, therefore, to refer to it here, though somewhat out of the order of dates, as it is a more or less isolated factor in the general story. The Seven Years’ War broke out in 1756, and in 1759, after sundry successes, the French menaced Hanover. Their opponents, commanded by Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, were assisted by a small British contingent commanded by Lord George Sackville, consisting of six cavalry regiments: the Horse Guards, the 1st and 3rd Dragoon Guards, the 2nd, 6th, and 10th Dragoons; and six infantry battalions: the 12th, 20th, 23rd, 25th, 37th, and 51st. There was much manœuvring on the part of Prince Ferdinand, before he succeeded in drawing his opponents across the marshy Wastau brook which unites with the river Weser at Minden to form a deep re-entrant bend. Crossing both these streams by numerous temporary bridges, the French, under Contades, deployed some 50,000 troops against 36,000;[26] but the flanks of his line of battle being unsuitable for the action of cavalry, the whole of that arm, some 10,000 strong, and the flower of his army, was stationed in the centre.