[17] Desertion became easy from the extension
of the French dominion and from the circumstance of so many
belligerent powers around requiring good soldiers; and no odium
attended desertion, where everything was done to degrade, and nothing
to exalt the soldier in his own esteem and that of society.
Instead of following the course of events and rendering the condition
of the soldier less odious by increasing his pay and hope of
promotion, and diminishing the labour and disgrace to which he was
liable, and thereby filling her regiments with voluntary soldiers
when involuntary ones could no longer be obtained, the Government of
France reduced the soldier's pay to one-half the rate of wages which
a common labourer got on the roads, and put them under restraints and
restrictions that made them feel every day, and every hour, that they
were slaves. To prevent desertions by severe examples under this
high-pressure System, they had recourse first to slitting the noses
and cutting off the ears of deserters, and, lastly, to shooting them
as fast as they could catch them.[18] But all was in vain; and
Frederick of Prussia alone got fifty thousand of the finest soldiers
in the world from the French regiments, who composed one-third of his
army, and enabled him to keep all the rest in that state of
discipline that improved so much its efficiency, in the same manner
as the deserters from the Roman legions, which took place under
similar circumstances, became the flower of the army of
Mithridates.
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