Page:Surprising adventures and sufferings of Frederick Baron Trenck.pdf/4

4 I was presented to the King, to whom I was known since the year 1746, as one of the best scholars in the university. He was much pleased with the pertinence of my answers; my stature for I was tall; and my manly assurance. I obtained permission to enter into the Life Guards in quality of cadet, with promises of speedy promotion.

The Life Guards were at that time the pattern and school of all the Prussian Cavalry. They consisted only of one squadron of men chosen from the whole army. Their uniform was the most brilliant in Europe; the dress and accoutrements of an officer costing two thousand crowns. The cuirass, which was covered with silver, its appendages and the horses’ furniture, amounted alone to seven hundred.

This squadron consisted only of six officers and an hundred and forty-four men; but we had always fifty or sixty supernumeraries, and as many spare horses; for the King took all the handsomest men he met with into his guards. The officers were the best in the army. The king instructed them himself, and afterwards ordered them to drill the rest of the Cavalry.

The duty of no other soldier in the world is so hard as was that of a Life Guardsman. At the time I was in this service, I had not eight hours rest in eight days. The exercise used to begin at four o’clock in the morning, when we tried all the new evolutions the King was desirous of introducing. We leaped ditches, three, four, five, and six feet wide, and even more, till somebody or other broke his neck. Sometimes, in a morning’s exercise, we had several men and horses