Every officer had the liberty to inflict it, and in peace it was more cruel than in war.

For when peace came the King turned adrift such of his officers as were not noble; whatever their services might have been.

He would call a captain to the front of his company and say, 'He is not noble, let him go.' We were afraid of him somehow, and were cowed before him like wild beasts before their keeper.

I have seen the bravest men of the army cry like children at a cut of the cane; I have seen a little ensign of fifteen call out a man of fifty from the ranks, a man who had been in a hundred battles, and he has stood presenting arms, and sobbing and howling like a baby, while the young wretch lashed him over the arms and thighs with the stick.
In a day of action this man would dare anything.

A button might be awry THEN and nobody touched him; but when they had made the brute fight, then they lashed him again into subordination.