"Fools are plentiful. Look here, I have known this Boulainvilliers of
whom you were speaking; I knew him well. At first the peasants were
armed with pikes; would you believe it, he took it into his head to
form them into pike-men. He wanted to drill them in crossing pikes and
repelling a charge. He dreamed of transforming these barbarians into
regular soldiers. He undertook to teach them how to round in the
corners of their squares, and to mass battalions with hollow squares.
He jabbered the antiquated military dialect to them; he called the
chief of a squad a _cap d'escade_,--which was what corporals under
Louis XIV, were called. He persisted in forming a regiment of all
those poachers. He had regular companies whose sergeants ranged
themselves in a circle every evening, and, receiving the sign and
countersign from the colonel's sergeant, repeated it in a whisper to
the lieutenant's sergeant, who repeated it to his next neighbor, who in
his turn transmitted it to the next man, and so on from ear to ear
until it reached the last man. He cashiered an officer for not
standing bareheaded to receive the watchword from the sergeant. You
may imagine how he succeeded. This simpleton could not understand that
peasants have to be led peasant fashion, and that it is impossible to
transform rustics into soldiers. Yes, I have known Boulainvilliers."
They walked along a few steps, each one engrossed in his own thoughts.