The officers were still an exclusive caste, which was almost entirely filled by the nobility; only a few not noble were in the Fusilier Battalions of Infantry and some among the Hussars. Under Frederic II., during the deficiency of men in the Seven Years' War, young volunteers of citizen origin were made officers. Then they were, at least in their pay, and frequently in the regimental lists, represented as noble; but after the peace, however great their capacity, they were almost always kept out of the privileged battalions. This did not improve under the later Kings. Only in the Artillery, in 1806, were the greater number of officers commoners, but on that account they were not considered as equals. It was a bitter irony that a French artillery officer should be the person, as Emperor of the French, to think of shattering the Prussian army and its State into pieces, at the same time in which they were contending in Prussia as to whether an officer of artillery should be received upon the general staff, and that the citizen Lieutenant-Colonel Schamhorst should be envied this privilege.[39] It was natural that all the failings of a privileged order should appear in full measure in the Prussian corps of officers. Pride towards the citizens, roughness to those under them, a deficiency in cultivation and good morals, and in the privileged regiments an unbridled insolence. It is a common complaint of contemporaries, that in the streets and societies of Berlin people were not secure from the insults of the _gens d'armes_, who were the _élite_ of the young nobility. Already did these arrogant men, at the beginning of the reign of Frederic William III., begin to be ashamed of wearing their old-fashioned uniform in society, and where they dared, lounged in with protruding white neck-ties, top-boots, and sword-sick.