Lacking this vital information, the conscripting officers, on receiving their orders, would descend upon any given village and seize as many men as could be found "without any order, arrangement, inscription, or lot-drawing." These men would then be tied together with ropes around their necks in groups of six or eight. They would then be marched off to the training camps escorted by the "conscription gang." leaving behind a "heart-stricken, sorrowful group" of wives, mothers and children wailing and screaming and hopelessly trying to prevent the soldiers from taking away their men.

XREF: Connects to the earlier claim at loc 410 that conscription gangs ignored age and fitness, wasting most recruits — this highlight supplies the vivid mechanics of those arbitrary seizures. Builds on: "Egyptian governors' propaganda tours augmented the army's deterrence value."

Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed…, loc. 469