Army surveillance discipline was compromised by the sentries enforcing it.

Evidence

As was shown with the apparently trivial example of sentry guards mentioned in chapters 4 and 5 the policy of surveillance that was crucial for the disciplining of the army was never as neatly and unproblematically implemented as Foucault or Mitchell have argued: it was constantly compromised by the activity of the one minor agent who was supposed to carry it through, the sentry guard. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 1667

Categorization

• XREF: Bears directly on the reader’s interest in army performance: discipline failure at the lowest enforcement level.