This chapter studies pre-industrial military labour from the standpoint of a hitherto largely unexplored occupation: military provosts. Provosts were responsible for carrying out corporal punishments and maintaining discipline in regiments. Throughout different armies in Europe, the number of officers in charge of such tasks had increased by the late seventeenth century. Besides opening an intriguing perspective on short-term jobs in the military, the history of provosts provides a vantage point to a larger category of people who dealt out corporal punishments. Using a database of 342 provosts collected from general muster rolls, the chapter provides a sociohistorical analysis of provosts who served in regiments stationed in Finland until the end of Swedish rule in 1809. The chapter demonstrates that while provosts formed a heterogeneous category, they typically had a military background. They often entered the job at an older age and with fewer craft skills than rank-and-file soldiers, and it was not uncommon for provosts to serve until the end of their lives. Serving as a provost thus appears to have been one possible strategy for aged or discharged soldiers, often in a vulnerable economic position, to maintain themselves in a society with a rudimentary poor relief system.