Ironically enough, if the king had just made his subjects happy then all his soldiers would have been bigger. Happy people have bigger kids, as several studies have shown. One of the happiest nations in the world is the Netherlands, and they are one of (if not the) tallest.

It was very interesting for me at over 6'2" to move to the Netherlands for a few years and suddenly I was just average height, if not on the small side.