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provision was made for permanently supporting so dispro- CHAP, portionate a force by means of the conscription. The conscription originated in Prussia, when Prussia was under a mere military despotism; it was now carried to its utmost extent in France. The law declared that every Frenchman was a soldier, and bound to defend his country: but the principle of general law which the latter clause of the sentence announces served to introduce a code, whereby the whole youth of France were placed at the disposal of the government, to be sent whithersoever its ambitious projects might extend,..to the sands of Egypt, or the snows of Moscovy. A view of this system will equally elucidate the strength, the resources, and the character, of the French government during these disastrous years.

military

tion.

Under the new arrangement of its territory, France was System of divided into departments, districts, cantons, and municipalities. conscrip The departments were governed by a prefect, and a council of prefecture; the districts by a sub-prefect and his council; the cantons and municipalities by a mayor and town-court: to which were added, on the part of the general government, a commissary of police, and his adjuncts. There was also a military division of the country into thirty districts, each under a general of division, with a long establishment of commissaries, inspectors, and military police-officers. On a certain day in every year, notice was given in every municipality that all men, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, should within eight days appear at the town-house, and enrol their names: if any individual failed, not he alone, but his family also, were subject to a criminal prosecution. The names of the absent were to be enrolled by their nearest relations, and concealment was thus rendered impossible: the man who was not in his usual domicile being doubly registered; as an absentee in one place, and as a temporary sojourner in another. From these registers the

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CHAP. returns for the conscription were prepared in five lists, according to age, and the names in each were carefully arranged according to seniority. The civil officers by whom these lists. were formed were responsible for any omission; and, as a farther precaution, every village and every house was visited at stated and at unexpected times, publicly and secretly. After such preparations, the machine was easily put in motion. The war-minister gave notice what number of men were required; the senate voted them from the conscripts of that year which was next in course, and the prefects were ordered to provide their contingents: they called upon the sub-prefects; these again upon the municipalities; and within sixteen days from the date of the prefect's orders, the ballot took place. Tickets, numbered to the amount of all who were upon the list, were put into the urn, and the men were registered in the order of the numbers which they had drawn. The first numbers, up to the sum required, were for immediate service; the others were to be called upon in sequence, in case of necessity only: but, under Buonaparte, that necessity always existed. They were marched off under military escort, and distributed among the artillery, cuirassiers, dragoons, infantry, or sappers and miners, according to their stature and bodily strength.

Exemp

tions.

The infirmities which might be pleaded as exemptions were severely scrutinized, and were determined by the law with critical inhumanity inveterate asthma, habitual spitting of blood, and incipient consumption only entitled the sufferer to a provisional dispensation. Men who were incapable of enduring the fatigues of war, or who might be more useful to the state in pursuing their own employments or their studies, were allowed to provide substitutes or purchase an exemption by the payment of three hundred francs; but this was an early law, and it is not likely that the pecuniary alternative was ever accepted when the waste

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of men became excessive. The substitute was required to be a CHAP. Frenchman, between twenty-five and forty years of age (and therefore not liable to the conscription), not below five feet one, Substitutes. of a strong constitution, and in robust health. In addition to his own name, he was to take that of the person for whom he served, and by that name he was to be known in the army: the principal was still upon the list, and subject to be called upon if his representative deserted or withdrew; nor could he obtain a definitive exemption unless he produced proof that the substitute had either been killed or disabled in service, or had served the full time which the laws required: during war the term was indefinite, in peace it was fixed at five years. During the latter years of Buonaparte's government men who could be admitted as substitutes were necessarily so rare, that their price rose from two hundred to a thousand Napoleons.

ments for

conscrip

No constituted authority, no branch of the civil or military Punishadministration, might retain in its service a conscript who was evading the called upon in his turn. No Frenchman, being, or having been, liable to the conscription, could hold any public office, or receive any public salary, or exercise public rights, or receive a legacy, or inherit property, unless he produced a certificate that he had conformed to the law, and either was actually in service, or had obtained his dismissal, or was legally exempted, or that his services had not been required. They who failed to join the army within the time prescribed were deprived of their civil rights, a circular description of their persons was sent to all the chiefs of the gendarmerie throughout the empire, and they were pursued as deserters. Eleven depôts were appointed, where these refractory conscripts were disciplined in an uniform of disgrace, with the hair cut close: they were employed upon the fortifications, or in other hard labour, for which they received no additional pay or rations. This, however, was

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Punishments for

desertion.

CHAP. thought too lenient when the emperor's expenditure of men became more lavish, and it was then decreed that such offenders A were to be punished as if they had actually deserted. deserter was condemned to a fine of fifteen hundred francs, chargeable upon whatever property might fall to him at any future time, if he was not able to pay it immediately. In addition to this fine, the punishment for the simple offence of deserting into the interior was three years' labour upon the public works. The culprits wore a particular uniform, and were allowed shoes; their heads were shaved every eighth day, and they were not permitted either to shave their beards or to cut them. Their rations were the soldiers' bread, rice, or dry pulse; their pay half that of a common labourer; and of this a third was withheld till they should have served out their time, a third was deducted for their expenses, and the remainder was all which they had for purchasing better food than their miserable allowance. He who had deserted from the army, or a frontier place, or in a direction toward the enemy, or with a companion, or who had scaled ramparts in effecting his escape, was sentenced to public labour for ten years, with a bullet of eight pounds weight fastened to him by a chain eight feet long. He was to work eight hours a day during five months, ten during the better part of the year, and to be chained in prison all the rest of the time he wore wooden shoes, and an uniform differing both in colour and fashion from that of the troops; his mustachios, as well as his head, were shaved every eight days; his beard was never shaved, nor shorn, nor shortened; his rations and pay were like those of the common deserters, because, indeed, life could not be supported upon less. The punishment of death, which was inflicted upon those who had deserted to the enemy, and in other aggravated cases, was mercy when compared to this.

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this system.

By the operation of this system the French were made a CHAP. military nation, a change equally inconsistent with their own welfare and with the safety and independence of the surround- Effect of ing states. Beginning at first with all men between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, enrolling the whole rising generation afterwards as they attained to manhood, and retaining all who were embodied as long as their services were required, in other words, as long as they were capable of serving,..the government had thus brought within its disposal every man who was capable of bearing arms; and this was the tremendous power which Buonaparte found already organized to his heart's desire when he assumed the supreme authority. Such power might have kindled ambition in an ordinary mind; no wonder then that the most ambitious of the human race, when he saw himself in possession of it, supposed universal empire to be within his reach. His supply of men might well appear inexhaustible: there was neither difficulty nor expense in raising them; he had only to say what number he required, and the rest was mere matter of routine. After his armies had once passed the frontier, there was no cost in maintaining them; war was made armade to support itself. This system also had been matured for him itself. by his republican predecessors. The contributions which he levied upon conquered or dependent states discharged the soldiers' pay in an ally's country their subsistence was expected as a proof of alliance; in an enemy's it was taken as the right of war. And the perfection of the French commissariat was admired and extolled in England as a masterpiece of arrangement by the blind admirers of France, who either did not or would not perceive how easy the duties of that department were made, when every demand was enforced by military power, and nothing was paid for.

to support