CHAP.

I.

Former

constitution

of the French

army.

When Louis XVI. began his unhappy reign, the French army was still constituted upon a feudal principle which had been well adapted to the circumstances of later times. The corps were divided into proprietary companies, the captains of which, receiving pay proportionate to the required expenditure, provided every thing for the men, and raised them among their own vassals. The system was liable to abuse, but it had great advantages for if the captain should act upon no worthier motive than mere selfishness, it was his interest to be careful of his men, lest he should incur the expense of recruiting them; and it might reasonably be expected that he would treat them kindly to prevent desertion, and that he would spare no means for keeping them in health or restoring them in sickness. But there were better principles brought into action: the character both of the captain and of the men, in their native place, depended upon what each should report of the other; the men also knew that their fidelity would not be forgotten when their services were over, and that, if they fell, their good conduct would be remembered to the benefit of their family. Both parties were always in the presence of that little world, to the opinion of which they were more immediately amenable, and from which applause or condemnation would most sensibly affect them; and local and hereditary attachments, with all their strength and endurance, were thus brought into the service Change in of the state. The system was abolished when M. de St. Germaine was minister at war, for the sake of some sordid speculations upon clothing and victualling the troops. Subalterns, who were learning their profession, and acquiring the love and confidence of the soldiers, were disbanded as a sacrifice to the prevailing fashion of economical reform at the same time the penal discipline of the Germans was introduced,..a poor substi

troduced by

M. de St.
Germaine.

I.

tution for the old bonds of feeling which had been thus rudely CHAP. broken; and while all that was useful in the feudal constitution of the army was discarded, the worst part was retained by an order that no person should hold a commission unless he could prove the nobility of his family for four generations.

principle f

tionary ser

The republicans naturally went into the other extreme; and Levelling Buonaparte retained in his army the levelling principle which the revolu the revolution had introduced, because it is as congenial to a vice. despotism as to a democracy. No Frenchman could be made an officer (except in the artillery and engineers) till he had served three years as a private or sub-officer, unless he signalized himself in action. Perhaps the conscription, in its full extent, could never have been established without such a regulation. It rendered the military service less odious to the common people, who saw the children of the higher classes thus placed upon a level with themselves, and who were deceived into an opinion that merit was the only means of promotion: it brought also into the ranks a degree of intelligence and ambition not to be found there in armies which are differently composed; and those qualities were a security for discipline and perfect obedience under circumstances in which ordinary troops might have become impatient of continual privations. But it may well be doubted, on the other hand, whether the officers derived any important advantage from being trained in the ranks; and there can be no doubt that any such advantage would be dearly purchased by the degradation to which they were exposed; for, while the soldiery were materially improved by the mixture of well-born men who looked for promotion, these persons themselves were more materially injured by the inevitable effects of a system which levelled nothing so effectually as it did the manners, the moral feeling, and the sense of honour.

VOL. I.

E

CHAP.

I.

character of

French

army.

The policy of the old French government had often been detestably perfidious, and yet French history abounds with Honourable examples of high chivalrous sentiment; and nowhere were the old men to be found more sensible of what was due to their king, their country, and themselves, more alive to the sense of national and individual honour, than in the old French army. A fatal change was produced by the revolution. At a time when all persons of high birth were objects of persecution or suspicion, men from the lowest occupations were hurried into the highest posts in the army. Many of them were possessed of great military talents, and there were some few who in every respect proved worthy of their fortune. But there were others who never cast the slough of their old habits: no service was too bloody or too base for such agents; and, without feeling shame for the employment, or compunction for the crime, they were ready to obey their remorseless master in whatever he might command,.. the individual murders of Palm and the Duc d'Enghein, or the wholesale massacres of Jaffa and of Madrid, and those other atrocious actions in Portugal and Spain, of which this history records the progress and the punishment.

Honour not the principle

ism.

It was observed by Montesquieu, that honour, which is the of despot moving and preserving principle of monarchy, is not, and cannot be, the principle of despotism. Little did he apprehend how soon the state of his own country would exemplify the maxim. Among military bodies, honour had hitherto supplied, however imperfectly, yet in some degree, the place of a higher and nobler principle: but under the tyranny of Buonaparte, while his measures tended directly, as if they had been so designed, to subvert this feeling (already weakened by the false philosophy of the age), there remained nothing in its stead except that natural goodness, and that innate sense of rectitude, which, in certain happy natures, can never be totally extin

I.

guished, but which, in the vast majority of mankind, are easily CHAP. deadened and destroyed. The humaner studies, whereby the manners and the minds of men are softened, and the sacred precepts whereby they are purified and exalted and enlightened, had been the one neglected, and the other proscribed, during the revolution; and a generation had grown up, without literature, without morals, and without religion.

in the hands

of the clergy

before the

revolution.

Education had been chiefly in the hands of the Jesuits till Education the extinction of that famous company, the most active, the most intriguing, but in later times the most useful and the most calumniated of the monastic orders. After their dissolution, the system was continued upon the same plan, though perhaps with inferior ability, and the colleges were every where conducted by the clergy, either secular or regular. The massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, and the dragonades of Louis XIV, are crimes always to be remembered with unabating and unqualified detestation. Even at a later time it was evinced, in the shocking tragedies at Rouen and Thoulouse, that the same spirit existed in the French church, and was ready to blaze out. These execrable things were known over Europe; but it was not so generally known, that in the service of that same church which had dishonoured itself, and outraged human nature, by these actions, many thousand ministers were continually employed in training the young, visiting the sick, relieving the poor, consoling the penitent, and reclaiming the sinner; uninfluenced by love of gain, hope of applause or of advancement, or any worldly motive; but patiently and dutifully devoting themselves in obscurity to the service of their fellow-creatures and their God. The knowledge of their virtues was confined to the little sphere wherein their painful and meritorious lives were passed; and the world knew them not, till they were hunted out by the atheistical persecution, and

CHAP. were found to endure wrongs, insults, outrages, exile, and death, with the meekness of Christians, and the heroism of martyrs.

I.

Generally diffused in France.

Under these teachers, the doctrines of Christianity, according to the Romish church, and the duties of Christianity, wherein all churches are agreed, were the first things inculcated, as being the first things needful. Errors of doctrine, though of tremendous importance when men are actuated by blind zeal, are, among the quiet and humble-minded part of mankind, latent principles which produce no evil, unless some unhappy circumstance calls them into action: but the moral influence of religion is felt in the whole tenour of public and of private life. There were endowed schools and colleges, before the revolution, in every part of France, chiefly under the direction of persons who acted from motives of duty and conscience, rather than of worldly interest. The French court, in the midst of its own licentiousness, understood the importance of training up the people in a faith which tended to make them good subjects, and therefore it had provided for this great

* In this respect, more had been done in France nearly a century ago than has yet been attempted in England. It was not the fault of the government if any one of its subjects was ignorant of what it most concerns all men to know. The declaration of the king, of May 14, 1724, contains the following article: "Voulons qu'il soit etabli, autant qu'il sera possible, des maîtres et maîtresses d'école dans toutes les paroisses ou il n'y en a point, pour instruire tous les enfans de l'un et de l'autre sexe, des principaux mysteres et devoirs de la religion catholique, apostolique et Romaine ; les conduire à la messe tous les jours ouvriers, autant qu'il sera possible; leur donner les instructions dont ils ont besoin sur ce sujet, et avoir soin qu'ils assistent au service divin les dimanches et fêtes; comme aussi pour y apprendre à lire, et même écrire à ceux qui pourront en avoir besoin, le tout ainsi qu'il sera ordonné par les archevêques et evêques en conformité de l'art. 25 de l'edit de 1695, concernant la jurisdiction ecclesiastique. Voulons a cet effet que, dans les lieux ou il n'y aura pas d'autres fonds, il puisse etre imposé sur tous les habitans la somme qui manquera pour l'etablissement des dits maîtres et maîtresses, jusqu'a celle de 150 fr. par an. pour les maitresses.”