We have shown that the course of education practised in France was so directed, as to turn the thoughts and hopes of the youth to a military life, and prepare them to obey the call of the conscription. This means of recruiting the military force, the most formidable ever established in a civilized nation, was originally presented to the Council of Five Hundred in 1798.[330] It comprehended a series of lists, containing the names of the whole youth of the kingdom, from the age of twenty to twenty-five, and empowering government to call them out successively, in such numbers as the exigencies of the state should require. The classes were five in number. The first contained those who were aged twenty years complete, before the commencement of the year relative to which the conscription was demanded, and the same rule applied to the other four classes of men, who had attained the twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth years successively, before the same period. In practice, however, the second class of conscripts were not called out until the first were actually in service, nor was it usual to demand more than the first class in any one year. But as the first class amounted to 60 or 80,000, so forcible and general a levy presented immense facilities to the government, and was proportionally burdensome to the people.[331]

This law, undoubtedly, has its general principle in the duty which every one owes to his country. Nothing can be more true, than that all men capable of bearing arms are liable to be employed in the defence of the state; and nothing can be more politic, than that the obligation which is incumbent upon all, should be, in the first instance, imposed upon the youth, who are best qualified for military service by the freshness of their age, and whose absence from the ordinary business of the country will occasion the least inconvenience. But it is obvious, that such a measure can only be vindicated in defensive war, and that the conduct of Buonaparte, who applied the system to the conduct of distant offensive wars, no otherwise necessary than for the satisfaction of his own ambition, stands liable to the heavy charge of having drained the very life-blood of the people intrusted to his charge, not for the defence of their own country, but to extend the ravages of war to distant and unoffending regions.

The French conscription was yet more severely felt by the extreme rigour of its conditions. No distinction was made betwixt the married man, whose absence might be the ruin of his family, and the single member of a numerous lineage, who could be easily spared. The son of the widow, the child of the decrepid and helpless, had no right to claim an exemption. Three sons might be carried off in three successive years from the same desolated parents; there was no allowance made for having already supplied a recruit. Those unable to serve were mulcted in a charge proportioned to the quota of taxes which they or their parents contributed to the state, and which might vary from fifty to twelve hundred francs. Substitutes might indeed be offered, but then it was both difficult and expensive to procure them, as the law required that such substitutes should not only have the usual personal qualifications for a military life, but should be domesticated within the same district as their principal, or come within the conscription of the year. Suitable persons were sure to know their own value, and had learned so well to profit by it, that they were not to be bribed to serve without excessive bounties. The substitutes also had the practice of deserting upon the road, and thus cheated the principal, who remained answerable for them till they joined their colours. On the whole, the difficulty of obtaining exemption by substitution was so great, that very many young men, well educated, and of respectable families, were torn from all their more propitious prospects, to bear the life, discharge the duties, and die the death, of common soldiers in a marching regiment.

There was no part of Napoleon's government enforced with such extreme rigour as the levy of the conscriptions.[332] The mayor, upon whom the duty devolved of seeing the number called for selected by lot from the class to whom they belonged, was compelled, under the most severe penalties, to avoid showing the slightest indulgence—the brand, the pillory, or the galleys, awaited the magistrate himself, if he was found to have favoured any individuals on whom the law of conscription had claims. The same laws held out the utmost extent of their terrors against refractory conscripts, and the public functionaries were every where in search of them. When arrested, they were treated like convicts of the most infamous description. Clothed in a dress of infamy, loaded with chains, and dragging weights which were attached to them, they were condemned like galley slaves to work upon the public fortifications. Their relations did not escape, but were often rendered liable for fines and penalties.

But perhaps the most horrible part of the fate of the conscript, was, that it was determined for life. Two or three, even four or five years spent in military service, might have formed a more endurable, though certainly a severe tax upon human life, with its natural prospects and purposes. But the conscription effectually and for ever changed the character of its victims. The youth, when he left his father's hearth, was aware that he was bidding it adieu, in all mortal apprehension, for ever; and the parents who had parted with him, young, virtuous, and ingenuous, and with a tendency, perhaps, to acquire the advantages of education, could only expect to see him again (should so unlikely an event ever take place) with the habits, thoughts, manners, and morals, of a private soldier.

But whatever distress was inflicted on the country by this mode of compulsory levy, it was a weapon particularly qualified to serve Buonaparte's purposes. He succeeded to the power which it gave the government, amongst other spoils of the Revolution, and he used it to the greatest possible extent.

The conscription, of course, comprehended recruits of every kind, good, bad, and indifferent; but chosen as they were from the mass of the people, without distinction, they were, upon the whole, much superior to that description of persons among whom volunteers for the army are usually levied in other countries, which comprehends chiefly the desperate, the reckless, the profligate, and those whose unsettled or vicious habits render them unfit for peaceful life. The number of young men of some education who were compelled to serve in the ranks, gave a tone and feeling to the French army of a very superior character, and explains why a good deal of intellect and power of observation was often found amongst the private sentinels. The habits of the nation also being strongly turned towards war, the French formed, upon the whole, the most orderly, most obedient, most easily commanded, and best regulated troops, that ever took the field in any age or country. In the long and protracted struggle of battle, their fiery courage might sometimes be exhausted before that of the determined British; but in all that respects the science, practice, and usages of war, the French are generally allowed to have excelled their more stubborn, but less ingenious rivals. They excelled especially in the art of shifting for themselves; and it was one in which the wars of Napoleon required them to be peculiarly adroit.[333]

The French Revolution first introduced into Europe a mode of conducting hostilities, which transferred almost the whole burden of the war to the country which had the ill-fortune to be the seat of its operations, and rendered it a resource rather than a drain to the successful belligerent. This we shall presently explain.

At the commencement of a campaign, nothing could be so complete as the arrangement of a French army. It was formed into large bodies, called corps d'armÉe, each commanded by a king, viceroy, mareschal, or general officer of high pretensions, founded on former services. Each corps d'armÉe formed a complete army within itself, and had its allotted proportion of cavalry, infantry, artillery, and troops of every description. The corps d'armÉe consisted of from six to ten divisions, each commanded by a general of division. The divisions, again, were subdivided into brigades, of which each, comprehending two or three regiments, (consisting of two or more battalions,) was commanded by a general of brigade. A corps d'armÉe might vary in number from fifty to eighty thousand men, and upwards; and the general of such a body exercised the full military authority over it, without the control of any one excepting the Emperor himself. There were very few instances of the Emperor's putting the officers who were capable of this high charge under command of each other; indeed, so very few, as might almost imply some doubt on his part, of his commands to this effect being obeyed, had they been issued. This system of dividing his collected forces into separate and nearly independent armies, the generals of which were each intrusted with and responsible for his execution of some separate portion of an immense combined plan, gave great celerity and efficacy to the French movements; and, superintended as it was by the master-spirit which planned the campaign, often contributed to the most brilliant results. But whenever it became necessary to combine two corps d'armÉe in one operation, it required the personal presence of Napoleon himself.

Thus organised, the French army was poured into some foreign country by forced marches, without any previous arrangement of stores or magazines for their maintenance, and with the purpose of maintaining them solely at the expense of the inhabitants. Buonaparte was exercised in this system; and the combination of great masses, by means of such forced marches, was one great principle of his tactics. This species of war was carried on at the least possible expense of money to his treasury; but it was necessarily at the greatest possible expenditure of human life, and the incalculable increase of human misery. Napoleon's usual object was to surprise the enemy by the rapidity of his marches, defeat him in some great battle, and then seize upon his capital, levy contributions, make a peace with such advantages as he could obtain, and finally return to Paris.

In these dazzling campaigns, the army usually began their march with provisions, that is, bread or biscuit for a certain number of days, on the soldiers' backs. Cattle also were for a time driven along with them, and slaughtered as wanted. These articles were usually provided from some large town or populous district, in which the troops might have been cantoned. The horses of the cavalry were likewise loaded with forage, for the consumption of two or three days. Thus provided, the army set forward on its expedition by forced marches. In a very short time the soldiers became impatient of their burdens, and either wasted them by prodigal consumption, or actually threw them away. It was then that the officers, who soon entertained just apprehensions of the troops suffering scarcity before another regular issue of provisions, gave authority to secure supplies by what was called la maraude, in other words, by plunder. To ensure that these forced supplies should be collected and distributed systematically, a certain number of soldiers from each company were despatched to obtain provisions at the villages and farm-houses in the neighbourhood of the march, or of the ground upon which the army was encamped. These soldiers were authorised to compel the inhabitants to deliver their provisions without receipt or payment; and, such being their regular duty, it may be well supposed that they did not confine themselves to provisions, but exacted money and articles of value, and committed many other similar abuses.

It must be owned, that the intellectual character of the French, and the good-nature which is the real ground of their national character, rendered their conduct more endurable under the evils of this system than could have been expected, provided always that provisions were plenty, and the country populous. A sort of order was then observed, even in the disorder of the maraude, and pains were taken to divide regularly the provisions thus irregularly obtained. The general temper of the soldiery, when unprovoked by resistance, made them not wholly barbarous; and their original good discipline, the education which many had received, with the habits of docility which all had acquired, prevented them from breaking up into bands of absolute banditti, and destroying themselves by their own irregularities. No troops except the French could have subsisted in the same manner; for no other army is sufficiently under the command of its officers.

But the most hideous features of this system were shown when the army marched through a thinly-peopled country, or when the national character, and perhaps local facilities, encouraged the natives and peasants to offer resistance. Then the soldiers became animated alike by the scarcity of provisions, and irritated at the danger which they sometimes incurred in collecting them. As their hardships increased, their temper became relentless and reckless, and, besides indulging in every other species of violence, they increased their own distresses by destroying what they could not use. Famine and sickness were not long of visiting an army which traversed by forced marches a country exhausted of provisions. These stern attendants followed the French columns as they struggled on. Without hospitals, and without magazines, every straggler who could not regain his ranks fell a victim to hunger, to weather, to weariness, to the vengeance of an incensed peasantry. In this manner, the French army suffered woes, which, till these tremendous wars, had never been the lot of troops in hostilities carried on between civilized nations. Still Buonaparte's object was gained; he attained, amid these losses and sacrifices, and at the expense of them, the point which he had desired; displayed his masses to the terrified eyes of a surprised enemy; reaped the reward of his despatch in a general victory; and furnished new subjects of triumph to the Moniteur. So much did he rely upon the celerity of movement, that if an officer asked time to execute any of his commands, it was frequently his remarkable answer—"Ask me for any thing except time." That celerity depended on the uncompromising system of forced marches, without established magazines; and we have described how wasteful it must have been to human life.[334] But when the battle was over, the dead were at rest, and could not complain; the living were victors, and soon forgot their sufferings; and the loss of the recruits who had been wasted in the campaign, was supplied by another draught upon the youth of France, in the usual forms of the conscription.

Buonaparte observed, with respect to his army, an adroit species of policy. His mareschals, his generals, his officers of high rank, were liberally honoured and rewarded by him; but he never treated them with personal familiarity. The forms of etiquette were, upon all occasions, strictly maintained. Perhaps he was of opinion that the original equality in which they had stood with regard to each other, would have been too strongly recalled by a more familiar mode of intercourse. But to the common soldier, who could not misconstrue or intrude upon his familiarity, Buonaparte observed a different line of conduct. He permitted himself to be addressed by them on all suitable occasions, and paid strict attention to their petitions, complaints, and even their remonstrances. What they complained of was, in all instances, inquired into and reformed, if the complaints were just. After a battle, he was accustomed to consult the regiments which had distinguished themselves, concerning the merits of those who had deserved the Legion of Honour, or other military distinction. In these moments of conscious importance, the sufferings of the whole campaign were forgotten; and Napoleon seemed, to the soldiery who surrounded him, not as the ambitious man who had dragged them from their homes, to waste their valour in foreign fields, and had purchased victory at the expense of subjecting them to every privation, but as the father of the war, to whom his soldiers were as children, and to whom the honour of the meanest private was as dear as his own.

Every attention was paid, to do justice to the claims of the soldier, and provide for his preferment as it was merited. But with all this encouragement, it was the remark of Buonaparte himself, that the army no longer produced, under the Empire, such distinguished soldiers as Pichegru, Kleber, Moreau, Massena, Desaix, Hoche, and he himself above all, who, starting from the ranks of obscurity, like runners to a race, had astonished the world by their progress. These men of the highest genius, had been produced, as Buonaparte thought, in and by the fervour of the Revolution; and he appears to have been of opinion, that, since things had returned more and more into the ordinary and restricted bounds of civil society, men of the same high class were no longer created. There is, however, some fallacy in this statement. Times of revolution do not create great men, but revolutions usually take place in periods of society when great principles have been under discussion, and the views of the young and of the old have been turned, by the complexion of the times, towards matters of grand and serious consideration, which elevate the character and raise the ambition. When the collision of mutual violence, the explosion of the revolution itself actually breaks out, it neither does nor can create talent of any kind. But it brings forth, (and in general destroys,) in the course of its progress, all the talent which the predisposition to discussion of public affairs had already encouraged and fostered; and when that talent has perished, it cannot be replaced from a race educated amidst the furies of civil war. The abilities of the Long Parliament ceased to be seen under the Commonwealth, and the same is true of the French Convention, and the Empire which succeeded it. Revolution is like a conflagration, which throws temporary light upon the ornaments and architecture of the house to which it attaches, but always ends by destroying them.

It is said also, probably with less authority, that Napoleon, even when surrounded by those Imperial Guards, whose discipline had been so sedulously carried to the highest pitch, sometimes regretted the want of the old Revolutionary soldiers, whose war-cry, "Vive la Republique!" identified each individual with the cause which he maintained. Napoleon, however, had no cause to regret any circumstance which referred to his military power. It was already far too great, and had destroyed the proper scale of government in France, by giving the military a decided superiority over all men of civil professions, while he himself, with the habits and reasoning of a despotic general, had assumed an almost unlimited authority over the fairest part of Europe. Over foreign countries, the military renown of France streamed like a comet, inspiring universal dread and distrust; and whilst it rendered indispensable similar preparations for resistance, it seemed as if peace had departed from the earth for ever, and that its destinies were hereafter to be disposed of according to the laws of brutal force alone.