bility of the sufferers, and to foment that rancorous animosity which, as we are assured, is generally entertained against their oppressors. Their hereditary antipathies, well known to the reader of history, and certainly not to be subdued by the events of our own era; the incalculable and heartstruck evils inflicted upon them by the republick and her armies, "the record of which is written in the flesh, and cannot be erased;" the ruin of their old and favourite institutions; the defacement of their monuments of superstition and art; the impoverishment of all classes, and the actual stoppage of every source of private comfort and publick prosperity.* Under the exacerbation of past and present wrongs, they send forth their youth with a reluctance which may be easily imagined, and of which their oppressors are fully aware. In the distribution of the levies among the departments, the contingent allotted to the incorporated territories is designedly small; but the proportion, nevertheless, of their refractory conscripts is astonishingly great; and the coercive measures for the punishment of disobedience, tend to increase the odium of the law itself. The common ends of political dominion, and the purposes of fiscal regulation, of the conscription, and of espionage, have given a monopoly of all offices of profit or trust to Frenchmen, whose conciliatory manners and affected moderation are insufficient to allay the jealousy resulting from their intrusion. As the Romans spread themselves over the provinces of their empire, these new conquerors inundate every country where the supremacy of their arms is felt and acknowledged. The Napoleon code and the language of its authors are established in the courts of Westphalia; and the governments and civil employments are administered almost exclusively by Frenchmen. Clerks have been draughted from the post offices of Paris to conduct similar establishments in Hamburgh and Dantzick. The customhouse officers of Bordeaux and Nantz regulate the whole Baltick coast. In the countries. nominally allied to France, which are treated with less lenity than the territories annexed to her empire, publick authority is every where exercised by Frenchmen; and what the rescript of the imperial legislator spares, private rapacity does not fail to devour. The members of the confederation of the Rhine are not subjected to the conscription; for, like the Romans, whose policy it was, not to make their subjects or allies as warlike as themselves, the modern pacificators exact no very copious supplies of men, but extort incredible contributions for the pay and clothing of their own troops. Mol. lien, the minister of the French treasury, in the printed budget of 1807, felicitates his emperour, on this subject, in the following terms. "Your majesty, sire, has protected your people, both from the scourge and the burdens of war. Your armies have added to their harvest of glory one of foreign contributions; which has assured their support, their clothing, and their pay." This compliment has nothing of the exaggeration of flattery. During the whole of the last campaign in the north, the treasury of Paris was overflowing. It is their object,f not merely to crush the armies, but

* See Brissot's address to his constituents for an official statement of the sufferings of Belgium during the revolution.

In the report of the minister of war, of July 1807, on the results of the war with Prussia, the number of Prussian prisoners is estimated at 5179 officers, and 123,418 privates and subalterns; and of killed, at about 50,000. Comparing this statement with the official report of Berlin in 1805, we should have about 60,000 men for the actual force of that once potent monarch. The report of Visconti, one of the directors of the "Musée Imperiale des Arts," deserves to be placed by the side of that of the war minister. It records 350 paintings; 242 rare and precious manuscripts, many of them oriental; 50 statues; 80 busts; 192 articles of bronze, armour, &c.

to ruin the finances of that quarter, in order that the means and the hope of future resistance, may be more completely extinguished. In the abovementioned Rationarium, the " Recettes extraordinaires et exterieures," are stated at more than thirty-two millions of livres; a sum exclusive of the exactions for the maintenance of the troops, the splendid establishments of the generals, and the gratification of private cupidity. This surplus is thrown into the list of "ways and means," to give colour to an idea publickly instilled, that foreign tribute will one day wholly exonerate the mas ters of the world from the burdens under which they now groan; as in the history of the Roman power, the military at all times, and, at one period, the whole states of Italy, were exempted from taxation.

If there be one principle of military discipline sanctioned by the universal experience of mankind, it is, that soldiers should be kept in a state of unre mitting activity. No great commander has ever appeared, with whom this was not a leading maxim; and it may be taken as an axiom, that no conquering army will ever issue from the walls of an idle garrison, or the ale houses of a populous city. In attending to the general analogy of our con. stitution, we must be at once sensible, that the soldier who, when at a distance from the theatre of war, is not inured to extreme labour, and the officer whose eye is not habitually exercised in contemplating the image of his profession, in somewhat of its native proportions, can never be well pre pared for the duties of a campaign. The science of command, and the mechanism of subordination, are not to be acquired by the mere manual training, or by the evolutions of small bodies of men; but must be studied on a large scale-in great camps and general movements. All the commen tators on the tacticks of the ancients, are struck with the importance which they attached to these objects; and represent the fatigues of their military, even in an interval of peace, as prodigies of human endurance. Augustus, Adrian, and Trajan employed the 170,000 men that constituted the peace establishment of their empire, in publick works; and it is to their labours that we may trace the great roads, bridges, and causeways, of which such magnificent vestiges are still extant in the southern parts of Europe. We need not expatiate upon the chances of success for a general who wages war with an army to which there is truly no other difference between the field of battle and the field of parade, than the effusion of blood.

There is no part of the Roman policy which the French have more studiously copied, than their attention to military discipline. It is their intention, as they express it, to form “* Une generation propre à la guerre et à la gloire"—" Un peuple guerrier porté à la gloire par ses lcis," &c. And for this purpose, the boys of all the lycées of the empire are made to march to their classes by the sound of the drum, and are taught the manual exercise during their hours of recreation. The exercises of the conscripts, after their union at the depots, are incessant, and of a nature to qualify them for the severest hardships. Not a moment of rest is allowed in the short interval between their incorporation and their march to the frontiers or to the enemy. The troops retained in France, which always consist of raw recruits, are collected in numerous bodies, and disciplined without intermis sion, upon a scale large enough to familiarize the private to the tumult of general action, and the officer to the use of the military coup d'œuil. The

as the spoil which, "the Protector of the Arts" had collected in the north during his campaign.

*

A generation devoted to war and to glory-A warlike people carried on to glory by their laws, &c.

camp of Boulogne is intended for this purpose; and should rather be imi. tated as a nursery for soldiers, than dreaded as an assemblage of invaders. Fatigue, and the penalties of misconduct, make a dreadful havock among the conscripts, whose youth and condition entail a peculiar delicacy of frame and habits. The waste of life, however, is not one of the objects of imperial solicitude. An unlimited control over the population of the country enables them to replace every deficiency,* and the survivers are poured into the field with bodies moulded into strength, and minds completely broken to the yoke. Thus, it was found that, with the aid of this probation, -of austere discipline, and of confidence in their commanders, the French troops supported the privations and severities of the winter campaign of Poland, better than their adversaries, who fought under every natural advantage.

The fear of punishment, the dread of shame, and the hope of reward, are all made to operate in their system with the strongest effect. Blows, which tend to weaken the sense of personal dignity, are never given; but, when the resources of reproach and disgrace prove insufficient, recourse is had to the utmost rigours of solitary imprisonment, and to the penalties we have detailed in a former part of this article. They know the full value, too, of that esprit de corps, which has so often changed poltroons into heroes; and employ every art to excite and maintain it, by minute divisions and invidious oppositions, employed particularly during the operations of a campaign. It requires little more than one or two years to make veterans of men thus fashioned and conducted; who, according to the bent of their genius, are precipitated in every movement, and led on impetuously to every attack; and whose murmurs, if time were given for the intrusion of discontent, would be lost in the tumults of incessant agitation. By the dispersion of the new conscripts, as we have seen, individually, among their veteran predecessors of a few campaigns, disaffection evaporates without danger to the government; and the former are gradually assimilated to their companions. Once without the sphere of their domestick attractions, with no hope of escape, and conscious that their destiny is irreversibly fixed, they accommodate themselves to circumstances with the facility which belongs to a temperament preeminently flexible and ardent. They are kept as much as possible beyond the frontiers, not merely for the purposes of conquest and rapine, but in order that they may the sooner lose the qualities of the citizen, and become altogether the creatures of the general. With a view to render this conversion more perfect, and more secure for the government, the principal leaders are frequently transferred from one corps to another, in order that no dangerous attachment to individuals may arise from a long.continuance in the same command. If their service has

* Were I to raise a new army, says Machiavel, I would choose them between 17 and 40;-to recruit an old one, I would always have them of 17. [Art. de la Guerre, liv. 1. c. 6.]

We have received a particular account of the toilsome and incessant exercises of a body of 20,000 men, encamped at Meudon, in August 1806, under the pretext of rewarding their exploits in the north with a great festival at Paris. This was meant as a mask to their leaders' designs upon Prussia, which were then irrevocably determined. No festival was ever celebrated; but the troops were exercised for six hours a day in a deep and wet meadow, Buonaparte himself directing their manoeuvres the whole time; and sometimes under a course of almost incessant rain and tempest.

Machiavel [Art. de la Guer.] attributes all the civil wars and conspiracies of the Roman empire, after the time of Julius Cesar, to the maintenance of the generals in the same command.

its extraordinary hardships, it has also its peculiar rewards. Their prototypes of antiquity never more successfully reconciled the restraints of disci pline and the license of pillage. Death is inexorably inflicted, as we have seen announced in their bulletins, for the slightest transgressions, when it is deemed expedient to enforce order: but we need not be told, that the signal for riot is often given by the general, and the abstinence of the soldier fully requited. After twenty years, he becomes of right a member of the legion of honour; and, as such, is entitled to a small pension for life. This long term, however, is anticipated in numerous instances. Individuals who signalize themselves are promoted on the field of battle, or singled from the ranks with the most encouraging solemnities; and sometimes, for very obvious reasons, invested with the insignia of the order, and dismissed to their homes with the booty they may have acquired.

By a law of the directory, no persons (with the exception of engineers) could become officers, who had not served three years in a subordinate capacity. The revolution naturally opened the way to merit; and, seconded by this admirable policy, has filled all the posts of their army with men who unite in themselves the qualities of the soldier with the excellences that qualify for command. It is not hazarding too much to assert, that nine tenths of the present French officers have sprung from the ranks. Educated in distant camps, they know no other country; and, habituated by long devotion to the trade of war, it has become their element and their passion. Their whole fortune is staked on the sword; and their attachment is therefore necessarily secured, under the auspicious influence of a leader, whose indefatigable ambition occupies them in their favourite pursuits, and whose liberal impartiality feeds the hope of preferment, and divides the fruits of conquest. To their credit and example is due much of that spirit, which, notwithstanding the causes of alienation heretofore detailed, seems to ani mate the whole frame of the army; and no small share of that portentous success which has attended the course of the French arms. Of the eighteen marechaux d'empire, fourteen have either emerged from the ranks, or as cended from the lowest employments. Most of the generals of division,

Bessieres, originally a common soldier, became in 1796 a captain of infantTM in the army of Italy.-Brune, a printer at the commencement of the revolution, a member of the club of Cordeliers, and an intimate friend of Danton, commenced his military career in 1793.-Augereau, a private in the Neapolitan service in 1787, became soon after a fencing master at Naples; in 1792 entered as a volunteer in the army of Italy; and in 1794 was a general of brigade in the army of the Pyrennees.-Bernadotte, at the commencement of the revolution, a serjeant in the regiment de royal marine; in 1794 a general of division.—Jourdan enlisted in 1778, but left the service in 1784; was a shopkeeper at the commencement of the revolution.-Kellerman began his ca reer as a simple hussar in the regiment of Conflans.-Lasnes, originally a common sol. dier, became, in 1795, adjutant of division in the national guard of Paris.-Massena, 2 subaltern in the Sardinian service at the beginning of the revolution, in 1793 became a general of brigade.-Mortier, a captain of a volunteer company in his native province at the same period.-Ney, a hussar, an adjutant general in 1796, after passing through all the inferiour grades.-Lefevbre, son of a miller of Alsace, became a ser jeant in the regiment of French guards before the revolution.-Perignon, after acting as a justice of peace at Monteschi, engaged in the army, and passed rapidly through all the subordinate grades, and, in 1794, commanded the army of the eastern Pyren nees.-Soult was a subaltern before the revolution, in a regiment of infantry, and an adjutant general in 1795.-Murat served originally in the constitutional guard of Louis XVI; became afterwards an officer in the 12th regiment of chasseurs à cheval, &c.-Junot began his career in 1792, as a grenadier in one of the volunteer battalions commanded by general Pille; and, in 1796, was one of the aids-de-camp of Buona. parte.

and others who hold the principal commands, have the same origin, and sufficiently prove that war is an experimental science, and that military renown is not the prerogative of birth, but the harvest of toil, or the bounty of fortune.

These men, whose duties have almost wholly estranged them from the refinements and indulgences of polished intercourse, retain all the leading features of their original department in life; a fierce and turbulent nature; a wild, irregular ambition; a total ignorance of the utility of civil laws, and a sovereign contempt for letters. As they partake largely of the prey, they zealously cooperate in the views of him, whom necessity or chance has led them to acknowledge as a master; but, should he be prematurely removed from the scene, we are not inclined to suppose, that his posthumous aims will be accomplished with equal fidelity. If it be true, as has been remarked, that military governments are at all times hostile to regular, monarchical succession, we can scarcely conceive the possibility of a quiet transmission of power in France, under her present circumstances. The military, of every description, are also said to be very unfit guardians for a legal constitution; and this observation is particularly applicable to the imperial generals, in whose minds no idea of subordination to civil authority, or of uncontested descent in the reigning family, could ever have taken root. The same daring enterprise which has born them forward to their present elevation would not suffer them to remain inactive, if supreme command were placed within their reach. They would tear the sceptre from a feeble hand, and dispute the prize with the same ferocious violence, and desperate resolution, with which they are now grasping at the dominion and the treasures of the rest of the world.

During their contentions, the continent might indeed be allowed to respire; but, independent of the established maxim, that a conquering nation must always be miserable, we confess that we can see no prospect of melioration for France herself. The establishment of freedom in that country must be viewed, we think, as hopeless; nor can it be denied, that the great bulk of the people, while they are incapable of the temperate enjoyment, are decidedly averse to the form of a popular government. Some expectation may be excited by the external frame of the electoral colleges and deliberative assemblies; but this is completely checked by an examination of their actual condition They have no basis of ancient opinion to command respect; no reputation of consistency to inspire confidence; and have not, indeed, in the view of any branch of the community, an existence or a will, distinct from that of the throne to which they are appended. Under the shadow of a constitution still preserved, their election can never take place, unless ratified by the emperour; and is universally understood to depend, in practice, altogether on his nomination. The princes of the blood, and the great dignitaries of the state, are officially members of the senate; and to this body, the generals of division, detached from the foreign service, are regularly associated, so as to give them almost a numerical preponderance.*

* The meetings of the senate are always private. Strangers may be admitted to those of the legislative body. The latter was not once assembled during the whole of the last campaign in the north, the members not being perfectly sure. By the constitution, the judges were chosen for life; but, by a senatus consultum of 12th October, 1807, it was enacted, that they should thereafter undergo a probation of five years, and be then continued or dismissed at the option of the emperour. mission was also created for the purpose of instituting an inquiry into the conduct of the judges in being, in order that the emperour might remove such as were pronounced unfit for their stations. In all political cases, and all cases of alleged fraud and eva

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