Page images
PDF
EPUB

Cavalrie: 69 colonels, 69 lieutenant-colonels, 180 chiefs of squadrons, 336 captains, 307 lieutenants, and 295 sub-lieutenants.

I have reserved the best for the last, the marshals and generals in active service.

Two marshals, McMahon and Canrobert, have worn the uniform of St. Cyr; also seventy-two generals of division and one hundred and thirty-one generals of brigade. But I have thrown to one side the retired generals and those of the cadre of reserve.

This is why all the army of Paris bestirs itself when it hears the St. Cyrian beaten. The hearts of the old St. Cyrians leap at the sight of the flag on which Napoleon I. caused to be inscribed, and which shines there still: Ils s'instruissent pour vaincre !

For the past two years the journals have been badly informed.

I have remarked how much those who invented news are better informed than those who seek for the truth,-the best-informed journals had spread the rumor that the school of Saint Maixent figured in the grand review of July 14.

This news was evidently false. For why place the students of Saint Maixent by the side of the Saint Cyrians?

This idea of effacing the differences by dwelling upon them has not terminated efficaciously the question of the unity of origin, which is still an open one.

Napoleon I. created the school of Fontainebleau, since transferred to St. Cyr; this made some stir in the military Landernau. He was not consul at that time. What were the old soldiers of Egypt and of Italy going to say? would the old moustaches be obedient to them— these young white-beaks? This was a question which preoccupied the faithful Berthier. But General Bonaparte stopped at little when he believed his resolution was a good one. At the first observation that was made to him by an old fellow of the first army of the republic, he took upon himself the trouble to explain that if the revolution had always had enough good soldiers, it had sinned through the staff-officers.

"Moreover," added he, "my young comrades will prove to you that in the school they understand as much about bravery as they do about mathematics."

Notwithstanding the old moustaches feared injury to themselves by the coalition of Fontainebleau and St. Cyr, out of three thousand five hundred sub-lieutenants that had gone out from those two places, not one had arrived at the grade of general in 1815.

This is because they did not take care of or spare themselves on the field of battle, and that Napoleon left them relatively a long time in the grades of sub-lieutenant, of lieutenant, and of captain, at the risk of making rapid strides later on in the grades of superior officers.'

1 The United States Congress seems to have adopted the principles of Napoleon in this respect.-TRANSLATOR.

The first general made from the military school was the Marquis de Talhouet de Bonamour; he was nominated general in 1816.

Lieutenant-General Gazan, one of the first five hundred of Fontainebleau, had, towards the end of his career, a desire to know the kind of men who were his old comrades; he was director during the war, and the bureaus were searched for the minutest details; he discovered that out of the four hundred and seventy-four who left with the epaulette of sub-lieutenant, one hundred and thirty-nine had been killed by the enemy; forty had become general officers; and one hundred and fifteen were remaining superior officers. The one hundred and eighty others had been retired or had resigned before they had arrived at the epaulette of commandant.

THE ARTILLERY AND THE ENGINEERS.

In our new army, where the general and special instruction will be directed henceforth to its advancement, the former students of St. Cyr will always possess a military superiority over the students of the Polytechnic school. The student of St. Cyr is resolutely a soldier; he has before him no other career than that of the regiment; whilst the Polytechnic student often considers the school of application at Fontainebleau as a last resource. For a long time he will regret the bridges and roadways, the mines, the maritime engineering, the manufactures of the state, the inspection of the finances, and it is only when the Bottieras they call one at the Polytechnic school-will be vainly endeavoring to escape by a tangent from the necessity of being an artillerist or sapper, that he will commence to believe himself definitively a soldier. But what a soldier!

Ask of the generals and colonels of infantry who have made the campaign of the Crimea what they think of the bravery of the officers of the engineers and the artillery. They will tell you of the simple, silent courage at all times, the wish to accomplish without bustle and without excitement, and they will say to you that, above all, wherever the blue pantaloons with scarlet bands have been shown, they have won the admiration of the red pantaloons.

Since our defeat, Versailles has become one of the four headquarters of the engineers. The others are Montpellier, Grenoble, and Arras. We can, then, in the future see an entire regiment of this arm of the service defile in our annual reviews.

Each regiment of engineers comprises five battalions of four companies each. In addition to this there is one depot company, one of sapper-conductors for the carriages designed to transport the matériel, and one of workmen for railroads.

The sappers and miners are scattered throughout all the companies of the battalion. Each of the twenty battalions of the four regiments, save one, count in an army corps.

The men they affect to recruit for this beautiful troop are generally the house-builders (stone-masons), clerks, and students of architecture; in fact, men from all the professions which might prove to be useful in the various works which fall to the lot of the military engineer. It has been thought to give them the military telegraph service. They have preferred, and with reason, to demand in time of war from the civil telegraph service some sections perfectly fitted out with tools and prepared for campaign duty. This corps d'élite, which has already made its record, in the grand manoeuvres in Algeria and in Tunis, which is represented at Tonquin, has never taken part in our ordinary reviews. The public has never seen it.

I have already given the possible development of the artillery passing from its peace to its war footing. I add that Paris possesses in its vicinity, and subject to its government, two complete brigades of artillery At Versailles, that of the Third Corps, composed of the Eleventh and the Twenty-second Regiments; at Vincennes, that of the Nineteenth Corps, composed of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Regiments.

:

The artillery, which is considered by the people, as well as by the army, as having to play a preponderating rôle in the future wars, is always strongly applauded in all the reviews. It is the arm of the moment. The republican government has almost doubled it, and of all the expense that it has created, it is on the whole quite justified. They cannot improvise artillery. We Parisians, who subscribed with much zeal for cannon during the siege, have seen enough of that. Those seven famous pieces, so badly constructed besides by the civil engineers, were not ready in time, except to become servants to the Communists.

After the raising of the siege, I left Paris to go to Bordeaux to assist at the first session of the Assembly, which place chance had fixed upon for the meeting. The first object which met my view on the dock was a magnificent American battery of steel guns that the sailors were disembarking. There were five; they had arrived during the night, a little like the famous marquis who came always the day after the battle to show himself among his comrades.

To-day we have cannon upon cannon of the latest designs.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that each nation in Europe imagines that it possesses the latest piece of mechanism for killing men easily, promptly, efficaciously, and, above all, at the greatest distance. Our field-pieces can, they say, lodge their shells at eight kilometres within a square of ten metres on a side. This is superb, is it not? Ah, well, there are in Europe one hundred and fifty officers of artillery and savants who are working to find a piece still more efficacious, still lighter, and more easily moved; for the height of perfection of a piece of artillery is not only the solidity of the carriage, but also its mobility and its lightness. It is necessary that a piece of artillery

may be able, as far as it is possible, to move wherever infantry may be able to go.

Or, suppose that one of these one hundred and fifty workers find something better than we have,-something very much better; for example, one of double capacity, and light enough for a piece to be placed on the top of the July column, with an absolute accuracy, certain and efficacious, in making a breach in the thickest walls,-the result will be that our material will be of no value, some hundreds of millions will be lost, and there will be some other hundreds of millions of expense. But I believe that, for the present, there is nothing to give us uneasiness. As long as they have not invented a new powder for cannon the present pieces may, without an absolutely unforeseen discovery, be considered as possessing relative perfection.

war.

By this example one may judge of what it costs to prepare for

Each arm of the service has its specialty. With the service of short duration these specialties become to be at the time well defined and simple. In three years and some months a soldier does not understand all that it is desirous for him to know.

The infantry has the appearance of being the best division, although the art of marching with a well-filled haversack, a rifle, and munitions for two purposes,-one to sustain life and the other to destroy it,-is not learned in a day. A good infantry, then, must not be composed of the most feeble of our army; it is to supply our foot regiments with strong and solid men that they have diminished the size required as a standard for the cavalry.

The engineers taking the house-builders, the artillery consuming the carpenters and blacksmiths, they have thought it was necessary to place in the cavalry all the men used to riding horses, and there are some very brave and vigorous men who could never accustom themselves to the association, often brutal, with horses.

Do not be astonished, then, at any apparent feebleness on the part of our dragoons, chasseurs, or hussars. They are small, but they are active resistants, and they are also as much used to the horse as their predecessors of seven years' service. This system of recruiting is much more rational than that of the time when they would leave a jockey in the infantry simply because he lacked a centimetre of the regular height of the hussars.

GUARD OF PARIS AND FIRE-SAPPERS.

The city of Paris has always had the privilege of possessing magnificent civil organizations. According to this, she is like a sovereign princess, who would have her guard of honor uniquely composed of soldiers d'élite.

That guard-municipal or republican, and fire-sappers-costs her

dearly; but it is not in the payment of these subjects of choice, among whom they are recruited, that occasions the great expense.

In 1830, before the revolution of July, Paris did not have for her security more than nine hundred gendarmes, some on foot and some mounted, and a battalion of fire-sappers, four companies.

The revolution of July having demonstrated the insufficiency of the gendarmerie of Paris, the new government created the Municipal Guard. At first, it was composed of twelve companies and three squadrons; then successively raised to sixteen companies and four squadrons.

In spite of the uniform of the Imperial Guard, in which it was clothed, it had the appearance of the royal gendarmerie; and it was replaced, in February, 1848, by the guards of the corps of Caussidiere. Clothed in blue blouses, with belts and cravats of most beautiful red, these night-movers required not more than a week to assume the manner of perfect municipals. But with tranquillity, regularity introduced itself into the new corps, excessively loose, and reconstituted it to the extent that the Republican Guard became absolutely like the Municipal Guard. The empire changed nothing of this, and during the siege of Paris the defense found in this superior corps a beautiful regiment of cavalry and a superb regiment of infantry.

The Commune having added force to the reasons which since 1830 have augmented the service of the Paris guard, two legions were at that time formed, each one composed of two battalions of eight companies each, and of six squadrons. They attached one battery of mountain artillery to each legion, and the Parisians had not had the occasion to see them until the review by General de Cissey, at the Champs Élysées, in September, 1871.

To-day the Republican Guard is composed of but one legion, but its strength is three battalions and six squadrons.

The difficulty of recruiting an élite corps in an army of young soldiers arises in taking them from the largest and best, although, under the name of auxiliary guards, they have introduced many men who do not combine all the legal conditions of age and service.

The fire-sappers have been increased from four to twelve companies --that is to say, tripled-since 1854. This is not only due to an enlargement of their round of service up to the fortifications, but is the result of industrial progress. The general employment of gas and steam has sextupled the dangers of fire, and each arrondissement of Paris has now its company of fire-sappers.

For these brave and heroic sappers we would remark that a reduction of the tour of night-service would add much to their recruitment. At the fire of the incendiary it is not only necessary for them to be brave, but they must be full of prudence, of knowledge, and of experience. Coolness is only acquired by the exercise of these qualities, or the young sappers do not remain in the corps longer than two and a

« PreviousContinue »