and Louis XIII. increased it to a regiment of twelve companies. The pay of all these troops was very high. The ordinary pay of a private was thirty sous, and on duty forty sous a-day. A captain of the Garde du Corps had 24,000 livres a-year; a colonel of the Garde Française 10,000 livres; a captain or colonel of one of these corps was already a person of high distinction at the French Court.

On the breaking out of the Revolution, the French Guards were the first to give the example of insubordination, and were cashiered as early as 1789. The household troops-Maison du Roi-remained faithful, and were therefore disbanded by the Assembly. The Swiss, as is well known, perished nobly at their post.

Napoleon's Guard was in fact a large army, and counted 102,706 men at the time of his first abdication.

What has been called the martinet or pipeclay system— with its overstrained minutiæ in dress, troublesome accuracy in useless details of service and exercise, that attached vast importance to the tying of queues, placing of buttons, and varnishing of straps, the torment, in fact, of inferior officers and soldiers-never obtained a firm footing,-was never naturalised, so to express it,-in the French army. Supported by corporal punishment, it made some progress towards the end of Louis XV.'s reign, but, like the punishment on which it rested, had already disappeared before the commencement of the Revolution.

The army which so shamefully abandoned the unfortunate Louis XVI. in the hour of need was composed of soldiers raised by voluntary enlistment, and commanded by officers generally, though not exclusively, of noble family. As in the other armies of Europe, gentlemen had been appointed to ensigncies and sub-lieutenancies on the recommendation of men of rank and influence; but this had given rise to so many abuses and to so much corruption, that an order was issued, a few years before the com

mencement of the troubles, ordering that all applications for commissions should be supported by regularly certified proofs of nobility. This order, which was strictly enforced, is generally mentioned by French writers as having greatly tended to complete that "denationalisation" of the army to which the previous system of corporal punishment had so greatly contributed. It may have been very inconsistent to demand proofs of nobility from gentlemen wishing to enter a profession originally deemed the source, and only source, indeed, of nobility; but we cannot see that the enforcement of an old and certainly not obsolete rule, and the consequences of a practice already abolished, and which had not observably changed the composition of the troops, can justify that shameful dereliction from honour, loyalty, and discipline which unfortunately marked the conduct of the French army at the commencement of the Revolution.

X.

THE BRITISH ARMY IN THE WORLD OF 1850.

THERE is no army, ancient or modern, which, in its advance to general efficiency, has been forced to contend with so many difficulties as the army of Britain. It has not only been fairly called upon to encounter the enemies of the country in the stern fields of war, to brave the dangers of noxious tropical climates "the yellow plague and maddening blaze of day"-but has been exposed to the persecution of domestic foes, and seen its best interest opposed in the very soil it had protected, and in the very land its actions had raised to greatness.

The dawn of a better prospect is now perhaps opening before us, and certainly comes not too soon; for it was a strange, unaccountable, and assuredly not creditable feeling which so long caused the British people to regard the army and the soldiers of the army with a spirit of marked hostility. It was an artificial and unnatural feeling also; for it was directed not only against the profession to which the peace and security of the country, the acquisition and protection of a vast colonial empire, the source of so much wealth and prosperity, were mainly due, but against brothers, friends, relatives, and countrymen-against those, in fact, whom all the better sentiments of the heart natur

ally call upon us to cherish and esteem. A hundred and fifty thousand men-far more, indeed, in time of wartaken from the flower of the manly population of the country, were railed at as enemies by parties calling themselves freeborn Britons-though often the veriest slaves of mammon-in utter forgetfulness that the very freedom of which they boasted was solely preserved by the gallantry and high conduct of the very soldiers they were endeavouring to undervalue. Disliking the army, the people were yet extravagant admirers of military prowess—idolaters, almost, of military fame. They mourned with noble and patriotic affection the early disasters of our last great war, and rejoiced in wild enthusiasm when victory again smiled on the old triumphant banner of England. But the brilliant actions performed by British troops-actions that overshadowed the land with the laurels gained in a hundred matchless combats, and raised the empire to the highest pinnacle of power and glory-could not altogether overcome the national hostility to the profession of arms and its members. The origin of this strange anti-military feeling in a naturally martial people may probably be traced to the times of the great Civil War, to the sufferings which the soldiers of both parties inflicted on citizens and cultivators, and, above all, to the mistaken notion which arose at the period that soldiers and armies were the natural tools of tyranny and oppression.

Instead of being allowed to die out with the causes from which it arose, this mischievous belief was long and zealously upheld by pseudo-patriots and hustings declaimers. Avarice, also, the source of so much falsehood, meanness, cruelty, and crime, was early brought in to aid a coward cause, for armies and military establishments were represented as the only obstacles to national retrenchment.

One of the great evils resulting from the anti-military feeling of which we have been speaking was the almost

total neglect of military science in the country. Looked upon as only a stiff, pipeclay, and goose-step pursuit, it was despised by the many and ridiculed by the educated classes, who, satisfied with a knowledge of Greek and Latin, treated every other branch of knowledge with scorn, especially when not recommended by any prospect of grand cash profits. The consequences were most fatal. Military men were almost ashamed of possessing professional knowledge; military literature was totally disregarded, as it is to this day; the higher powers remained ignorant of the best modes of conducting war, and disastrous contests were continued through protracted campaigns, which skill and energy might have brought to a prompt and satisfactory termination.

Not to go back to our ill-conducted American War, we need only point to our last great war against France. The most ardent admirers of Mr Pitt allow that he was a bad war minister, and unaided by military knowlege knew not, great as his genius avowedly was, how to direct the military energies of the country. Nearly all his military enterprises failed. Those undertaken by the Whigs were equally unsuccessful; and it was not till the direction of the Peninsular War fell into the hands of the Duke of Wellington that the military resources of the country ceased to be frittered away in petty expeditions, the very success of which could have brought no real benefit to the general cause. And no sooner was his Grace's hand withdrawn from direct control than disaster again followed in our last American contest. Nor did mismanagement cease here; for as late as 1841 a small British force, termed an army, was, in defiance of the very first and most evident principles of strategy, left at Cabool, far removed from assistance and support, exposed, without an open line of retreat or stronghold on which to fall back, to the assaults of all the wild hordes of Central Asia. Thus, during a long succession of years, and in every quarter of