Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 130.djvu/588

580 and admitted that under these circumstances they rarely gave way to real panic. The more this war is studied by any fair critic, the more will it be found that the vices were those of the system, whilst the virtues were inherent in the men. And the Comte de Paris has done a great service to historical truth in showing how both virtues and vices were inherited in a sense as strict as that which showed the victors of Sedan the true descendants of those who made Brandenburg formidable under the Great Elector, and Prussia a great power under Frederick. But here we prefer, by the use of one or two extracts from his invaluable opening chapter, to let the Comte de Paris speak for himself. Let him first tell the story, from a slightly French point of view, as is natural, of the rough school in which the old provincial levies learned their business: —


 * It was against our own troops in the Seven Years' War that the American volunteers, at that time the militia of an English colony, first tried their arms. We may remember this not only without bitterness, since happily the flag of the United States has never been found opposed to that of France on the battlefield, but even as a recollection to create one bond the more between them and us. For, in the unequal struggle which decided the mastery of the new continent, these militiamen received valuable lessons whilst massing themselves against the handful of heroic men who, in despite of their country's forgetfulness of them, defended our empire beyond the sea. In this school were formed the soldiers of the War of Independence. Montcalm, rather than Wolfe, was the teacher of the adversaries who were soon to have the task of avenging him. It was while seeking in long and often disastrous expeditions to plant French authority on the banks of the Ohio that the founders of the American nation served their apprenticeship to the indefatigable energy which in the end triumphed over every obstacle. It was the example of the defenders of Fort Carillon staying a British army, from behind a feeble parapet, which inspired in later days the defenders of Bunker's Hill. It was the surrender of Washington at Fort Necessity, the disaster of Braddock at Fort Duquesne, which taught the future victors of Saratoga how, in an uncultivated country, to embarrass an enemy's march, cut off his supplies, do away with his apparent advantages, and finally take or destroy him. Thus, though despised by the aristocratic ranks of the regular English army, the provincial militia, as they were then called, were soon able to win their esteem, and to inspire respect in their foes. In this sort of warfare, so different from that carried on in Europe, in these actions fought in the midst of a wild and wooded country, they already displayed all those qualities that have since distinguished the American soldier — address, energy, valor, and individual intelligence.

So of the War of Independence he writes, again giving his countrymen perhaps a little more than their due, as his own words show that our part in the training of these levies has been slighted in the former extract: —


 * And they displayed them still when, fifteen years later, they took up arms, under the name of volunteers or national militia, to throw off the oppressive yoke of the mother country. But they had no longer the trained officers of the English army to direct, and the veteran regulars to support them in critical moments. Their part of auxiliaries had ill prepared them to maintain unaided the great struggle on which their patriotism forced them to enter. Except Washington, no colonial officer had shone in the higher grades. And so the Frenchmen who came over with Lafayette to put their experience at the service of the young American army, brought it precious aid. Yet its best ally and its greatest power lay in that perseverance which enabled it to draw advantage out of defeat instead of being overwhelmed by it. This was soon seen when the arrival of Rochambeau gave it the opportunity of that fine and decisive campaign which carried the war from the banks of the Hudson to Virginia, and finished it at a blow in the trenches of Yorktown. … In this first effort of the young American nation to organize its military strength, we find all the precedents of 1861, and in its little armies of the last century, the model of those that took part in the Civil War.

The comte passes on at this point to a discussion as to whether the Northern or Southern levies of 1861 can be more properly compared with the volunteers that won its independence for the Union. Here we do not care to follow him; for in all parts where the military history, which in his opening paragraphs he declares to be the essential purpose of his 