Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/209

 196 the best of a campaign against us, except in the little wars of the colonies, they are ever fertile in such excuses as the fortune of war, or a bad general, who was, or ought to have been, shot for cowardice, incapacity, or treachery, or something else that robbed their army of its glory. In discussing these points, I generally had the worst of the argument, because Velay and Duchêne are pretty well crammed on the subject, both being required to take up for their examinations as to the details and plans of the great European wars and battles, of which I only know the results. The French excel in everything that admits of being reduced to a system, and, as an army admits of any amount of organisation, the French army cannot be surpassed for system, discipline, and equipment. The half million of all ranks are not on paper only. They exist and are available, and they possess unbounded spirit and emulation. They are a warlike people, and their system of promotion (by which a soldier may, like Pélissier, become a field-marshal, by study and by good and distinguished conduct in face of an enemy,) gives a stimulus to ambition which is unknown in armies that live under the cold shade of an aristocracy. All Frenchmen, soldiers as well as civilians, have a good address, and, like other monkeys, can imitate the manners of their betters when they rise in the scale of humanity. When a soldier becomes an officer, he is removed to another regiment at once. He drops his former associates, and his new friends cannot say he has not the ideas or manners of a gentleman, for the same reason that Hamlet’s madness was not observed in England, where all were as mad as he. When an officer cannot pass an examination—which, even for the infantry, is rather severe—he remains where he is. As there is nothing that the vanity of a Frenchman will not tell him to attempt—from conic sections to the command of the Channel fleet—most of the officers have tried to pass examinations, and they are, or were, immediately after undergoing cram, pretty well informed on the general subjects of military education, such as history (French editions), including the details of great French victories, and the articles of the principal treaties of Europe, particularly those in which they have kept faith and “perfidious” Albion has broken it. They are fluent in the use of technical terms; not only of what we call “pipeclay,” but of military science, including fortification, tactics, and even strategy. Our Lieutenant Alfred cannot pass his examination, but he would be called a well-informed man in any society.

The men seem to be dressed and equipped for service. The knapsack is cleverly strapped, and appears to sit light, and the wearer is not constantly obliged to lean forward to jerk it into a higher and more comfortable place. Whether there is much inside, I cannot say. The French are not celebrated for carrying more linen than they want.

I met one of our great clothing contractors in Paris, and had a long conversation with him. He said that the cloth used in France for the troops is of the same quality as that used in England; but it looked better, and it is possible that he may have been rather prejudiced on the subject. Government professes to manufacture everything the army wears, and there is certainly no contract-look in the French soldier.

They break down now and then, like other armies, in the commissariat and the other civil departments. At the beginning of the siege of Sebastopol, for instance, their available resources were no more equal to the occasion than ours. My friend, the contractor, told me that the French Government spent nearly a million sterling in contracts in England during the Crimean war. He was, when I saw him, in Paris with an eye to business, ready to tender for the supply of anything in case of war between France and Austria. However, the French are naturally proud of an army that, within the present century, has been to every capital in Europe—except London. And here French vanity—a passion of which we proud islanders have no conception—supplies them with the soothing conviction that the Emperor has nothing to do but to land an army on the English coast and march straight to London.

The Channel rather bothers them. Louis Velay told me quite calmly, that in case the Emperor ever made the attempt, and failed, we would have to thank the twenty miles of sea, and not ourselves, for our good fortune. “What,” said this wretched youth who cannot pass his examination, “was to have prevented the Great Emperor from going straight to London, if he had won the battle of Waterloo, but your twenty miles of sea?” I asked him, if he had ever read a very amusing book, called “The History of Events that have Never Occurred.” But he had never heard of it: the book had not been translated into French.

The occupations of Paris in 1814 and 1815 are delicate subjects. The thoughts of them make French blood to boil, French teeth to grind, and French hearts to beat with hopes of retaliation some day. They do not care the least about the other Allies having been twice to Paris, because the old Emperor sent armies, or went himself, to their capitals whenever he pleased. But a French army has not been to London yet. It is therefore the day-dream of the army and of all ranks of society, and its feasibility is never doubted for a moment. A war with England would be the most popular of all wars; it would place every man and every sous at the disposal of the Emperor, for it would give the nation an opportunity of rubbing off old scores. We may rest assured that if he ever finds his popularity on the wane, and his throne slipping from under him, he will play the last and greatest card in his hand, and declare war against England. If he fails, he is in statu quo ante bellum, but a great success by sea and then by land makes him in glory second only to his uncle.

There is a general impression among alarmists, military as well as civil, that the Emperor of the French has only to succeed in landing an army on our coast, and then to march in one column straight to London. But there are certain rules of war, which, though they may be modified by circumstances, have been the same in all ages; and no general, let alone a French general, who always thinks as much of his own fame as of the glory of France, dare act contrary to these rules.