In the multiplicity of military regulations of all kinds, and of men who
promulgate them and who are affected by them, there naturally appear
from time to time some of the aberrations and eccentricities of ordinary
human nature. Sometimes the French wit appreciates these oddities and
makes much of them; and sometimes it completely fails to perceive them.
One of the most distinguished of their generals, Poilloüe de Saint-Mars,
enjoys quite a little reputation for the _cocasseries_ of certain of his
orders. One of the most famous of these was that of the _soldat-tender_,
designed to enhance the prestige of the infantry officer. For this
purpose, he was authorized to select from among the men in his command
one of the "most robust and alert," who would be the "most sympathetic
and the most devoted to his officer, and who would follow him like his
shadow." This soldier-tender, who "would be to his officer what the
tender is to the locomotive," would carry his déjeuner and all his other
baggage, being relieved from the ordinary company equipment,--the
officer, thus lightened of everything but his weapons, would enjoy over
his men the same physical and moral advantage that his comrades of the
artillery and cavalry do by the excellence of their mounts and their
"aureola of an orderly," and those of the marine by the superiority of
their technical knowledge. "In campaign, the mission of the tender will
accentuate itself and aggrandize itself. He will be authorized to halt
if his officer fall wounded. He will assist him affectionately, will
bandage his wounds, confide him to the litter-bearers, and, to avenge
him, then hasten to rejoin his comrades." Practically, an arrangement is
made by which the infantry officer, in reviews and parades and while in
charge of detachments,--as may constantly be seen in the
streets,--marches along unencumbered by the side of his heavily-charged
men.
Another of General de Saint-Mars's theories was that the foot of man had
been especially created by Providence for the pedal of the bicycle.
During the annual manoeuvres of 1896, he issued an order to the mounted
escort of the foreign officers, recommending to them an extreme
cleanliness, even to the point of cleaning their finger-nails with "a
piece of paper folded in four." This was really a very practical
regulation, for the hands of the French soldier are capable of the most
extreme dirtiness. In this respect, they practice more than even the
usual neglect of their countrymen for the most elemental rules of
decency in washing. It may be said that they would be a much pleasanter
people to live with if they observed the Semitic regulations and
observances of their hated Jewish fellow-citizens.
In the present year, General Billot issued an order to the commandants
of the corps d'armée to request the chiefs of corps and of detachments
to take measures against those civilians who, by the unseemly cracking
of whips, caused the soldiers to fall off their horses and get hurt.
This measure calls attention at once to two national peculiarities,
nowhere more noticeable than in the streets of Paris,--the ungraceful
and apparently insecure equitation of the mounted soldiers, and the
childish, not to say idiotic, delight that the French driver and
teamster takes in cracking his whip. It is not only the reckless youth
who have in charge light wagons and trotting horses, but carters of
every grade may be seen amusing themselves by filling the air with an
ear-splitting series of detonations produced by their long lashes.
Naturally, the more intelligent beast they conduct soon learns that this
is not addressed to him, and plods along without even moving his ears
while his master is awakening all the echoes in the neighborhood. The
military horses are, apparently, more spirited or less intelligent, for
General Billot proposed to hold these inconsiderate civilians to strict
account, to make them pay the hospital expenses of his unhorsed
troopers, and even, if need should arise, to hold them responsible for
the pension charges that may ensue because of their intempestiveness.
The sudden irruptions of barking dogs are also responsible for many
equestrian accidents, and "the proprietors of _chiens hargneux_" are
also to be held to strict account for any diminution of the military
strength of France for which they may be responsible.
In the streets of the capital, the French soldier trots his horse
instead of cantering him, and his military bearing disappears as soon as
he gets in motion. There is no pretence of the fine old centaur theory,
that horse and rider are one; there is no attempt to preserve the
straight leg and stiff carriage which distinguishes the American
military seat; the _dragon_, or the _cuirassier_, stoops forward and
jounces up and down in his saddle like any amateur. The President's
cavalry escort comes down the Champs-Élysées bumpety-bump, with an
anxious and uneasy expression, instead of a proud and martial one. The
officers, of course, ride better, and look very fine cantering out to
the Bois in their peg-top red trousers and high boots; but it may be
noticed that the only occasion on which they abandon their swords is on
these equestrian promenades. Otherwise, officers and men are never seen
without their side-arms, excepting an occasional escort of a
wagon-train. These weapons are not allowed to trail, and there seems to
be no method known of hooking them to the belt so that the wearer can
walk comfortably; they are therefore carried in the left hand, or nursed
under the left arm. As they are very long and heavy, with steel
scabbards,--with the exception of the straight cuirassiers' swords, far
heavier, both in blade and grip, than any of the sabres of the First
Empire, and as the wearers are by no means always tall men, they are
sufficiently cumbrous. The shapeless, full trousers, and the leathern
leggings in imitation of boots, combined with the heavy shoes and the
inelastic tread of these dismounted cavaliers, give them an appearance
that an English drill sergeant would scarcely consider "smart." The
dragoons of the picked Garde Républicaine wear a blue uniform with the
Napoleonic horse-tail helmet, and high boots, and have a much more
efficient appearance; but there is not to be seen in Paris as truly
imposing and martial a figure as a mounted sentry of the Horse Guards on
duty. The undersized, callow, and youthful infantry soldiers seen in the
streets are such evident rustics, in spite of their uniform, that the
contemner of war drops an additional tear as he passes them. It may be
observed that this uniform, with its red and blue, white gloves and
white gaiters, is peculiarly adapted to being picked out by the enemy's
sharpshooter at the longest possible range in a green landscape. The
gloves and gaiters, however, promptly disappear in active service.
[Illustration: AN ESTAFETTE.]
The most coveted position in the French army is that of military
Governor of Paris, and the administration of this post, it seems, is
attended with all the inconveniences which arise from a peace
organization differing seriously from that which would be necessary in
time of war. These difficulties, it is contended by the military
writers, would largely disappear if more definite authority were given
this officer, if the grade of général d'armée were created, as in other
countries, and the holder made practically irremovable. To this the
civilians reply--and not without a certain show of reason, as the events
of the last few months have demonstrated--that it is probably safer for
the constituted authorities not to do so. The duties and
responsibilities of the Governor of Paris are very definite, engrossing,
and important; very different from those which would be adjudged to the
incumbent if he were officially appointed to a post similar to that
which the King of Prussia fills, or that held by Lord Wolseley in
England, replacing the Duke of Cambridge. As Governor of Paris, this
officer has a general staff which is not similar in composition to that
which he would have in active campaign in time of war; the officers who
constitute it are occupied with duties which bear but little analogy
with those they would be called upon to fulfil at the outbreak of
hostilities.
That union which makes strength, it is asserted, is unfortunately
lacking in the organization of the army. In its stead prevails an evil
which is called _particularisme_. The origin of this evil is in the
office of the Minister of War, where there is a _direction_ of the
infantry, one of the cavalry, and one of the intendance, or
administration. These directions do not converge; each one goes off with
its own theory and practice; consequently, there is wanting that
military unity, that community of sentiment, which the Russian General
Dragomirov calls "the comradeship of combat." This unity must
necessarily come from above, that is to say, from the officers; hence,
it has been proposed to educate them all in the same school, in hopes
that this community of origin may give rise to intimacies, to friendly
relations, and cause all jealousies and suspicions to disappear.
Fruitful emulation will replace noxious rivalries; all the
inconveniences which arise from the functioning of the present nurseries
of officers will be done away with. Perhaps it will do to divide the
army into two classes only; to instruct all the field combatants in
Saint-Cyr, and the officers for the fortresses at the École
Polytechnique.
These military critics are very positive in their statements. The _Revue
hebdomadaire_, M. Veuglaire in the _Revue encyclopédique_, Captain
Gilbert (G. G.) in the _Nouvelle Revue_, support each other in these
statements. The former, in an article on the instruction of the
officers, says that this instruction is very badly conducted; the
special editor of the _Nouvelle Revue_, after having demonstrated that
the competitions, the methods, the programmes, considered individually,
are characterized by grave defects, proceeds to show that, taken
together, there is a complete absence of co-ordination. "No general
view," he exclaims, "no common impulse, presides over the functioning of
our establishments of military education. Saint-Cyr, the École
Polytechnique, the École d'application, the École de guerre, are so many
entities absolutely independent; have distinct inspections, comités de
surveillance having no relations with each other; admitting only one
common attachment,--the Minister of War. Now, our ministers have a too
precarious and too brief existence to exercise any regulating influence
upon the schools." The administration varies according to the personal
qualities of the successive directors; sometimes it is the physical
exercises which are cultivated at the expense of the intellectual, and
sometimes the reverse. The general commanding at Saint-Cyr two or three
years ago, a former colonel of Zouaves, was, above all, a man of action,
and that which he exercised upon the school "was bad;" he was succeeded
by one of the most brilliant professors of tactics at the École de
guerre, who gave to the oral instruction an importance which it had
never had before, the evolutions, the perfectioning of the manual of
arms, the manoeuvring in the field, the blacking of the shoes, and the
proper alignment of the beds in the caserne.
"At the École de Versailles, where are formed the future officers of
artillery and of engineers, there is to be found the same incoherence.
The changes brought about each year in the '_coefficients de
majoration_' demonstrate with how little spirit of consecutiveness these
affairs are managed. Having attributed more importance to the general
information than to the qualities of manoeuvring, you are quite stupefied
to see admitted novices, bachelors who have failed, more or less, and
very mediocre subaltern officers, whilst excellent _maréchaux des
logis_, intelligent, vigorous, industrious, are refused, because the
blackboard intimidates them, because they design in but a mediocre
fashion, and have, concerning the rivers of Asia, only vague ideas and
perhaps erroneous ones," etc. Captain Gilbert has proposed, in order to
do away with the inconveniences attending this anarchic régime, to
institute, as in Germany, an inspector-general of all the schools, a
sort of high master of the military University. "In any case, it is
necessary to adopt some method that will put an end to a situation that
is truly dangerous."
The greatest danger of all, of course, lies "in the fault of the French
mothers, who do not give to the army soldiers enough," says another
writer, M. Armand Latour, "and, alas! it is to be foreseen that they
will be, in this respect, less and less generous in the future."
Of these military schools, the oldest is the _École superieure de
guerre_ at the _École militaire_, founded by Louis XV in 1751, under the
name of the _École royale militaire_. It was the king's intention to
devote this institution to the education of five hundred young
gentlemen, born without property, and, in preference, those who, having
lost their fathers in battle, had become the children of the State. In
addition to the five hundred young gentlemen, the hôtel was to be grand
and spacious enough to receive the officers of the troops to whom the
command was to be confided, the learned professors of every species who
were to be proposed for the instruction and exercise of all those who
would take any part in the spiritual and temporal administration of this
household. The architect Gabriel commenced the construction of the
buildings in the following year on what was then a portion of the plain
of Grenelle, and in the meanwhile the school was opened provisorily in
the Château de Vincennes. The architect was soon arrested by want of
funds; but the king applied to these expenses the proceeds of a tax on
playing-cards, those of a lottery,--the favorite method of raising funds
at this period,--and the revenues of the Abbaie de Laon, which was then
vacant. The first stone of the chapel, blessed by the Archbishop of
Paris, was not laid by the king, till 1769. The pupils were admitted in
1756, divided into eight classes; at the age of eighteen or twenty
years, they were graduated, and passed into the royal troops, receiving
a pension of two hundred livres on the funds of the school.
In the month of August, 1760, the king issued a long statement setting
forth the motives which had actuated him in drawing up the code of
regulations; in the following February, the Archbishop of Paris
published an equally long manifesto defining the functions and exercises
spiritual which the pupils were to practise. All this did not prevent
the king from modifying the organization of the school, in 1764;
recognizing the truth that a strictly military education was not the
best adapted to the wants of youth, and establishing the Collège de la
Flèche for a preparatory educational institution; in 1776, Louis XVI
suppressed the École, and distributed the pupils among various colleges
whose graduates were gentlemen cadets for the various royal
regiments. In 1778, the school was re-established, and the king granted
it an endowment of fifteen millions; a decree of March 26, 1790,
abolished the restriction of titles of nobility for all applicants, and
threw the entrance open to all sons of officers of the land and sea
forces. The Convention, by a decree of 13th of June, 1793, ordered the
sale of all the property from which the revenues of the school were
drawn, and converted the buildings into cavalry barracks and a depot for
flour. Under the Empire, Napoleon installed his Guard in the École
Militaire; in 1815, under the Restoration, the Garde Royale was lodged
there; under Louis Napoleon, the Imperial Guard again,--very important
demolitions and reconstructions having been found necessary between 1856
and 1865.
[Illustration: LA VIE A LA CASERNE: NIGHT IN THE "CHAMBRÉE." After a
drawing by Georges Scott.]
The aim of the school, as at present conducted, is to develop the
highest military studies, and to form officers for the service of the
general staff. Captains and lieutenants of all arms of the two branches
of the service, having served a certain number of years, and being
acceptable to their superiors, are admitted to compete. Three failures
to pass the examination disqualify the aspirant.
The terrible Convention wished to have a military school of its own, and
by a decree of the 1st of June, 1793, it founded the École de Mars, in
the plain of Sablons. The idea had originated with Carnot; the
institution was intended to educate soldiers for the corps of artillery,
the cavalry, and the infantry. The pupils, from sixteen to seventeen
years of age, were there to receive a Revolutionary education, "all the
acquirements and the manners and customs of a Revolutionary soldier."
Their costume, at first, consisted of a blouse of white ticking and a
police cap. But this uniform was considered to be not sufficiently
military, and the painter, David, was commissioned to design another.
Being then in the classic and impracticable mood of his career, he
furnished, for these budding warriors, a tunic _à la polonaise_,
decorated with knots, _d'hirondelle_, to serve as epaulettes, and with
frogs, a waistcoat _à châle_, a fichu _à la Collin_, as a cravat; tight
pantaloons, disappearing in half-gaiters of black canvas. Each of these
articles was of a different color from all the others, the stuffs having
been procured by requisitions made among the merchants of the Halles.
The footman was armed with a Roman sword with a red scabbard, suspended
across his body by a black scarf, on which might be read: _Liberté_,
_Égalité_, over the image of a sword placed over a row of other swords.
The horsemen carried the sabre of the chasseurs à cheval. The
cartridge-box was in the Corsican shape. The pupils were all awakened at
daybreak by the report of a thirty-six-pound gun, which indicated the
hour of morning prayer; this prayer being the hymn that Méhul had set to
music, and which began with the invocation:
"Sire of the Universe; intelligence supreme."
The École de Mars was abolished by a decree of the 23d of October, 1794.
Almost behind Saint-Étienne-du-Mont are the buildings of the famous
École Polytechnique, which, "to our French families, so essentially
_fonctionnaresques_, appears like the portals of the Administrative
Paradise: all the mothers dream of it for their sons." To be a graduate
of this institution is to have a certain title to distinction in the
intellectual and scientific world. It was founded by a decree of the
Convention, under the initiative of Monge, in March, 1794, and
consequently celebrated its centennial in 1894, with great ceremony. It
was instituted as a school of public works, a school of mines, maritime
construction, bridges and highways, the marine, the artillery, etc. It
was established in the Palais Bourbon, under the direction of
Lamblardie; the pupils were to be admitted between the ages of sixteen
and twenty, this limitation being afterward extended to the age of
twenty-five. Their number was fixed at four hundred. By a decree of
September 1, 1795, the name of the institution was changed to École
Polytechnique. Within the next two years, the annual allowance from the
State was fixed at three hundred thousand francs, and the number of
pupils at three hundred. Napoleon, who took a great interest in this
institution, entitling it his "hen with the golden eggs,"--and this hen
has remained the emblem of the school,--changed its organization
radically in 1804, and transferred its seat to the ancient college of
Navarre, founded by Jeanne de Navarre, wife of Philippe le Bel, and De
Boncourt. In 1840, in 1843, and 1844 the buildings were enlarged and
improved; by a decree of November, 1852, the school was reorganized and
made a dependency of the Ministry of War. Its general staff was composed
of a general of brigade, _commandant supérieur_; of a colonel or
lieutenant-colonel, _commandant en second_; of six captains and former
pupils who had the title of _inspecteurs des études_, and of six
adjutants, _sous-officiers_. Thirty-nine professors imparted instruction
in analysis, mechanics, descriptive geometry, physics, chemistry,
land-surveying, architecture, the military art, fortifications, plans,
French composition, the German language and design.
[Illustration: INFANTRY OF THE LINE: CORPORAL AND PRIVATE.