Вальтер Скотт
Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume III
CHAPTER XXXIX
System of Education introduced into France by Napoleon – National University – its nature and objects – Lyceums – Proposed Establishment at Meudon.
The reputation of Buonaparte as a soldier, was the means which raised him to the Imperial dignity; and, unfortunately for himself, his ideas were so constantly associated with war and victory, that peaceful regulations of every kind were postponed, as of inferior importance; and thus war, which in the eye of reason ought always, even when most necessary and justifiable, to be regarded as an extraordinary state into which a nation is plunged by compulsion, was certainly regarded by Napoleon as almost the natural and ordinary condition of humanity. He had been bred on the battle-field, from which his glory first arose. "The earthquake voice of victory," according to the expression of Britain's noble and lost bard, "was to him the breath of life."329 And although his powerful mind was capable of applying itself to all the various relations of human affairs, it was with war and desolation that he was most familiar, and the tendency of his government accordingly bore an aspect decidedly military.
PUBLIC EDUCATION.
The instruction of the youth of France had been the subject of several projects during the Republic; which was the more necessary, as the Revolution had entirely destroyed all the colleges and seminaries of public instruction, most of which were more or less connected with the Church, and had left the nation almost destitute of any public means of education. These schemes were of course marked with the wild sophistry of the period. In many cases they failed in execution from want of public encouragement; in others, from want of funds. Still, however, though no fixed scheme of education had been adopted, and though the increasing vice and ignorance of the rising generation was sufficiently shocking, there existed in France two or three classes of schools for different purposes; as indeed it is not to be supposed that so great and civilized a nation could, under any circumstances, tolerate a total want of the means of educating their youth.
The schemes to which we allude had agreed in arranging, that each commune (answering, perhaps, to our parish) should provide a school and teacher, for the purpose of communicating the primary and most indispensable principles of education. This plan had in a great measure failed, owing to the poverty of the communes on whom the expense was thrown. In some cases, however, the communes had found funds for this necessary purpose; and, in others, the expense had been divided betwixt the public body, and the pupils who received the benefit of the establishment. So that these primary schools existed in many instances, though certainly in a precarious and languishing state.
The secondary schools were such as qualified persons, or those who held themselves out as such, had established upon speculation, or by the aid of private contributions, for teaching the learned and modern languages, geography, and mathematics.
There was besides evinced on the part of the Catholic clergy, so soon as the Concordat had restored them to some rank and influence, a desire to resume the task of public education, which, before the Revolution, had been chiefly vested in their hands. Their seminaries had been supported by the public with considerable liberality, and being under the control of the bishop, and destined chiefly to bring up young persons intended for the Church, they had obtained the name of Ecclesiastical Schools.
LYCEUMS.
Matters were upon this footing when Buonaparte brought forward his grand project of a National University, composed of a Grand Master, a Chancellor, a treasurer, ten counsellors for life, twenty counsellors in ordinary, and thirty inspectors-general; the whole forming a sort of Imperial council, whose supremacy was to be absolute on matters respecting education. All teachers, and all seminaries of education, were subjected to the supreme authority of the National University, nor could any school be opened without a brevet or diploma from the Grand Master, upon which a considerable tax was imposed. It was indeed the policy of the government to diminish as far as possible the number of Secondary and of Ecclesiastical Schools, in order that the public education might be conducted at the public seminaries, called Lyceums, or Academies.
In these Lyceums the discipline was partly military, partly monastic. The masters, censors, and teachers, in the Lyceums and Colleges, were bound to celibacy; the professors might marry, but in that case were not permitted to reside within the precincts. The youth were entirely separated from their families, and allowed to correspond with no one save their parents, and then only through the medium, and under the inspection, of the censors. The whole system was subjected to the strict and frequent investigation of the University. The Grand Master might dismiss any person he pleased, and such a sentence of dismission disqualified the party receiving it from holding any civil employment.
In the general case, it is the object of a place of learning to remove from the eyes of youth that pomp and parade of war, by which at an early age they are so easily withdrawn from severe attention to their studies. The Lyceums of Buonaparte were conducted on a contrary principle; every thing was done by beat of drum, all the interior arrangements of the boys were upon a military footing. At a period when the soldier's profession held out the most splendid prospects of successful ambition, it was no wonder that young men soon learned to look forward to it as the only line worthy of a man of spirit to pursue. The devotion of the young students to the Emperor, carefully infused into them by their teachers, was farther excited by the recollection, that he was their benefactor for all the means of instruction afforded them; and thus they learned from every circumstance around them, that the first object of their lives was devotion to his service, and that the service required of them was of a military character.
There were in each Lyceum one hundred and fifty exhibitions, or scholarships, of which twenty were of value sufficient to cover the student's full expenses, while the rest, of smaller amount, were called half or three quarter bursaries, in which the parents or relations of the lad supplied a portion of the charge. From these Lyceums, two hundred and fifty of the most selected youth were yearly draughted into the more professional and special military schools maintained by the Emperor; and to be included in this chosen number, was the prime object of every student. Thus, every thing induced the young men brought up at these Lyceums, to look upon a military life as the most natural and enviable course they had to pursue; and thus Buonaparte accomplished that alteration on the existing generation, which he intimated, when he said, "The clergy regard this world as a mere diligence which is to convey us to the next – it must be my business to fill the public carriage with good recruits for my army."
Of the whole range of national education, that which was conducted at the Lyceums, or central schools, was alone supported by the state; and the courses there taught were generally limited to Latin and mathematics, the usual accomplishments of a military academy. Undoubtedly Brienne was in Napoleon's recollection; nor might he perhaps think a better, or a more enlarged course of education necessary for the subjects of France, than that which had advanced their sovereign to the supreme government. But there was a deeper reason in the limitation. Those who, under another system of education, might have advanced themselves to that degree of knowledge which becomes influential upon the mind of the public, or the fortunes of a state, by other means than those of violence, were disqualified for the task by that which they received in the Lyceums; and the gentle, studious, and peaceful youth, was formed, like all the rest of the generation, to the trade of war, to which he was probably soon to be called by the conscription. If the father chose to place his son at one of the Secondary Schools, where a larger sphere of instruction was opened, it was still at the risk of seeing the youth withdrawn from thence and transferred to the nearest Lyceum, if the Directors of the Academy should judge it necessary for the encouragement of the schools which appertained more properly to Government.
Yet Napoleon appears to have been blind to the errors of this system, or rather to have been delighted with them, as tending directly to aid his despotic views. "My university," he was accustomed to say to the very last, "was a masterpiece of combination, and would have produced the most material effect on the public mind." And he was wont on such occasions to throw the blame of its failure on Monsieur Fontanes, the Grand Master, who, he said, afterwards took merit with the Bourbons for having encumbered its operation in some of its most material particulars.
Buonaparte, it must be added, at a later period, resolved to complete his system of national education, by a species of Corinthian capital. He proposed the establishment of an institution at Meudon, for the education of his son, the King of Rome, where he was to be trained to the arts becoming a ruler, in the society of other young princes of the Imperial family, or the descendants of the allies of Napoleon. This would have been reversing the plan of tuition imposed on Cyrus, and on Henry IV., who were bred up among the common children of the peasants, that their future grandeur might not too much or too early obscure the real views of human nature and character. But it is unnecessary to speculate on a system which never was doomed to be brought to experiment; only, we may presume it was intended to teach the young Napoleon more respect to the right of property which his princely companions held in their toys and playthings, than his father evinced towards the crowns and sceptres of his brothers and allies.
CHAPTER XL
Military Details – Plan of the Conscription – Its Nature – and Effects – Enforced with unsparing rigour – Its influence upon the general Character of the French Soldiery – New mode of Conducting Hostilities introduced by the Revolution – Constitution of the French Armies, Forced Marches —La Maraude– Its Nature – and Effects – on the Enemy's Country, and on the French Soldiers themselves – Policy of Napoleon, in his personal conduct to his Officers and Soldiers – Altered Character of the French Soldiery during, and after, the Revolution.
THE CONSCRIPTION.
We have shown that the course of education practised in France was so directed, as to turn the thoughts and hopes of the youth to a military life, and prepare them to obey the call of the conscription. This means of recruiting the military force, the most formidable ever established in a civilized nation, was originally presented to the Council of Five Hundred in 1798.330 It comprehended a series of lists, containing the names of the whole youth of the kingdom, from the age of twenty to twenty-five, and empowering government to call them out successively, in such numbers as the exigencies of the state should require. The classes were five in number. The first contained those who were aged twenty years complete, before the commencement of the year relative to which the conscription was demanded, and the same rule applied to the other four classes of men, who had attained the twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth years successively, before the same period. In practice, however, the second class of conscripts were not called out until the first were actually in service, nor was it usual to demand more than the first class in any one year. But as the first class amounted to 60 or 80,000, so forcible and general a levy presented immense facilities to the government, and was proportionally burdensome to the people.331
This law, undoubtedly, has its general principle in the duty which every one owes to his country. Nothing can be more true, than that all men capable of bearing arms are liable to be employed in the defence of the state; and nothing can be more politic, than that the obligation which is incumbent upon all, should be, in the first instance, imposed upon the youth, who are best qualified for military service by the freshness of their age, and whose absence from the ordinary business of the country will occasion the least inconvenience. But it is obvious, that such a measure can only be vindicated in defensive war, and that the conduct of Buonaparte, who applied the system to the conduct of distant offensive wars, no otherwise necessary than for the satisfaction of his own ambition, stands liable to the heavy charge of having drained the very life-blood of the people intrusted to his charge, not for the defence of their own country, but to extend the ravages of war to distant and unoffending regions.
The French conscription was yet more severely felt by the extreme rigour of its conditions. No distinction was made betwixt the married man, whose absence might be the ruin of his family, and the single member of a numerous lineage, who could be easily spared. The son of the widow, the child of the decrepid and helpless, had no right to claim an exemption. Three sons might be carried off in three successive years from the same desolated parents; there was no allowance made for having already supplied a recruit. Those unable to serve were mulcted in a charge proportioned to the quota of taxes which they or their parents contributed to the state, and which might vary from fifty to twelve hundred francs. Substitutes might indeed be offered, but then it was both difficult and expensive to procure them, as the law required that such substitutes should not only have the usual personal qualifications for a military life, but should be domesticated within the same district as their principal, or come within the conscription of the year. Suitable persons were sure to know their own value, and had learned so well to profit by it, that they were not to be bribed to serve without excessive bounties. The substitutes also had the practice of deserting upon the road, and thus cheated the principal, who remained answerable for them till they joined their colours. On the whole, the difficulty of obtaining exemption by substitution was so great, that very many young men, well educated, and of respectable families, were torn from all their more propitious prospects, to bear the life, discharge the duties, and die the death, of common soldiers in a marching regiment.
There was no part of Napoleon's government enforced with such extreme rigour as the levy of the conscriptions.332 The mayor, upon whom the duty devolved of seeing the number called for selected by lot from the class to whom they belonged, was compelled, under the most severe penalties, to avoid showing the slightest indulgence – the brand, the pillory, or the galleys, awaited the magistrate himself, if he was found to have favoured any individuals on whom the law of conscription had claims. The same laws held out the utmost extent of their terrors against refractory conscripts, and the public functionaries were every where in search of them. When arrested, they were treated like convicts of the most infamous description. Clothed in a dress of infamy, loaded with chains, and dragging weights which were attached to them, they were condemned like galley slaves to work upon the public fortifications. Their relations did not escape, but were often rendered liable for fines and penalties.
But perhaps the most horrible part of the fate of the conscript, was, that it was determined for life. Two or three, even four or five years spent in military service, might have formed a more endurable, though certainly a severe tax upon human life, with its natural prospects and purposes. But the conscription effectually and for ever changed the character of its victims. The youth, when he left his father's hearth, was aware that he was bidding it adieu, in all mortal apprehension, for ever; and the parents who had parted with him, young, virtuous, and ingenuous, and with a tendency, perhaps, to acquire the advantages of education, could only expect to see him again (should so unlikely an event ever take place) with the habits, thoughts, manners, and morals, of a private soldier.
But whatever distress was inflicted on the country by this mode of compulsory levy, it was a weapon particularly qualified to serve Buonaparte's purposes. He succeeded to the power which it gave the government, amongst other spoils of the Revolution, and he used it to the greatest possible extent.
The conscription, of course, comprehended recruits of every kind, good, bad, and indifferent; but chosen as they were from the mass of the people, without distinction, they were, upon the whole, much superior to that description of persons among whom volunteers for the army are usually levied in other countries, which comprehends chiefly the desperate, the reckless, the profligate, and those whose unsettled or vicious habits render them unfit for peaceful life. The number of young men of some education who were compelled to serve in the ranks, gave a tone and feeling to the French army of a very superior character, and explains why a good deal of intellect and power of observation was often found amongst the private sentinels. The habits of the nation also being strongly turned towards war, the French formed, upon the whole, the most orderly, most obedient, most easily commanded, and best regulated troops, that ever took the field in any age or country. In the long and protracted struggle of battle, their fiery courage might sometimes be exhausted before that of the determined British; but in all that respects the science, practice, and usages of war, the French are generally allowed to have excelled their more stubborn, but less ingenious rivals. They excelled especially in the art of shifting for themselves; and it was one in which the wars of Napoleon required them to be peculiarly adroit.333
The French Revolution first introduced into Europe a mode of conducting hostilities, which transferred almost the whole burden of the war to the country which had the ill-fortune to be the seat of its operations, and rendered it a resource rather than a drain to the successful belligerent. This we shall presently explain.
THE CONSCRIPTION – CORPS D'ARMÉE.
At the commencement of a campaign, nothing could be so complete as the arrangement of a French army. It was formed into large bodies, called corps d'armée, each commanded by a king, viceroy, mareschal, or general officer of high pretensions, founded on former services. Each corps d'armée formed a complete army within itself, and had its allotted proportion of cavalry, infantry, artillery, and troops of every description. The corps d'armée consisted of from six to ten divisions, each commanded by a general of division. The divisions, again, were subdivided into brigades, of which each, comprehending two or three regiments, (consisting of two or more battalions,) was commanded by a general of brigade. A corps d'armée might vary in number from fifty to eighty thousand men, and upwards; and the general of such a body exercised the full military authority over it, without the control of any one excepting the Emperor himself. There were very few instances of the Emperor's putting the officers who were capable of this high charge under command of each other; indeed, so very few, as might almost imply some doubt on his part, of his commands to this effect being obeyed, had they been issued. This system of dividing his collected forces into separate and nearly independent armies, the generals of which were each intrusted with and responsible for his execution of some separate portion of an immense combined plan, gave great celerity and efficacy to the French movements; and, superintended as it was by the master-spirit which planned the campaign, often contributed to the most brilliant results. But whenever it became necessary to combine two corps d'armée in one operation, it required the personal presence of Napoleon himself.
Thus organised, the French army was poured into some foreign country by forced marches, without any previous arrangement of stores or magazines for their maintenance, and with the purpose of maintaining them solely at the expense of the inhabitants. Buonaparte was exercised in this system; and the combination of great masses, by means of such forced marches, was one great principle of his tactics. This species of war was carried on at the least possible expense of money to his treasury; but it was necessarily at the greatest possible expenditure of human life, and the incalculable increase of human misery. Napoleon's usual object was to surprise the enemy by the rapidity of his marches, defeat him in some great battle, and then seize upon his capital, levy contributions, make a peace with such advantages as he could obtain, and finally return to Paris.
LA MARAUDE.
In these dazzling campaigns, the army usually began their march with provisions, that is, bread or biscuit for a certain number of days, on the soldiers' backs. Cattle also were for a time driven along with them, and slaughtered as wanted. These articles were usually provided from some large town or populous district, in which the troops might have been cantoned. The horses of the cavalry were likewise loaded with forage, for the consumption of two or three days. Thus provided, the army set forward on its expedition by forced marches. In a very short time the soldiers became impatient of their burdens, and either wasted them by prodigal consumption, or actually threw them away. It was then that the officers, who soon entertained just apprehensions of the troops suffering scarcity before another regular issue of provisions, gave authority to secure supplies by what was called la maraude, in other words, by plunder. To ensure that these forced supplies should be collected and distributed systematically, a certain number of soldiers from each company were despatched to obtain provisions at the villages and farm-houses in the neighbourhood of the march, or of the ground upon which the army was encamped. These soldiers were authorised to compel the inhabitants to deliver their provisions without receipt or payment; and, such being their regular duty, it may be well supposed that they did not confine themselves to provisions, but exacted money and articles of value, and committed many other similar abuses.
THE FRENCH SOLDIERY.
It must be owned, that the intellectual character of the French, and the good-nature which is the real ground of their national character, rendered their conduct more endurable under the evils of this system than could have been expected, provided always that provisions were plenty, and the country populous. A sort of order was then observed, even in the disorder of the maraude, and pains were taken to divide regularly the provisions thus irregularly obtained. The general temper of the soldiery, when unprovoked by resistance, made them not wholly barbarous; and their original good discipline, the education which many had received, with the habits of docility which all had acquired, prevented them from breaking up into bands of absolute banditti, and destroying themselves by their own irregularities. No troops except the French could have subsisted in the same manner; for no other army is sufficiently under the command of its officers.
But the most hideous features of this system were shown when the army marched through a thinly-peopled country, or when the national character, and perhaps local facilities, encouraged the natives and peasants to offer resistance. Then the soldiers became animated alike by the scarcity of provisions, and irritated at the danger which they sometimes incurred in collecting them. As their hardships increased, their temper became relentless and reckless, and, besides indulging in every other species of violence, they increased their own distresses by destroying what they could not use. Famine and sickness were not long of visiting an army which traversed by forced marches a country exhausted of provisions. These stern attendants followed the French columns as they struggled on. Without hospitals, and without magazines, every straggler who could not regain his ranks fell a victim to hunger, to weather, to weariness, to the vengeance of an incensed peasantry. In this manner, the French army suffered woes, which, till these tremendous wars, had never been the lot of troops in hostilities carried on between civilized nations. Still Buonaparte's object was gained; he attained, amid these losses and sacrifices, and at the expense of them, the point which he had desired; displayed his masses to the terrified eyes of a surprised enemy; reaped the reward of his despatch in a general victory; and furnished new subjects of triumph to the Moniteur. So much did he rely upon the celerity of movement, that if an officer asked time to execute any of his commands, it was frequently his remarkable answer – "Ask me for any thing except time." That celerity depended on the uncompromising system of forced marches, without established magazines; and we have described how wasteful it must have been to human life.334 But when the battle was over, the dead were at rest, and could not complain; the living were victors, and soon forgot their sufferings; and the loss of the recruits who had been wasted in the campaign, was supplied by another draught upon the youth of France, in the usual forms of the conscription.
Buonaparte observed, with respect to his army, an adroit species of policy. His mareschals, his generals, his officers of high rank, were liberally honoured and rewarded by him; but he never treated them with personal familiarity. The forms of etiquette were, upon all occasions, strictly maintained. Perhaps he was of opinion that the original equality in which they had stood with regard to each other, would have been too strongly recalled by a more familiar mode of intercourse. But to the common soldier, who could not misconstrue or intrude upon his familiarity, Buonaparte observed a different line of conduct. He permitted himself to be addressed by them on all suitable occasions, and paid strict attention to their petitions, complaints, and even their remonstrances. What they complained of was, in all instances, inquired into and reformed, if the complaints were just. After a battle, he was accustomed to consult the regiments which had distinguished themselves, concerning the merits of those who had deserved the Legion of Honour, or other military distinction. In these moments of conscious importance, the sufferings of the whole campaign were forgotten; and Napoleon seemed, to the soldiery who surrounded him, not as the ambitious man who had dragged them from their homes, to waste their valour in foreign fields, and had purchased victory at the expense of subjecting them to every privation, but as the father of the war, to whom his soldiers were as children, and to whom the honour of the meanest private was as dear as his own.
Every attention was paid, to do justice to the claims of the soldier, and provide for his preferment as it was merited. But with all this encouragement, it was the remark of Buonaparte himself, that the army no longer produced, under the Empire, such distinguished soldiers as Pichegru, Kleber, Moreau, Massena, Desaix, Hoche, and he himself above all, who, starting from the ranks of obscurity, like runners to a race, had astonished the world by their progress. These men of the highest genius, had been produced, as Buonaparte thought, in and by the fervour of the Revolution; and he appears to have been of opinion, that, since things had returned more and more into the ordinary and restricted bounds of civil society, men of the same high class were no longer created. There is, however, some fallacy in this statement. Times of revolution do not create great men, but revolutions usually take place in periods of society when great principles have been under discussion, and the views of the young and of the old have been turned, by the complexion of the times, towards matters of grand and serious consideration, which elevate the character and raise the ambition. When the collision of mutual violence, the explosion of the revolution itself actually breaks out, it neither does nor can create talent of any kind. But it brings forth, (and in general destroys,) in the course of its progress, all the talent which the predisposition to discussion of public affairs had already encouraged and fostered; and when that talent has perished, it cannot be replaced from a race educated amidst the furies of civil war. The abilities of the Long Parliament ceased to be seen under the Commonwealth, and the same is true of the French Convention, and the Empire which succeeded it. Revolution is like a conflagration, which throws temporary light upon the ornaments and architecture of the house to which it attaches, but always ends by destroying them.
It is said also, probably with less authority, that Napoleon, even when surrounded by those Imperial Guards, whose discipline had been so sedulously carried to the highest pitch, sometimes regretted the want of the old Revolutionary soldiers, whose war-cry, "Vive la Republique!" identified each individual with the cause which he maintained. Napoleon, however, had no cause to regret any circumstance which referred to his military power. It was already far too great, and had destroyed the proper scale of government in France, by giving the military a decided superiority over all men of civil professions, while he himself, with the habits and reasoning of a despotic general, had assumed an almost unlimited authority over the fairest part of Europe. Over foreign countries, the military renown of France streamed like a comet, inspiring universal dread and distrust; and whilst it rendered indispensable similar preparations for resistance, it seemed as if peace had departed from the earth for ever, and that its destinies were hereafter to be disposed of according to the laws of brutal force alone.