MILITARY SCHOOLS.—PLAN OF EDUCATION PRESCRIBED BY THE EMPEROR.—HIS INTENTIONS IN BEHALF OF VETERANS.—CHANGES INTRODUCED IN THE MANNERS OF THE CAPITAL.
Wednesday, 5th.—The Emperor went out at about four o’clock; he had been three hours in his bath, and did not feel well. Yet the weather was delightful; it was like a fine afternoon in Europe. We walked until we came up to the calash, and then took our usual drive. Our conversation turned upon the military school of Paris before the Revolution, and we contrasted the footing of luxury upon which we were placed at that school with the severe discipline introduced by the Emperor in these establishments during his reign.
At the military school of Paris we were treated in every respect like officers of fortune, boarded and waited upon in a style of great magnificence, greater indeed than the circumstances of most of our families warranted, and greater than most of us could hope to be able to keep up in after-life. The Emperor had been anxious, he said, to avoid falling into this error; he had wished, above all, that his young officers, who were one day to command soldiers, should begin by being soldiers themselves, and learn by experience all the technical details of the service: a system of education, he added, which must ever prove an immense advantage to an officer in the course of his future career, by enabling him to follow them and to enforce the observance of those details in others who are placed under his orders. It was on this principle that, at St. Germain, the young students were obliged to groom their own horses, taught to shoe them, &c. The same spirit presided over the regulations at St. Cyr: there several pupils were lodged together in one large apartment, a common mess was provided for all indiscriminately, &c.: yet the attention paid to these particulars was not suffered to interfere with the care bestowed upon the instruction necessary to qualify them for their future career: in short, they did not leave St. Cyr before they had really earned the rank of officers, and were found capable of leading and commanding soldiers. “And it must be admitted,” the Emperor observed, “that if the young men who passed from that institution, at its origin, into different corps of the army, were at first viewed with jealousy, ample justice was soon rendered to their discipline and to their abilities.”
The establishments of Ecouen, St. Denis and others, which the benevolent solicitude of Napoleon had created for the daughters of members of the legion of honour, were conducted upon principles of a similar nature. Some of the rules, made by the Emperor himself, ordered that every article for the use of the institution should be made in the house and by the hands of the pupils themselves, and forbade every species of luxury, extravagance in dress, and plays; the object being, he said, to form good housewives and respectable women.
Public opinion had given to Napoleon, at the time of his elevation, the reputation of a man of a harsh disposition and void of sensibility; yet it is certain that no sovereign ever acted more from the impulse of genuine feelings than he did; but, from a peculiar turn of mind, he concealed all emotions of the heart with as much care as others take to display them.
He had adopted all the children of the soldiers and officers killed at Austerlitz, and with him such an act was not one of mere form; he had provided for them all.
I heard the following anecdote from a young man who has related it to me since my return to Europe, with tears of gratitude. Having been fortunate enough, when yet very young, to attract the Emperor’s notice by some signal proof of his attachment; Napoleon asked him what profession he would wish to embrace; and, without waiting for his answer, pointed out one himself. The young man observed that his father’s fortune was not sufficient to allow him to follow it. “What signifies that?” replied the Emperor hastily: “Am I not also your father?” Those persons who have known Napoleon in his private life, who have lived near his person, can relate a thousand traits of the same kind.
He had done much for the army and the veterans, and proposed to do much more: every day some new thought tending to that object occupied his mind. The plan of a decree was one day laid before us in the Council of State, proposing that in future all vacant situations in the customs, the collection of the revenue, and the excise, should be given to wounded soldiers, or to veterans capable of filling them, from the private up to the highest ranks in the army. This plan being coldly received, the Emperor addressed one of those who opposed it in his usual manner, urging him to discuss the question freely, and state his opinion without reserve. “Sire,” answered M. Malouet, “my objection is that I fear the other classes of the nation will feel themselves aggrieved in seeing the army preferred to them.” “Sir,” replied the Emperor warmly, “you make a distinction which does not exist; the army no longer forms a separate class of the nation. In the situation in which we are now placed no member of the state is exempt from being a soldier; to follow a military career is no longer a matter of choice, it is one of necessity. The greatest number of those who are engaged in that career have been compelled to abandon their own profession against their will, it is therefore but justice that they should receive some kind of compensation for it.”—"But," again observes the member who opposed the plan, “will it not be inferred that your majesty intends that in future almost all vacant situations shall be given to soldiers?”—
“And such is indeed my intention,” said the Emperor. “Sir, the only question is, whether I have the right to do so, and whether I thereby commit an act of injustice? Now the constitution gives me the nomination to all places, and I think it a principle of strict equity that those who have suffered most have the greatest claims to be indemnified.” Then, raising his voice, he added, “Gentlemen, war is not a profession of ease and comfort: quietly seated on your benches here you know it only by reading our bulletins, or by hearing of our triumphs. You know nothing of our nightly watches, our forced marches, the sufferings and privations of every kind to which we are exposed: but I do know them, because I witness them, and sometimes share in them.”
This plan, however, like many others, was at last abandoned, after having been several times under discussion and variously modified; and the beneficent intentions of the Emperor were, I believe, not even known to the public, though he had appeared to take a lively interest in the passing of this decree, and had defended it in its most minute details.