"Instead of having our Generals in the army, we have them at the head of the religious orders. Imagine the sensations of the General of the Jesuits at hearing a soldier announced by the honourable ecclesiastical title of General!"
"Well! there's something in that."
"In order to have commanders for our troops, without at the same time creating personages of too much importance, we have imported three foreign Colonels, who are permitted to perform the functions of General. They even appear in the disguise of Generals, but they will never have the audacity to assume the title."
"Capital! Well, now with us there is not a scamp of eighteen who would engage in the army if he were told that he might become a Colonel, but never a General; or even a General, but never a Marshal of France. Who, or what, could induce a man to rush into a career in which there is at a certain point an impassable barrier? You regret that all your officers are not savants. I admit that they have learnt something. They enter the College without competition or preliminary examination, sometimes without orthography or arithmetic. The first inspection made by our Generals discovers future lieutenants who cannot do a sum in division, a French class without either a master or pupils, and an historical class in which, after seven months of teaching, the professor is still theologically expounding the creation of the world. It must indeed be a powerful spirit of emulation which can induce these young men to make themselves capable of keeping up a conversation with French officers. You are astonished that they allow the discipline of their men to become somewhat relaxed. Why, discipline is about the last thing they have been taught. In the time of Gregory XVI. an officer refused to allow a Cardinal's carriage to pass down a certain street. Such were his orders. The coachman drove on, and the officer was sent to the castle of St. Angelo, for having done his duty. A single instance of this sort is quite enough to demoralize an army. But the King of Naples shows the Pope his mistake. He had a sentry mentioned in the order of the day, for giving a bishop's coachman a cut with his sword. You are scandalized because certain military administrators curtail the soldiers' poor allowance of bread; but they have never been told that peculation will be punished by dismissal."
"Well, the scheme of reorganization is in hand; you will see a new order of things in 1859."
"I am glad to hear it, Monsignore; and I will answer for it that a judicious, well-considered reform—slowly progressive, of course, as everything is at Rome—will produce excellent results in a few years. It is not in a day that you can expect to change the face of things; but you know the gardener is not discouraged by the certainty that the tree he plants to-day will not produce fruit for the next five years. The morals of your soldiers are, as you say, none of the best: I hear it said everywhere that an honest peasant thinks it a dishonour to wear your uniform. When you can hold out a future to your men, you need no longer recruit them from the dregs of the population. The soldier will have some feeling of personal dignity when he ceases to find himself exposed to contempt. These poor fellows are looked down upon by everybody, even by the servants of small families. They breathe an atmosphere of scorn, which may be termed the malaria of honour. Relieve them, Monsignore; they ask nothing better."
"Do you think, then, the means are to be found of giving us an army as proud and as faithful as the French army? That were a secret for which the Cardinal would pay a high price."
"I offer it to you for nothing, Monsignore. France has always been the most military country in Europe; but in the last century the French soldier was no better than yours. The officers are pretty much the same, with this difference only,—that formerly the King selected them from the nobility, whereas now they ennoble themselves by zeal and courage. But a hundred years ago the soldiery, properly so called, consisted in France of what it now does with you—the scum of the population. Picked up in low taverns, between a heap of crown-pieces and a glass of brandy, the soldier made himself more dreaded by the peasantry than by the enemy. He seemed to be overpowered beneath the weight of the scorn of the country at large, the meanness of his present condition, and the impossibility of future promotion; and he revenged himself by forays upon the cellar and the farmyard. He had his place among the scourges which desolated monarchical France. Hear what La Fontaine says,—
"La faim, les créanciers, les soldats, la corvée, Lui font d'un malheureux la peinture achevée."
You see that your soldiers of 1858 are angels in comparison with our soudards of the monarchy. If, with all this, you still find them, not absolutely perfect, try the French recipe: submit all your citizens to a conscription, in order that your regiments may not be composed of the refuse of the nation, Create—"