The Count of Ségur, above mentioned, was acting as aide-de-camp to the commanding general. A few days after the quarrel about the chairs, just as he was going to begin a game of prisoners' base, two officers who were his friends informed him privately that the Calotte had ordered the two colonels who had given offense on that occasion to be publicly tossed in blankets and that the sentence was about to be carried out. Ségur, to gain time, ordered the drummers to beat an alarm. The game was broken up, every officer ran to his colors, and the aide-de-camp hastened to explain the matter to the astonished general. The proposed punishment was deferred and finally prevented; but the escape from a scandalous breach of discipline had been a narrow one.
As the Revolution drew nearer, its spirit became evident in the army. The Count of Guibert, the most talented and influential member of the Board of War in 1788, was the object of satire and epigram. The younger officers conspired to spoil the success of his manoeuvres. The experiments that had been tried, the frequent changes in the regulations, had unsettled their ideas. In their reaction against the disagreeable rigor of German discipline, they protested that English officers alone, and not the machine-like soldiers of a despot, were the models for freemen. The common soldiers caught the spirit of insubordination from those who commanded them. Especially, the large regiment of French Guards, a highly privileged body, permanently quartered in Paris, was infected with the spirit of revolt. Its men were conspicuous in the early troubles of the Revolution, acting on the side of the mob.[Footnote: Chérest, i. 552. Miot de Mélito, i. 3.]
The militia of old France does not call for a long notice. It consisted of from sixty to eighty thousand men, whose chief duty was in garrison in time of war, and who during peace were not kept constantly together, but assembled from time to time for drill. As the term of service was six years, the number of men drawn did not exceed fifteen thousand annually. This was surely no great drain on a population of twenty-six millions. Militia duty was greatly hated, however. This appears to have been because men did not volunteer for it, but were drafted; and because many persons were exempted from the draft. This immunity covered not only the sons of aged parents who were dependent on them for support, but privileged persons of all sorts, from apothecaries to advocates, gentlemen and their servants and game-keepers. The burden was thus thrown entirely on the poorer peasantry.[Footnote: Broc, i. 117; Babeau, Le Village, 259.]
The navy in the time of Louis XVI. reached a high state of efficiency. The war of 1778 to 1783 was in great measure a naval war, and although the French and their allies were worsted in some of the principal actions, the general result may be held to have been favorable to them. The navy at the outbreak of hostilities consisted of about seventy ships of the line, and as many frigates and large corvettes, with a hundred smaller vessels. These ships were built on admirable models, for the French marine architects were well-trained and skillful; but the materials and the construction were not equal in excellence to the design. The invention of coppering the ships' bottoms, and thus adding to their speed, although generally practiced in England, had been applied in France only to the smaller part of the navy. The French, however, had an advantage over the English in the fact that ships of the same nominal class were in reality larger and broader of beam among the former than among the latter, so that the French were sometimes able to fight their lower batteries in rough water, when the English had to keep their lower ports closed.
The naval officers of France were almost all noblemen, and received a careful professional training. Yet the practice of transferring officers of high rank from the army to the navy had not been completely abandoned. Thus d'Estaing, who commanded with little distinction on the North American coast in 1778, was no sailor, but a lieutenant-général, artificially turned into a vice-admiral. Such cases, however, were not common, and in general the French commanders erred rather by adhering too closely to naval rule, than by want of professional training. In the navy, as elsewhere, no great original talent was developed during this reign, which was a time of expectation rather than of action.
The men, like the officers, were good and well-trained, except when the lack of sailors obliged the government to employ soldiers on shipboard. It is noticeable that the seamen bore the rope's end with equanimity, although the landsmen were so much offended at flogging with the flat of the sword. Nor do I find any complaint of want of discipline at sea.
The administration of naval affairs was less satisfactory than the ships or the crews. The magazines were not well provided; and the stores were probably bad, for the fleets were subject to epidemics.[Footnote: Chabaud-Arnault, 189, 196, 214. Charnoek, iii. 222, 282 Ségur, i. 138. Chevalier.]
In general the navy appears to have suffered less than the army from the fermentation of the public mind. Marine affairs must always remain the concern of a special class of men, cut off by absorbing occupations from the interests and sympathies of the rest of mankind.