Paris as It Was and as It Is / A Sketch Of The French Capital, Illustrative Of The Effects Of The Revolution

by Francis William Blagdon

At the beginning of its institution, the Dépôt de la guerre was no more than archives, where were collected, and preserved with order, the memoirs of the generals, their correspondence, the accounts yet imperfect, and the traces of anterior military operations.

The numerous resources afforded by this collection alone, the assistance and advantages derived from it on every occasion, when it was necessary to investigate a military system, or determine an important operation, suggested the idea of assembling it under a form and classification more methodical. Greater attention and exactness were exerted in enriching the Dépôt with every thing that might complete the theoretical works and practical elucidations of all the branches of the military art,

Marshal DE MAILLEBOIS, who was appointed director of this establishment in 1730, was one of the first authors of the present existing order. The classification at first consisted only in forming registers of the correspondence of the generals, according to date, distinguishing it by different wars. It was divided into two parts, the former containing the letters of the generals; and the latter, the minutes or originals of the answers of the king and his ministers. To each volume was added a summary of the contents, and, in regular succession, the journal of the military operations of the year. These volumes, to the number of upwards of two thousand seven hundred, contain documents from the eleventh century to the close of the last American war; but the series is perfect only from the year 1631. This was a valuable mine for a historiographer to explore; and, indeed, it is well known that the Memoirs of Turenne and of Condé, the History of the war of 1741, and part of the fragments of the Essay on the Manners and History of Nations, by Voltaire, were compiled and digested from the original letters and memoirs preserved in the Dépôt de la guerre.

Geographical engineers did not then exist as a corps. Topography was practised by insulated officers, impelled thereto by the rather superficial study of the mathematics and a taste for drawing; because it was for them a mean of obtaining more advantageous employments in the staffs of the armies: but the want of a central point, the difference of systems and methods, not admitting of directing the operations to one same principle, as well as to one same object, topography, little encouraged, was making but a slow progress, when M. DE CHOISEUIL established, as a particular corps, the officers who had applied themselves to the practice of that science. The Dépôt was charged to direct and assemble the labours of the new corps. This authority doubled the utility of the Dépôt: its results had the most powerful influence during the war from 1757 to 1763.

Lieutenant-General De VAULT, who had succeeded Marshal De MAILLEBOIS as director of the Dépôt de la guerre, conceived, and executed a plan, destined to render still more familiar and secure the numerous documents collected in this establishment. He first retrenched from the Military Correspondences and Memoirs all tedious repetitions and unnecessary details; he then classed the remainder under the head of a different army or operation, without subjecting himself to any other order than a simple chronology; but he caused each volume to be preceded by a very succinct, historical summary, in order to enable the reader to seize the essence of the original memoirs and documents, the text of which was faithfully copied in the body of each volume, In this manner did he arrange all the military events from the German war in 1677 to the peace of 1763. This analysis forms one hundred and twenty five volumes.

It is easy to conceive how much more interesting these historical volumes became by the addition, which took place about the same epoch, of the labours of the geographical engineers employed in the armies. The military men having it at the same time in his power to follow the combinations of the generals with the execution of their plans, imbibes, without difficulty, the principles followed by great captains, or improves himself from the exact account of the errors and faults which it is so natural to commit on critical occasions.

When all the establishments of the old régime were tottering, or threatened by the revolutionary storm, measures were suggested for preserving the Dépôt de la guerre, and, towards the end of 1791, it was transferred from Versailles to Paris. Presently the new system of government, the war declared against the emperor, and the foreseen conflagration of Europe, concurred to give a new importance to this establishment. Alone, amidst the general overthrow, it had preserved a valuable collection of the military and topographical labours of the monarchy, of manuscripts of the greatest importance, and a body of information of every kind respecting the resources, and the country, of the powers already hostile, or on the point of becoming so. All the utility which might result from the Dépôt was then felt, and it was thought necessary to give it a new organization.[[2]]

The Dépôt de la guerre, however, would have attained but imperfectly the object of its institution, had there not been added to its topographical treasure, the richest, as well as the finest, collection in Europe of every geographical work held in any estimation. The first epochs of the revolution greatly facilitated the increase of its riches of that description. The general impulse, imprinted on the mind of the French nation, prompted every will towards useful sacrifices. Private cabinets in possession of the scarcest maps, gave them up to the government, The suppression of the monasteries and abbeys caused to flow to the centre the geographical riches which they preserved in an obscurity hurtful to the progress of that important science: and thus the Dépôt de la guerre obtained one of the richest collections in Europe.[[3]] The government, besides, completed it by the delivery of the great map of France by CASSINI, begun in 1750, together with all the materials forming the elements of that grand work. It is painful to add that not long before that period (in 1791) the corps of geographical engineers, which alone could give utility to such valuable materials had been suppressed.[[4]]

In the mean time, the sudden changes in the administrative system had dispersed the learned societies employed in astronomy, or the mathematical sciences. The National Observatory was disused. The celebrated astronomers attached to it had no rallying point: they could not devote themselves to their labours but amidst the greatest difficulties; the salary allowed to them was not paid; the numerous observations, continued for two centuries, were on the point of being interrupted.

The Dépôt de la guerre then became the asylum of those estimable men. This establishment excited and obtained the reverification of the measure of an arc of the meridian, in order to serve as a basis for the uniformity of the weights and measures which the government wished to establish.