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

MÉCHAIN, DELAMBRE, NOUET, TRANCHOT, and PERNY were dispatched to different places from Barcelona to Dunkirk. After having established at each extremity of this line a base, measured with the greatest exactness, they were afterwards to advance their triangles, in order to ascend to the middle point of the line. This operation, which has served for rectifying a few errors that the want of perfection in the instruments had occasioned to be introduced into the measure of the meridian of CASSINI, may be reckoned one of the most celebrated works which have distinguished the close of the eighteenth century.

The establishment of the system of administration conformably to the constitution of the year III (1795) separated the various elements which the Dépôt de la guerre had found means to preserve. The Board of Longitude was established; the National Institute was formed to supply the place of the Academy of Sciences, &c. The Dépôt de la guerre was restored solely to its ancient prerogatives. Two years before, it had been under the necessity of forming new geographical engineers and it succeeded in carrying the number sufficiently high to suffice for the wants of the fourteen armies which France had afterwards on foot.[[5]] These officers being employed in the service of the staffs, no important work was undertaken. But, since the 18th of Brumaire, year VIII, (9th of November, 1799) the Consuls of the Republic have bestowed particular attention on geographical and topographical operations. The new limits of the French territory require that the map of it should be continued; and the new political system, resulting from the general pacification, renders necessary the exact knowledge of the states of the allies of the Republic.

The Dépôt de la guerre forms various sections of geographers, who are at present employed in constructing accurate maps of the four united departments. Piedmont, Savoy, Helvetia, and the part of Italy comprised between the Adige and the Adda. One section, in conjunction with the Bavarian engineers, is constructing a topographical map of Bavaria: another section is carrying into execution the military surveys, and other topographical labours, ordered by General MOREAU for the purpose of forming a map of Suabia.

The Dépôt has just published an excellent map of the Tyrol, reduced from that of PAYSAN, and to which have been added the observations made by Chevaliers DUPAY and LA LUCERNE. It has caused to be resumed the continuation of the superb map of the environs of Versailles, called La carte des chasses, a master-piece of topography and execution in all the arts relating to that science. Since the year V (1795), it has also formed a library composed of upwards of eight thousand volumes or manuscripts, the most rare, as well as the most esteemed, respecting every branch of the military art in general.

Although, in the preceding account, General A----y, with that modesty which is the characteristic of a superior mind, has been totally silent respecting his own indefatigable exertions, I have learned from the best authority, that France is soon likely to derive very considerable advantages from the activity and talent introduced by him, as director, into every branch of the Dépôt de la guerre, and of which he has afforded in his own person an illustrious example.

In giving an impulse to the interior labours of the Dépôt, the sole object of General A----y is to make this establishment lose its paralyzing destination of archives, in which, from time to time, literati might come to collect information concerning some periods of national or foreign history. He is of opinion that these materials ought to be drawn from oblivion, and brought into action by those very persons who, having the experience of war, are better enabled than any others to arrange its elements. Instruction and method being the foundations of a good administration, of the application of an art and of a science, as well as of their improvement, he has conceived the idea of uniting in a classical work the exposition of the knowledge necessary for the direction of the Dépôt, for geographical engineers, staff-officers, military men in general, and historians. This, then, is the object of the Mémomorial du Dépôt de la guerre, a periodical work, now in hand, which will become the guide of every establishment of this nature[[6]], by directing with method the various labours used in the application of mathematical and physical sciences to topography, and to that art which, of all others, has the greatest influence on the destiny of empires: I mean the art military. The improvements of which it is still susceptible will be pointed out in the Mémorial, and every new idea proposed on the subject will there be critically investigated.

In transcribing General A----y's sketch of this extremely-interesting establishment, I cannot but reflect on the striking contrast that it presents, in point of geographical riches, even half a century ago, to the disgraceful poverty, in that line, which, about the same period, prevailed in England, and was severely felt in the planning of our military expeditions.

I remember to have been told by the late Lord Howe, that, when he was captain of the Magnanime at Plymouth, and was sent for express to London, in the year 1757, in order to command the naval part of an expedition to the coast of France, George II, and the whole cabinet council, seemed very much astonished at his requiring the production of a map of that part of the enemy's coast against which the expedition was intended. Neither in the apartment where the council sat, nor in any adjoining one, was any such document; even in the Admiralty-office no other than an indifferent map of the coast could be found: as for the adjacent country, it was so little known in England, that, when the British troops landed, their commander was ignorant of the distance of the neighbouring villages.

Of late years, indeed, we have ordered these matters better; but, to judge from circumstances, it should seem that we are still extremely deficient in geographical and topographical knowledge; though we are not quite so ill informed as in the time of a certain duke, who, when First Lord of the Treasury, asked in what part of Germany was the Ohio?

P.S. In order to give you, at one view, a complete idea of the collections of the Dépôt de la guerre, and of what they have furnished during the war for the service of the government and of the armies, I shall end my letter by stating that, independently of eight thousand chosen volumes, among which is a valuable collection of atlases, of two thousand seven hundred volumes of old archives, and of upwards of nine hundred cartons or pasteboard boxes of modern original documents, the Dépôt possesses one hundred and thirty-one volumes and seventy-eight cartons of descriptive memoirs, composed at least of fifty memoirs each, four thousand seven hundred engraved maps, of each of which there are from two to twenty-five copies, exclusively of those printed at the Dépôt, and upwards of seven thousand four hundred valuable manuscript maps, plans, or drawings of marches, battles, sieges, &c.