The French army on a full war establishment is represented by 580,000 men, 82,000 cavalry horses, and 1182 guns; there is also a reserve, made up of old non-commissioned officers and conscripts, whom it has not been found necessary to call out, amounting to at least 150,000 men. All the men are thoroughly in earnest; they don’t wear the “Emperor’s coat,” but the uniform of their country; the regiments do not bear the name of any varying possession, but has its own number and permanent place in history. “We did so and so at Austerlitz,” say the men to this day, in speaking of the regiment to which they belong. In France, too, any good soldier can become a corporal, any corporal a lieutenant, and so on in military rank. The words of the Great Emperor will never be eradicated from the minds of the French troops: “Every soldier of France carries a marshal’s bâton in his knapsack;” and indeed many a man who entered the service in a blouse has died in a General’s uniform.
Ah, my friend, I see you are inattentive. I know what means that glow upon your cheek and sparkle in your eyes; I hear the strain as well as yourself:—
“Our plumes have waved in combats
That ne’er shall be forgot,
Where many a mighty squadron
Reel’d backward from our shot.
In charges with the bayonet
We lead our bold compeers,
But Frenchmen like to stay not
For British Grenadiers.