The students quitting the Polytechnic in the manner described in the account of that school, at the average age of twenty-one, enter the School of Application, with the provisional rank, the uniform, and the pay of sub-lieutenants (sous-lieutenants.) The ordinary term of residence is two years. Under special circumstances this may be shortened; and in case of illness or want of application individual students are occasionally retained for a third year. Each new body of students, each admission or promotion, is classified at the end of the first year, and the students composing it are arranged in order of merit in accordance with the reports of the professors, but without an examination; at the close of the second year they pass a final examination before the Board of Officers, and are definitively placed in the corps they have chosen, the artillery or engineers, according to the order of merit. They are allowed to count, as regards retirement from the service and towards military decorations, four year’s service on account of the two years passed at the Polytechnic School, and of the time passed in preparing for admission to it, reckoning from the day of their admission to the School of Application.
[Metz is a fortified place] on the Prussian frontier, the seat of war at the time of the school’s first foundation; it is on the line of railway to Mannheim, about thirty miles from the point where this branch diverges from the main line to Strasburg. The Moselle flows through the town, and is employed, with its little affluent the Seille, in the military defenses. The garrison numbers 10,000 men; there is an Arsenal, a school of Pyrotechny for the manufacture of rockets, two Regimental Schools, one of Artillery and the other of Engineers. The School of Application occupies buildings erected on the site, and partly the original buildings themselves, of a suppressed Benedictine monastery. Three sides of the cloistered monastic quadrangle are devoted to the offices, lecture-rooms, galleries and halls of study. A fourth, formerly the ancient church, is converted into a salle des manœuvres. There is an adjoining residence for the commandant; and a separate modern building, four stories in height, affords lodging to the young men.
The salle des manœuvres is a large area under a lofty roof, rising to the whole height of the buildings of the quadrangle; it contains artillery of various descriptions, mortars, field and siege guns placed as in a battery, and is amply large enough to allow cannon to be moved and exercises performed when the state of the weather may make it desirable.
The amphitheaters or lecture rooms, much on the same system as those at the Polytechnic, are two in number, one for each of the two divisions. Officers of the artillery and engineers who are in garrison, are entitled, if they please, to attend the lectures, and other officers also may be admitted by permission.
The galleries, partly on the ground floor, partly on the first floor, contain very good collections of models of artillery, ancient and modern, of sets of small arms, of tools, of locks, barrels and other portions of muskets in various stages of the process of their manufacture, of specimens of carpentry and roofing, of minerals, of models of fortifications, bridges, coffer-dams, locks, &c.
The library on the first floor has an adjoining reading room; and near it is the examination room, of which further mention will be made. The three halls of study (salles d’étude) on the first floor are on a different plan from those of the Polytechnic, each one being large enough to accommodate a whole division (seventy students.) Three rooms are also provided for the professors to prepare their lectures in.
The barracks, on the opposite side of the open space used for drill and exercises, form a lofty and handsome building, entered by separate staircases, the ground-floor rooms of each being assigned to a servant, who undertakes to provide attendance for all the young men lodging in the rooms above. The rooms are comfortable, mostly double-bedded, the bedroom serving also as a sitting room, and a small adjoining closet being used for washing, &c. Twenty or twenty-two appear to be thus accommodated on each staircase; there are lodgings altogether for one hundred and forty-five. A certain number of the senior sub-lieutenants would, probably, on the arrival of the new cadets from the Polytechnic, be removed to lodge in the town.
There is a riding-school adjoining the court; stables, for thirty-three horses, which are kept for the use of the pupils, and lodgings for the attendants are provided in the neighborhood.
The mere description of the buildings shows at once that the system is different in many respects from that of the Polytechnic. Young men of twenty-one and twenty-two years of age, already holding provisional commissions in the service, receiving the pay and wearing the uniform of sub-lieutenants, are naturally allowed much greater freedom of action. They live, and partly also study, not in the halls of study, but in their own rooms; they take their meals in the town, where they frequent the cafés and restaurants of their choice. The rappel summons them every morning to rise and attend a roll-call at half-past five or six; military exercises, riding, or interrogations, similar to the interrogations particulières, require the presence of a portion of the number, but the rest are free to return to their rooms. At ten they have to attend either the day’s lecture, followed by employment in the halls of study, till four o’clock P.M., or they proceed at once to the halls of study, and set to work on the drawings, designs, projects, &c., which are described hereafter in the account of the studies. From four to half-past five P.M.; drill, exercises, and riding occupy a portion of the number, probably those who were not called for in the morning. After half-past five they are left to themselves.
This ordinary routine of studies is interrupted in the summer months by the occurrence of expeditions for making surveys, and for measuring and sketching machines in manufactories. The young men are sent, two together, to survey (lever à boussole;) singly for the reconnaissance sketch (lever à vue ;) and generally, a certain number are distributed about a district not too large for an officer to make his round in it, and see each day that all are at work. The railways afford considerable facilities; the expeditions never occupy more than ten days at a time, but they may be extended as far as Strasburg.