Military schools and courses of instruction in the science and art of war, / in France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, Sardinia, England, and the United States. Drawn from recent official reports and documents. Revised Edition

by Unknown

FRENCH MILITARY EDUCATION IN 1869.

The following remarks on French Military Education are from the Report of the English Military Education Commission submitted to Parliament, and printed in 1870:

[1.] The proportion of professionally educated officers in the line is greater now than in 1856, when it was stated by the Commissioners in their report to be one-third.

[2.] The professional education for commissions in the line is given by a two years’ course at St. Cyr, admission to the school being dependent on competitive examination. Admission to the Artillery and Engineers is obtained through the Polytechnic, where young men intended for commissions in those arms receive a preparatory education of a highly scientific character, in common with candidates for many other branches of the public service. Admission to the school is obtained by competition, and the choice of services is dependent on the results of another competitive examination at the end of the two years’ course. Commissions are then obtained in the respective corps, and the young officers go for a further period of two years to the School of Application at Metz, there to receive their strictly professional instruction. The course of teaching at Metz is still mainly of a theoretical character, and the main portion of the practical training of the officers is deferred until they join their regiments. The Staff Corps is recruited entirely from the Staff School; a very small number of pupils from the Polytechnic have a claim to admission to the school, but the great majority of the students are admitted by competitive examination, open nominally to the sub-lieutenants of the army and to the best students of St. Cyr, but in practice almost entirely confined to the latter. The students join the school with commissions as officers; at the end of the two years’ course they are definitely appointed to the Staff Corps in the order in which they stand in a competitive examination, but before being employed upon the staff they are sent to do duty for five years with the various arms.

[3.] The military schools in France are not, as in England and in Prussia, placed under the control of a special department. They are all under the immediate management of the Minister of War. There is, however, for each branch of the service in the French army a consulting committee (comité consultatif), or board of general officers, attached to the War Department, for the purpose of giving advice to the Minister, and in matters affecting the individual schools the Minister generally consults the comité consultatif of that branch of the service for which the school is specially preparatory.

[4.] Each school has its own conseil d’instruction, composed of officers and professors of the establishment, which exercises a general supervision over the course of instruction, and has the power of suggesting alterations or improvements in it. The financial business of the school is managed by another board (conseil d’administration); and there is generally also a similar board (conseil de discipline), which exercises more or less authority in questions of discipline. The effect of this arrangement is to give the various officers and professors of each school to some extent a voice in the general management of the institution.

[5.] The staff of officers and instructors employed appears, in most cases, very large in proportion to the number of the students; 48 for 270 in the Polytechnic; 33 for 170 in the school at Metz; 62 for 600 in St. Cyr, &c.

Though there is in all the schools a military staff separate from the staff of professors and instructors, and more especially charged with the maintenance of discipline, the line of separation between the two bodies is not, except at the Polytechnic, so distinctly drawn as in the English military schools. The military professors exercise disciplinary powers; while, on the other hand, the members of the strictly military staff in almost all cases take some part in instruction. The latter appear to be more utilized for this purpose than is the case either at Sandhurst or Woolwich.

[6.] Considerable care is exercised in the appointment of professors; at the Polytechnic the candidates are selected by the Conseil de Perfectionnement; at La Flèche they are recommended to the Minister of War by the Minister of Public Instruction; at the Staff School and St. Cyr the appointments are thrown open to competition.

[7.] The discipline maintained at all the schools is of a very strict nature; except for the youngest pupils at La Flèche it is entirely military; the punishments are similar to those inflicted in the army, and even include imprisonment. The maintenance of discipline is considerably facilitated by the fact that the pupils at most of the schools are actually subject to military law; and those of St. Cyr, if dismissed from the school, are sent into the ranks as private soldiers. There appears, however, in all the schools to be an absence of the moral control over the young men which is exercised in the Prussian schools. The Commandant of each school has very extensive powers in regard to discipline, but in no case has he authority to dismiss a student from the school without the sanction of the Minister of War.