Quite recently a class has been added to the school at Ivrea for the exclusive education of Non-commissioned Officers aspiring to a commission; and for the sake of economy this class is to be common to Infantry and Cavalry.
It is consequently from this body of officers that teachers are derived for the topographical classes established in each Regiment or Brigade. The Staff School having been recently founded, and a period of active war having intervened since its institution, can not be supposed to have completely organized its system of instruction. We have elsewhere mentioned that Topography, the Art of War, and Fortification, are the branches of military study most attended to; but we have reason to believe that its plan of instruction will be extended. It may not be superfluous to mention the high appreciation in Sardinia of the Austrian General Staff, as tending to confirm our own estimate of the excellence of the Austrian Staff School. We have been recently informed, on the best authority, that some of the most distinguished Sardinian Officers, who, from their service in the Crimea and elsewhere, have been able to compare the merits of different Staff Corps, consider the Austrian General Staff “the best in existence.”
As regards the System of Examinations, there is a Standing Board consisting of from five to seven Officers, presided over by a Lieutenant-General, which superintends all the more important Examinations of the Military Schools, such as those upon leaving the School, &c. The constant Examinations within the School, when the Cadets are being moved from one class to another, are conducted by the Professors.
The expense of Military Education in the Sardinian States amounts to 18,000l. annually. The Military Schools are all under the direction of the Minister of War.
5. Two Institutions peculiar to the Sardinian Service are the Schools for Officers, one or other of which it is necessary that every Officer under ordinary circumstances should attend for a year before being promoted to the rank of Captain. One of these is for the Infantry, at Ivrea; the other for the Cavalry, at Pinerol. In saying that every Officer must attend these Schools, we except that proportion of one-third who are promoted annually from the ranks, and whose attendance apparently has not hitherto been required.
Details respecting the organization and instruction of these schools will be found under the following heads.
[II. THE ROYAL MILITARY ACADEMY AT TURIN.]
The Accademia Militare was originally designed by Charles Emanuel, for the instruction of sons of officers of the army and of the nobility in the use of weapons, in horsemanship, dancing, mathematics, and belles-lettres. In the course of time, the institution was converted to its present purpose, of training Officers for the Sardinian Army.
The regular course of study in this school lasts apparently for six years, shortly to be reduced to five years, and the earliest age at which it is possible now to enter is fourteen, the usual age of admission being fifteen or sixteen. Formerly, boys entered at eleven and twelve, but this practice has lately been altered, to the regret of many Officers, who prefer the plan so commonly adopted abroad, of training Officers to their business as soldiers from very early years.