Thus it was on the ruin of all the old teaching, that the new institution was erected; a truly revolutionary school, as its founders delighted to call it, using the term as it was then commonly used, as a synonym for all that was excellent. And then for the first time avowing the principle of public competition, its founders, Monge and Fourcroy, began their work with an energy and enthusiasm which they seem to have left as a traditional inheritance to their school. It is curious to see the difficulties which the bankruptcy of the country threw in their way, and the vigor with which, assisted by the summary powers of the republican government, they overcame them. They begged the old Palais Bourbon for their building; were supplied with pictures from the Louvre; the fortunate capture of an English ship gave them some uncut diamonds for their first experiments; presents of military instruments were sent from the arsenals of Havre; and even the hospitals contributed some chemical substances. In fine, having set their school in motion, the government and its professors worked at it with such zeal and effect, that within five months after their project was announced, they had held their first entrance examination, open to the competition of all France, and started with three hundred and seventy-nine pupils.
The account of one of these first pupils, who is among the most distinguished still surviving ornaments of the Polytechnic, will convey a far better idea of the spirit of the young institution than could be given by a more lengthy description. M. Biot described to us vividly the zeal of the earliest teachers, and the thirst for knowledge which, repressed for awhile by the horrors of the period, burst forth with fresh ardor amongst the French youth of the time. Many of them, he said, like himself, had been carried away by the enthusiasm of the revolution, and had entered the army. “My father had sent me,” he added, “to a mercantile house, and indeed I never felt any great vocation to be a soldier, but Que voulez vous? les Prussiens etaient en Champagne.” He joined the army, served two years under Dumouriez, and returned to Paris in the reign of terror, “to see from his lodgings in the Rue St. Honore the very generals who had led us to victory, Custine and Biron, carried by in the carts to the guillotine. “Imagine what it was when we heard that Robespierre was dead, and that we might return safely to study after all this misery, and then to have for our teachers La Place, Lagrange, and Monge. We felt like men brought to life again after suffocation. Lagrange said, modestly, “Let me teach them arithmetic.” Monge was more like our father than our teacher; he would come to us in the evening, and assist us in our work till midnight, and when he explained a difficulty to one of our chefs de brigade, it ran like an electric spark through the party.” The pupils were not then, he told us, as they have since been, shut up in barracks, they were left free, but there was no idleness or dissipation amongst them. They were united in zealous work and in good camaraderie, and any one known as a bad character was avoided. This account may be a little tinged by enthusiastic recollections, but it agreed almost entirely with that of M. de Barante, who bore similar testimony to the early devotion of the pupils, and the unique excellence of the teaching of Monge.
We are not, however, writing a history of this school, and must confine ourselves to such points as directly illustrate its system of teaching and its organization. These may be roughly enumerated in the following order:
1. Its early history is completed by the law of its organization, given it by La Place in his short ministry of the interior. This occurred in the last month of 1799, a memorable era in French history, for it was immediately after the revolution of the 18th of Brumaire, when Napoleon overthrew the Directory and made himself First Consul. One of his earliest acts was to sign the charter of his great civil and military school. This charter or decree deserves some attention, because it is always referred to as the law of the foundation of the school. It determined the composition of the two councils of instruction and improvement, the bodies to which the direction of the school was to be, and still is, intrusted; some of its marked peculiarities in the mode and subject of teaching. It is important to notice each of the two points.
[The direction of the school] was at first almost entirely in the hands of its professors, who formed what is still called its Council of Instruction. Each of them presided over the school alternately for one month, a plan copied from the revolutionary government of the Convention. In the course of a few years, however, another body was added, which has now the real management of the school. This is called the “Council of Improvement” (Conseil de perfectionnement,) and a part of its business is to see that the studies form a good preparation for those of the more special schools (écoles d’application) for the civil and military service. It consists of eminent men belonging to the various public departments supplied by the school, and some of the professors. It has had, as far as we could judge, an useful influence; first, as a body not liable to be prejudiced in its proposals by the feelings of the school, and yet interested in its welfare and understanding it; secondly, as having shown much skill in the difficult task of making the theoretical teaching of the Polytechnic a good introduction to the practical studies of the public service; thirdly, as being sufficiently influential, from the character of its members, to shield the school from occasional ill-judged interference. It should be added that hardly any year has passed without the Council making a full report on the studies of the school, with particular reference to their bearing on the Special Schools of Application.
[The method of scientific teaching] has been peculiar from the beginning. It is the most energetic form of what may be called the [repetitorial] system, a method of teaching almost peculiar to France, and which may be described as a very able combination of professional and tutorial teaching. The object of the répétiteur, or private tutor, is to second every lecture of the professor, to explain and fix it by ocular demonstration, explanations, or examination. This was a peculiarity in the scheme of Monge and Foureroy. The latter said, in the first programme, “Our pupils must not only learn, they must at once carry out their theory. We must distribute them into small rooms, where they shall practice the plans of descriptive geometry, which the professors have just shown them in their public lectures. And in the same manner they must go over in practice (répéteront) in separate laboratories the principal operations of chemistry.” To carry out this system the twenty best pupils, of whom M. Biot was one, were selected as répétiteurs soon after the school had started. Since then the vacancies have always been filled by young but competent men, aspiring themselves to become in turn professors. They form a class of teachers more like the highest style of private tutors in our universities, or what are called in Germany Privat-docenten, than any other body—with this difference, that they do not give their own lectures, but breaking up the professor’s large class into small classes of five and six pupils, examine these in his lecture. The success of this attempt we shall describe hereafter.
2. A change may be noticed which was effected very early by the Council of Improvement—the union of pupils for artillery and engineers in a single school of application. The first report in December 1800, speaks of the identity in extent and character of the studies required for these two services; and in conformity with its recommendation, the law of the 3rd of October 1802, (12th Vendémiaire, XI.) dissolved the separate artillery school at Châlons, and established the united school for both arms in the form which it still retains at Metz.
[3.] In 1805 a curious change was made, and one very characteristic of the school. The pupils have always been somewhat turbulent, and generally on the side of opposition. In the earliest times they were constantly charged with incivisme, and the aristocracy was said to have “taken refuge within its walls.” In fact, one of its earliest and of its few great literary pupils, M. de Barante, confirmed this statement, adding, as a reason, that the school gave for a while the only good instruction in France. It was in consequence of some of these changes that the pupils who had hitherto lived in their own private houses or lodgings in Paris, were collected in the school building. This “casernement” said to be immediately owing to a burst of anger of Napoleon, naturally tended to give the school a more military character; but it was regarded as an unfortunate change by its chief scientific friends. “Ah! ma pauvre école!” M. Biot told us he had exclaimed, when he saw their knapsacks on their beds. He felt, he said, that the enthusiasm of free study was gone, and that now they would chiefly work by routine and compulsion.
[4.] The year 1809 may be called the epoch at which the school attained its final character. By this time the functions, both of boards and teachers, were accurately fixed, some alterations in the studies had taken place, and the plan of a final examination had been drawn up, according to which the pupils were to obtain their choice of the branch of the public service they preferred. In fact, the school may be said to have preserved ever since the form it then assumed, under a variety of governments and through various revolutions, in most of which, indeed, its pupils have borne some share; and one of which, the restoration of 1816, was attended with its temporary dissolution.
Thus, during the first years after its foundation the Polytechnic grew and flourished in the general dearth of public teaching, being indeed not merely the only great school, but, until the Institute was founded, the only scientific body in France. Working on its first idea of high professorial lectures, practically applied and explained by répétiteurs, its success in its own purely scientific line was, and has continued to be, astonishing. Out of its sixteen earliest professors, ten still retain an European name. Lagrange, Monge, Fourcroy, La Place, Guyton de Morveau were connected with it. Malus, Hauy, Biot, Poisson, and De Barante, were among its earliest pupils. Arago, Cauchy, Cavaignac, Lamoricière, with many more modern names, came later. All the great engineers and artillerymen of the empire belonged to it, and the long pages in its calendar of distinguished men are the measure of its influence on the civil and military services of France. In fact its pupils, at a time of enormous demands, supplied all the scientific offices of the army, and directed all the chief public works, fortresses, arsenals, the improvement of cities, the great lines of roads, shipbuilding, mining—carried out, in a word, most of the great improvements of Napoleon. He knew the value of his school, “the hen” as he called it, “that laid him golden eggs”—and perhaps its young pupils were not improved by the excessive official patronage bestowed by him upon “the envy of Europe,” “the first school in the world.” It can not, however, be matter of surprise, that its vigor and success should have caused Frenchmen, even those who criticise its influence severely, to regard it with pride as an institution unrivaled for scientific purposes.