Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume III.

by Walter Scott

THE CONSCRIPTION.

We have shown that the course of education practised in France was so directed, as to turn the thoughts and hopes of the youth to a military life, and prepare them to obey the call of the conscription. This means of recruiting the military force, the most formidable ever established in a civilized nation, was originally presented to the Council of Five Hundred in 1798.[330] It comprehended a series of lists, containing the names of the whole youth of the kingdom, from the age of twenty to twenty-five, and empowering government to call them out successively, in such numbers as the exigencies of the state should require. The classes were five in number. The first contained those who were aged twenty years complete, before the commencement of the year relative to which the conscription was demanded, and the same rule applied to the other four classes of men, who had attained the twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth years successively, before the same period. In practice, however, the second class of conscripts were not called out until the first were actually in service, nor was it usual to demand more than the first class in any one year. But as the first class amounted to 60 or 80,000, so forcible and general a levy presented immense facilities to the government, and was proportionally burdensome to the people.[331]

This law, undoubtedly, has its general principle in the duty which every one owes to his country. Nothing can be more true, than that all men capable of bearing arms are liable to be employed in the defence of the state; and nothing can be more politic, than that the obligation which is incumbent upon all, should be, in the first instance, imposed upon the youth, who are best qualified for military service by the freshness of their age, and whose absence from the ordinary business of the country will occasion the least inconvenience. But it is obvious, that such a measure can only be vindicated in defensive war, and that the conduct of Buonaparte, who applied the system to the conduct of distant offensive wars, no otherwise necessary than for the satisfaction of his own ambition, stands liable to the heavy charge of having drained the very life-blood of the people intrusted to his charge, not for the defence of their own country, but to extend the ravages of war to distant and unoffending regions.

The French conscription was yet more severely felt by the extreme rigour of its conditions. No distinction was made betwixt the married man, whose absence might be the ruin of his family, and the single member of a numerous lineage, who could be easily spared. The son of the widow, the child of the decrepid and helpless, had no right to claim an exemption. Three sons might be carried off in three successive years from the same desolated parents; there was no allowance made for having already supplied a recruit. Those unable to serve were mulcted in a charge proportioned to the quota of taxes which they or their parents contributed to the state, and which might vary from fifty to twelve hundred francs. Substitutes might indeed be offered, but then it was both difficult and expensive to procure them, as the law required that such substitutes should not only have the usual personal qualifications for a military life, but should be domesticated within the same district as their principal, or come within the conscription of the year. Suitable persons were sure to know their own value, and had learned so well to profit by it, that they were not to be bribed to serve without excessive bounties. The substitutes also had the practice of deserting upon the road, and thus cheated the principal, who remained answerable for them till they joined their colours. On the whole, the difficulty of obtaining exemption by substitution was so great, that very many young men, well educated, and of respectable families, were torn from all their more propitious prospects, to bear the life, discharge the duties, and die the death, of common soldiers in a marching regiment.

There was no part of Napoleon's government enforced with such extreme rigour as the levy of the conscriptions.[332] The mayor, upon whom the duty devolved of seeing the number called for selected by lot from the class to whom they belonged, was compelled, under the most severe penalties, to avoid showing the slightest indulgence—the brand, the pillory, or the galleys, awaited the magistrate himself, if he was found to have favoured any individuals on whom the law of conscription had claims. The same laws held out the utmost extent of their terrors against refractory conscripts, and the public functionaries were every where in search of them. When arrested, they were treated like convicts of the most infamous description. Clothed in a dress of infamy, loaded with chains, and dragging weights which were attached to them, they were condemned like galley slaves to work upon the public fortifications. Their relations did not escape, but were often rendered liable for fines and penalties.

But perhaps the most horrible part of the fate of the conscript, was, that it was determined for life. Two or three, even four or five years spent in military service, might have formed a more endurable, though certainly a severe tax upon human life, with its natural prospects and purposes. But the conscription effectually and for ever changed the character of its victims. The youth, when he left his father's hearth, was aware that he was bidding it adieu, in all mortal apprehension, for ever; and the parents who had parted with him, young, virtuous, and ingenuous, and with a tendency, perhaps, to acquire the advantages of education, could only expect to see him again (should so unlikely an event ever take place) with the habits, thoughts, manners, and morals, of a private soldier.

But whatever distress was inflicted on the country by this mode of compulsory levy, it was a weapon particularly qualified to serve Buonaparte's purposes. He succeeded to the power which it gave the government, amongst other spoils of the Revolution, and he used it to the greatest possible extent.

The conscription, of course, comprehended recruits of every kind, good, bad, and indifferent; but chosen as they were from the mass of the people, without distinction, they were, upon the whole, much superior to that description of persons among whom volunteers for the army are usually levied in other countries, which comprehends chiefly the desperate, the reckless, the profligate, and those whose unsettled or vicious habits render them unfit for peaceful life. The number of young men of some education who were compelled to serve in the ranks, gave a tone and feeling to the French army of a very superior character, and explains why a good deal of intellect and power of observation was often found amongst the private sentinels. The habits of the nation also being strongly turned towards war, the French formed, upon the whole, the most orderly, most obedient, most easily commanded, and best regulated troops, that ever took the field in any age or country. In the long and protracted struggle of battle, their fiery courage might sometimes be exhausted before that of the determined British; but in all that respects the science, practice, and usages of war, the French are generally allowed to have excelled their more stubborn, but less ingenious rivals. They excelled especially in the art of shifting for themselves; and it was one in which the wars of Napoleon required them to be peculiarly adroit.[333]

The French Revolution first introduced into Europe a mode of conducting hostilities, which transferred almost the whole burden of the war to the country which had the ill-fortune to be the seat of its operations, and rendered it a resource rather than a drain to the successful belligerent. This we shall presently explain.