THE CONSCRIPTION—CORPS D'ARMÉE.
At the commencement of a campaign, nothing could be so complete as the arrangement of a French army. It was formed into large bodies, called corps d'armée, each commanded by a king, viceroy, mareschal, or general officer of high pretensions, founded on former services. Each corps d'armée formed a complete army within itself, and had its allotted proportion of cavalry, infantry, artillery, and troops of every description. The corps d'armée consisted of from six to ten divisions, each commanded by a general of division. The divisions, again, were subdivided into brigades, of which each, comprehending two or three regiments, (consisting of two or more battalions,) was commanded by a general of brigade. A corps d'armée might vary in number from fifty to eighty thousand men, and upwards; and the general of such a body exercised the full military authority over it, without the control of any one excepting the Emperor himself. There were very few instances of the Emperor's putting the officers who were capable of this high charge under command of each other; indeed, so very few, as might almost imply some doubt on his part, of his commands to this effect being obeyed, had they been issued. This system of dividing his collected forces into separate and nearly independent armies, the generals of which were each intrusted with and responsible for his execution of some separate portion of an immense combined plan, gave great celerity and efficacy to the French movements; and, superintended as it was by the master-spirit which planned the campaign, often contributed to the most brilliant results. But whenever it became necessary to combine two corps d'armée in one operation, it required the personal presence of Napoleon himself.
Thus organised, the French army was poured into some foreign country by forced marches, without any previous arrangement of stores or magazines for their maintenance, and with the purpose of maintaining them solely at the expense of the inhabitants. Buonaparte was exercised in this system; and the combination of great masses, by means of such forced marches, was one great principle of his tactics. This species of war was carried on at the least possible expense of money to his treasury; but it was necessarily at the greatest possible expenditure of human life, and the incalculable increase of human misery. Napoleon's usual object was to surprise the enemy by the rapidity of his marches, defeat him in some great battle, and then seize upon his capital, levy contributions, make a peace with such advantages as he could obtain, and finally return to Paris.
LA MARAUDE.
In these dazzling campaigns, the army usually began their march with provisions, that is, bread or biscuit for a certain number of days, on the soldiers' backs. Cattle also were for a time driven along with them, and slaughtered as wanted. These articles were usually provided from some large town or populous district, in which the troops might have been cantoned. The horses of the cavalry were likewise loaded with forage, for the consumption of two or three days. Thus provided, the army set forward on its expedition by forced marches. In a very short time the soldiers became impatient of their burdens, and either wasted them by prodigal consumption, or actually threw them away. It was then that the officers, who soon entertained just apprehensions of the troops suffering scarcity before another regular issue of provisions, gave authority to secure supplies by what was called la maraude, in other words, by plunder. To ensure that these forced supplies should be collected and distributed systematically, a certain number of soldiers from each company were despatched to obtain provisions at the villages and farm-houses in the neighbourhood of the march, or of the ground upon which the army was encamped. These soldiers were authorised to compel the inhabitants to deliver their provisions without receipt or payment; and, such being their regular duty, it may be well supposed that they did not confine themselves to provisions, but exacted money and articles of value, and committed many other similar abuses.
THE FRENCH SOLDIERY.
It must be owned, that the intellectual character of the French, and the good-nature which is the real ground of their national character, rendered their conduct more endurable under the evils of this system than could have been expected, provided always that provisions were plenty, and the country populous. A sort of order was then observed, even in the disorder of the maraude, and pains were taken to divide regularly the provisions thus irregularly obtained. The general temper of the soldiery, when unprovoked by resistance, made them not wholly barbarous; and their original good discipline, the education which many had received, with the habits of docility which all had acquired, prevented them from breaking up into bands of absolute banditti, and destroying themselves by their own irregularities. No troops except the French could have subsisted in the same manner; for no other army is sufficiently under the command of its officers.
But the most hideous features of this system were shown when the army marched through a thinly-peopled country, or when the national character, and perhaps local facilities, encouraged the natives and peasants to offer resistance. Then the soldiers became animated alike by the scarcity of provisions, and irritated at the danger which they sometimes incurred in collecting them. As their hardships increased, their temper became relentless and reckless, and, besides indulging in every other species of violence, they increased their own distresses by destroying what they could not use. Famine and sickness were not long of visiting an army which traversed by forced marches a country exhausted of provisions. These stern attendants followed the French columns as they struggled on. Without hospitals, and without magazines, every straggler who could not regain his ranks fell a victim to hunger, to weather, to weariness, to the vengeance of an incensed peasantry. In this manner, the French army suffered woes, which, till these tremendous wars, had never been the lot of troops in hostilities carried on between civilized nations. Still Buonaparte's object was gained; he attained, amid these losses and sacrifices, and at the expense of them, the point which he had desired; displayed his masses to the terrified eyes of a surprised enemy; reaped the reward of his despatch in a general victory; and furnished new subjects of triumph to the Moniteur. So much did he rely upon the celerity of movement, that if an officer asked time to execute any of his commands, it was frequently his remarkable answer—"Ask me for any thing except time." That celerity depended on the uncompromising system of forced marches, without established magazines; and we have described how wasteful it must have been to human life.[334] But when the battle was over, the dead were at rest, and could not complain; the living were victors, and soon forgot their sufferings; and the loss of the recruits who had been wasted in the campaign, was supplied by another draught upon the youth of France, in the usual forms of the conscription.
Buonaparte observed, with respect to his army, an adroit species of policy. His mareschals, his generals, his officers of high rank, were liberally honoured and rewarded by him; but he never treated them with personal familiarity. The forms of etiquette were, upon all occasions, strictly maintained. Perhaps he was of opinion that the original equality in which they had stood with regard to each other, would have been too strongly recalled by a more familiar mode of intercourse. But to the common soldier, who could not misconstrue or intrude upon his familiarity, Buonaparte observed a different line of conduct. He permitted himself to be addressed by them on all suitable occasions, and paid strict attention to their petitions, complaints, and even their remonstrances. What they complained of was, in all instances, inquired into and reformed, if the complaints were just. After a battle, he was accustomed to consult the regiments which had distinguished themselves, concerning the merits of those who had deserved the Legion of Honour, or other military distinction. In these moments of conscious importance, the sufferings of the whole campaign were forgotten; and Napoleon seemed, to the soldiery who surrounded him, not as the ambitious man who had dragged them from their homes, to waste their valour in foreign fields, and had purchased victory at the expense of subjecting them to every privation, but as the father of the war, to whom his soldiers were as children, and to whom the honour of the meanest private was as dear as his own.
Every attention was paid, to do justice to the claims of the soldier, and provide for his preferment as it was merited. But with all this encouragement, it was the remark of Buonaparte himself, that the army no longer produced, under the Empire, such distinguished soldiers as Pichegru, Kleber, Moreau, Massena, Desaix, Hoche, and he himself above all, who, starting from the ranks of obscurity, like runners to a race, had astonished the world by their progress. These men of the highest genius, had been produced, as Buonaparte thought, in and by the fervour of the Revolution; and he appears to have been of opinion, that, since things had returned more and more into the ordinary and restricted bounds of civil society, men of the same high class were no longer created. There is, however, some fallacy in this statement. Times of revolution do not create great men, but revolutions usually take place in periods of society when great principles have been under discussion, and the views of the young and of the old have been turned, by the complexion of the times, towards matters of grand and serious consideration, which elevate the character and raise the ambition. When the collision of mutual violence, the explosion of the revolution itself actually breaks out, it neither does nor can create talent of any kind. But it brings forth, (and in general destroys,) in the course of its progress, all the talent which the predisposition to discussion of public affairs had already encouraged and fostered; and when that talent has perished, it cannot be replaced from a race educated amidst the furies of civil war. The abilities of the Long Parliament ceased to be seen under the Commonwealth, and the same is true of the French Convention, and the Empire which succeeded it. Revolution is like a conflagration, which throws temporary light upon the ornaments and architecture of the house to which it attaches, but always ends by destroying them.