The Eve of the French Revolution Part 4

Faithful husbands and wives were by no means exceptional; although, as in other places, well behaved people did not make a parade of their morality. There is such a thing as a French prig; but prigs are neither common nor popular in France. Before the Revolution the art of pleasing was more studied than it is to-day,--that art by which men and women make themselves agreeable to their acquaintance.

"In old times, under Louis XV. and Louis XVI.," says the Viscount of Segur, "a young man entering society made what was called a _debut_. He cultivated accomplishments. His father suggested and directed this work, for work it was; but the mother, the mother only, could bring her son to that last degree of politeness, of grace and amiability, which completed his education. Beside her natural tenderness, her pride was so much at stake that you may judge what care, what studied pains, she used in giving her children, on their entrance into society, all the charm that she could develop in them, or bestow upon them. Thence came that rare politeness, that exquisite taste, that moderation in speech and jest, that graceful carriage, in short that combination which characterized what was called good company, and which always distinguished French society even among foreigners. If a young man, because of his youth, had failed in attention to a lady, in consideration for a man older than himself, in deference for old age, the mother of the thoughtless young fellow was informed of it by her friends the same evening; and on the following day he was sure to receive advice and reproof."[Footnote: The Viscount of Segur was brother to the Count of Segur, from the preface to whose Memoirs this extract is taken.]

The instruction thus early given was not confined to forms. Indeed, French society in that day was probably less formal in some ways than any other European society; and in Paris people were more free than in the provinces. Although making a bow was a fine art, although a lady's curtsey was expected to be at once "natural, soft, modest, gracious, and dignified," ceremonious greetings were considered unnecessary, and few compliments were paid. To praise a woman's beauty to her face would have been to disparage her modesty. Good manners consisted in no small part in distinguis.h.i.+ng perfectly what was due to every one, and in expressing that distinction with lightness and grace. Different modes of address were appropriate toward parents, relations, friends, acquaintances, strangers, your superiors in rank, your poor dependents, yet all must be treated with courtesy and consideration. Such manners are possible only where social distinctions are positively ascertained. In old France, at least, every man had his place and knew where he was.

But it was in their dealings with ladies that the Frenchmen of that day showed the perfection of their system. Vicious they might be, but discourteous they were not. No well-bred man would then appear in a lady's room carelessly dressed, or in boots. In speech between the s.e.xes, the third person was generally used, and a gentleman in speaking to a lady dropped his voice to a lower tone than he employed to men.

Gentlemen were careful before ladies not to treat even each other with familiarity. Still less would one of them, however intimate he might be with a lady's husband or brother, speak to her of his friend by any name less formal than his t.i.tle. These habits have left their mark in France and elsewhere to this day; but the mark is fast disappearing, not altogether to the advantage of social life.[Footnote: Genlis, Dictionnaire des etiquettes, i. 94, 218; ii. 194, 347.]

Friends.h.i.+p between men was sometimes carried so far as to interfere with the claims of domestic affection. At least it was faithful and sincere, and the man on whom fortune had frowned, the fallen minister, or the disgraced courtier, was followed in his adversity by the kindness of his friends. Of all the virtues this is perhaps the one which in our hurried age tends most to disappear. It is left for the occupation of idle hours, and the smallest piece of triviality which can be tortured into the name of business, is allowed to crowd away those constantly repeated attentions which might add a true grace and refinement to the lives of those who gave and of those who received them. It is often said that friends.h.i.+ps are formed only in youth. Is not this partly because youth Revolution, men of all ages made friends.h.i.+ps, and supported them by the consideration for others which is at the bottom of all politeness. The Frenchman is nervous and irritable. When he lets his temper get beyond his control, he is fierce and violent. He has little of the easy-going good-nature under inconveniences, which some branches of the Teutonic race believe themselves to possess. He has less kindly merriment than the Tuscan. But he has trained himself for social life; and has learned, when on his good behavior, to make others happy about him. And it is part of the well-bred Frenchman's pride and happiness to be almost always on his good behavior.

In one respect Paris in the eighteenth century was more like a provincial town than like a great modern capital. Acquaintances.h.i.+p had not swallowed up intimacy. A man or a woman did not undertake to keep on terms of civility with so many people that he could not find time to see his best friends oftener than once or twice a year. The much vaunted _salons_ of the old monarchy were charming, in great measure because they were reasonably organized. An agreeable woman would draw her friends about her; they would meet in her parlor until they knew each other, and would be together often enough to keep touch intellectually. The talker knew his audience and felt at home with it.

The listener had learned to expect something worth hearing. The mistress of the house kept language and men within bounds, and had her own way of getting rid of bores. But even French wit and vivacity were not always equal to the demands upon them. "I remember," says Montesquieu, "that I once had the curiosity to count how many times I should hear a little story, which certainly did not deserve to be told or remembered; during three weeks that it occupied the polite world, I heard it repeated two hundred and twenty-five times, which pleased me much."[Footnote: _Oeuvres_, vii 179 _(Pensees diverses)._]

Beside the tie of friends.h.i.+p we may set that of the family. In old France this bond was much closer than it is in modern America. If a man rose in the world, the benefit to his relations was greater than now; and there was no theory current that a ruler, or a man in a position of trust, should exclude from the places under him those persons with whom he is best acquainted, and of whose fidelity to himself and to his employers he has most reason to be sure. On the other hand, a disgrace to one member of a family spread its blight on all the others, and the judicial condemnation of one man might exclude his near relations from the public service--a state of things which was beginning to be repugnant to the public conscience, but which had at least the merit of forming a strong band to restrain the tempted from his contemplated crime.

In fact, the old idea of the family as an organic whole, with common joys, honors, and responsibilities, common sorrows and disgraces, was giving way to the newer notion of individualism. In France, however, the process never went so far as it has done in some other countries, including our own.

Good manners were certainly the rule at the French court, but there were exceptions, and not inconspicuous ones, for Louis XV. was an unfeeling man, and Louis XVI. was an awkward one. When Mademoiselle Genet, fifteen years old, was first engaged as reader to the former king's daughters, she was in a state of agitation easy to imagine. The court was in mourning, and the great rooms hung with black, the state armchairs on platforms, several steps above the floor, the feathers and the shoulder-knots embroidered with tinsel made a deep impression on her. When the king first approached, she thought him very imposing. He was going a-hunting, and was followed by a numerous train. He stopped short in front of the young girl and the following dialogue took place:--

"Mademoiselle Genet, I am told that you are very learned; that you know four or five foreign languages."

"I know only two, sir," trembling.

"Which are they?"

"English and Italian."

"Do you speak them fluently?"

"Yes, sir, very fluently."

"That's quite enough to put a husband out of temper;" and the king went on, followed by his laughing train, and left the poor little girl standing abashed and disconsolate.[Footnote: Campan, i. pp. vi. viii.]

The memoirs of the time are full of stories proving that the rigorous enforcement of etiquette and the general training in good manners had not done away with eccentricity of behavior. The Count of Osmont, for instance, was continually fidgeting with anything that might come under his hand, and could not see a snuff-box without ladling out the snuff with three fingers, and sprinkling it over his clothes like a Swiss porter. He sometimes varied this pleasant performance by putting the box itself under his nose, to the great disgust of whomever happened to be its owner. He once spent a week at the house of Madame de Va.s.sy, a lady who was young and good-looking enough, but stiff and ceremonious. This lady wore a skirt of crimson velvet over a big panier, and was covered with pearls and diamonds. Madame de Va.s.sy would not reprove Monsieur d'Osmont in words for his method of treating her magnificent golden snuff-box; but used to get up from her place at the card-table as soon as he had so used it, empty all the snuff into the fireplace, and ring for more. D'Osmont, meanwhile, would go on without noticing her, laugh and swear over his cards, and get in a pa.s.sion with himself if the luck ran against him. Yet when he was not playing, the man was lively, modest and amiable, and except for his fidgety habits, had the tone of the best society.[Footnote: Dufort, ii. 46.]

That which above all things distinguished the French n.o.bility, and especially the highest ranks of it, from the rest of mankind was the amount of leisure which it enjoyed. Most people in the world have to work, most aristocracies to govern The English gentleman of the eighteenth century farmed his estates, acted as a magistrate, took part in politics. Living in the country, he was a mighty hunter. The French n.o.bleman, unless he were an officer in the army (and even the officers had inordinately long leave of absence), had nothing to do but to kill time. Only the poorer country gentlemen ever thought of farming their own lands. For the unemployed n.o.bles of Paris, there was but occasional sport to be had. Indeed, the Frenchman, although he likes the more violent and tumultuous kinds of hunting, is not easily interested in the quieter and more lasting varieties of sport. He will joyfully chase the wild boar, when horses, dogs, and horns, with the admiration of his friends and servants, concur to keep his blood boiling; but he will not care to plod alone through the woods for a long afternoon on the chance of bringing home a brace of woodc.o.c.k; nor can he mention fis.h.i.+ng without a sneer. Being thus deprived of the chief resource by which Anglo-Saxons combine activity and indolence, the French n.o.bility cultivated to their highest pitch those human pleasures which are at once the most vivid and the most delicate. They devoted themselves to society and to love-making. Too quick-witted to fall into sloth, too proud to become drunkards or gluttons, they dissipated their lives in conversation and stained their souls with intrigue. Never, probably, have the arts which make social intercourse delightful been carried to so high a degree of excellence as among them. Never perhaps, in a Christian country, have offenses against the laws of marriage been so readily condoned, where outward decency was not violated, as in the upper circles of France in the century preceding the Revolution.

The vice of Parisian society under Louis XV. and his grandson presented a curious character. Adultery had acquired a regular standing, and connections dependent upon it were openly, if tacitly recognized. Such illicit alliances were even governed by a morality of their own, and the attempt to induce a woman to be unfaithful to her criminal lover might be treated as an insult.[Footnote: Witness Rousseau and Mme. d'Houdetot in the _Confessions_. Mlle. d'Aydie was accounted very virtuous for dissuading her lover from marrying her, even after the birth of her child, for fear of injuring his prospects. Yet the match would not seem, to modern ideas, to have been a very unequal one.] But this pedantry of vice was not always maintained. There were men and women in high life who changed their connections very frequently, yielding to the caprice of the moment, as the senses or the wit might lead them. Such people were not pa.s.sionate, but simply depraved; yet the ma.s.s of the community, deterred partly by fear of ridicule, and partly by the Philosophic spirit which had decided that chast.i.ty was not a part of natural morals, did not visit them with very severe condemnation.

If eccentricity sometimes overrode etiquette and even politeness, good morals and religion not infrequently made a stand against corruption.

There were loving wives and careful mothers among the highest n.o.bility.

Of the d.u.c.h.ess of Ayen we get a description from her children. Her mansion was in the Rue St. Honore, and had a garden running back almost to that of the Tuileries (for the Rue de Rivoli was not then in existence). The house was known for the beauty of its apartments, and for the superb collection of pictures which it contained. After dinner, which was served at three o'clock, the d.u.c.h.ess would retire to her bedchamber, a large room hung with crimson damask, and take her place in a great armchair by the fire. Her books, her work, her snuff-box, were within reach. She would call her five girls about her. These, on chairs and footstools, squabbling gently at times for the places next their mother, would tell of their excursions, their lessons, the little events of every day. There was nothing frivolous in their education. Their old nurse had not filled their minds with fairy tales, but with stories from the Old Testament and with anecdotes of heroic actions.

The pleasures of these girls were simple. Once or twice in a summer they went on a visit to their grandfather, the Marshal de Noailles at Saint Germain en Laye. In the autumn they spent a week with their other grandfather, Monsieur d'Aguesseau at Fresnes. An excursion into the suburbs, a ride on donkeys on the slopes of Mont Valerien, made up their innocent dissipations. Their most frivolous excitement was to see their governess fall off her donkey.

The piety of the d.u.c.h.ess might in some respects appear extravagant. Her fourth daughter had two beggars of the parish for G.o.d-parents, as a constant reminder of humility. The same child was of a violent and willful disposition, but was converted at the age of eleven and became mild, patient, and studious. The conversion of so young a sinner, and the seriousness with which the event was treated by the family, seem rather to belong to the atmosphere of Puritanism than to that of the Catholicism of the eighteenth century. But if the religion of the d.u.c.h.ess of Ayen sometimes led her to fantastic extremes, these were not its princ.i.p.al characteristics. Her piety was applied to the conduct of her daily life and to the education of her daughters in honesty, reasonableness, and self-devotion. Their faith and hers were to be tested by the hardest trials, and to be victorious both in prison and on the scaffold. We are fortunate in possessing their biographies. In how many cases at the same time and in the same country did similar virtues go unrecorded?[Footnote: Vie de Madame de Lafayette, Mme. de Montagu.]

As for the smaller n.o.bility, the "sparrow hawks,"[Footnote: Hoberaux.]

living in the country, they dwelt among their less exalted neighbors, doing good or evil as the character of each one of them directed.

Sometimes we find them on friendly terms with the villagers, acting as G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers to the children, summoning the peasants to take part in the chase, or to dance in the courtyard of the castle. We find them endowing hospitals, giving alms, keeping an eye on the conduct of the village priest. A continual interchange of presents goes on between the cottage and the great house. A new lord is welcomed by salvos of musketry, the ladies of his family are met by young girls bearing flowers. Such relations as these are said to have grown less common as the great Revolution drew near. It has often been remarked of the Vendee and Brittany, where a larger proportion of lords resided on their estates than was the case elsewhere, that a friendlier feeling was there cultivated between the upper and the lower cla.s.ses; and that it was in those provinces that a stand was made by lords and peasants alike for the maintenance of the old order of things. In some parts of the country the peasants and their lords were continually quarreling and going to law. The royal intendant was besieged with complaints. The poor could not get their pay for their work. They received blows instead of money. Arrogance and injustice on the one side were met by impudence and fraud on the other. The old leaders.h.i.+p had pa.s.sed away. The upper cla.s.s had lost its power and its responsibility; it insisted the more tenaciously on its privileges. Exemption from certain taxes was the chief of these, but there were others as irritating if less important.

Quarrels arose with the priest about the lord's right to be first given the holy water. One vicar in his wrath deluged his lords.h.i.+p's new wig.

In general, we may conceive of the lesser n.o.bles, deprived of their useful function of regulating and administering the country, leading somewhat penurious and useless lives. They hunted a good deal, they slept long. Generally they did not eat overmuch, for gluttony is not a vice of their race. They grumbled at the ascendency of the court, and at the new army-regulations. They preserved in their families the n.o.ble virtues of dignity and obedience. Children asked their parents' blessing on their knees before they went to bed. The elder Mirabeau, the grim Friend of Men, still knelt nightly before his mother in his fiftieth year. The children honored their parents in fact as well as in form, and took no important step in life without paternal consent. The boys ran rather wild in their youth, but settled down at the approach of middle life; the oldest inheriting the few or barren paternal acres; the younger sons equally n.o.ble, and thus debarred from lucrative occupations, pus.h.i.+ng their fortunes in the army. The girls were married young or went into a convent. Marriages were arranged entirely by the parents. "My father," said a young n.o.bleman, "I am told that you have agreed on a marriage for me. Would you be kind enough to tell me if the report be true, and what is the name of the lady?" "My son," answered his parent, "be so good as to mind your own business, and not to come to me with questions."[Footnote: Babeau, _Le Village_, 158. Ch. de Kibbe, 169. Mme. de Montagu, 57. Genlis, _Dictionnaire des etiquettes,_ i. 71. Lavergne, _Les economistes,_ 127.]

CHAPTER VII.

THE ARMY.

The n.o.bility of France was essentially a military cla.s.s. Its privileges were claimed on account of services rendered in the field. The priests pray, the n.o.bles fight, the commons pay for all; such was the theory of the state. It is true that the n.o.bility no longer furnished the larger part of the armies; that the old feudal levies of ban and rear-ban, in which the baron rode at the head of his va.s.sals, were no longer called out. But still the soldier's life was considered the proper career of the n.o.bleman. A large proportion of the members of the order were commissioned officers, and most officers were members of the order.

The rule which required proofs of n.o.bility as a prerequisite to obtaining a commission was not severely enforced in the reign of Louis XV., and in the earlier years of his successor. In many regiments it was usual to promote one or two deserving sergeants every year. In others the necessary certificate of birth could be signed by any n.o.bleman and was often obtained from greed or good-nature. Moreover, an order of 1750 had provided that officers of plebeian extraction should sometimes be enn.o.bled for distinguished services. But in 1781, a new rule was established. No one could thenceforth receive a commission as second lieutenant who could not show four generations of n.o.bility on his father's side, counting himself. Thus were all members of families recently enn.o.bled excluded from the service, and no door was left open to the military ambition of people belonging to the middle cla.s.s; although that cla.s.s was yearly increasing in importance. Moreover, strict genealogical proofs were required, the candidate for a commission having to submit his papers to the royal herald. Exceptions were made in favor of the sons of members of the military order of Saint Louis.

[Footnote: Segur, i. 82, 158. Cherest, i. 14. Anciennes lois francaises, 22d May, 1781. The regiments to which the regulation applies are those of French infantry (not foreign regiments), cavalry, light horse, dragoons, and cha.s.seurs a cheval. This would seem to exclude the artillery and engineers. The foreign regiments appear to have been included in a later order. Cherest, i. 24.]

But all n.o.bles were not on the same footing in the army. Among the regimental officers two cla.s.ses might be distinguished. There were, on the one hand, the ensigns, lieutenants, captains, majors, and lieutenant-colonels, who generally belonged to the poorer n.o.bility. They served long and for small pay, with little hope of the more brilliant rewards of the profession. They did their work and stayed with their regiments, although leave of absence was not difficult to obtain in time of peace. Their lives were hard and frugal, a captain's pay not exceeding twenty-five hundred livres, which was perhaps doubled by allowances. On the other hand were the colonels and second colonels, young men of influential families, who, at most, pa.s.sed through the lower ranks to learn something of the duties of an officer. Their commissions were procured by favor. There was scarce a bishop about the court who did not have a candidate for a colonelcy, scarcely a pretty woman who did not aspire to make her friend a captain. The rich young men, thus promoted, threw their money about freely in camp and garrison.

Thus if the n.o.bility had exclusive privileges, the court had privileges that excluded those of the rest of the n.o.bility, and in the very last days of the old monarchy, these also were enhanced. The Board of War in 1788, decided that no one should become a general officer who had not previously been a colonel; and colonels' commissions, besides being very expensive, were given, as above stated, by favor alone. Thus on the eve of the Revolution were the bands of privilege drawn tighter in France.

[Footnote: Segur, i. 154. Cherest, ii. 90.] The colonels thus appointed were generally not wanting in courage. The French n.o.bility of all degrees was ready enough to give its blood on the battle-field. Thus the son of the Duke of Boufflers, fourteen years old, had been made colonel of the regiment which bore the name of his family. The duke served as a lieutenant-general in the same army. Fearing that the boy might not know how to behave in battle, the father, on the first occasion, obtained permission from the Marshal, Maurice de Saxe, commander of the army, to accompany his son as a volunteer. The boy's regiment was ordered to attack the intrenched village of Raucoux. The young colonel and his father, followed by two pages, led their men against the intrenchments.

When they reached the works, the duke took his son in his arms and threw him over the parapet. He himself followed, and both came off unhurt, but the two pages were shot dead.[Footnote: Montbarey, i. 38.]

In America, as in Europe, the young favorites of fortune were ready enough to fight. Such men as Lauzun, Segur, or the Viscount of Noailles asked nothing better than adventures, whether of war or love; but in peace they could not be looked on as satisfactory or hard-working officers. Yet they and their like continued to get advancement.

Ordinances might be pa.s.sed from time to time, requiring age or length of service, but ordinances in old France did not apply to the great. The poorer n.o.bility might grumble, but the court families continued to get the good places. The lieutenant-colonels and the other working officers of the army had but little chance of rising to be general officers. Even before the order of 1788, promotion fell to the courtier colonels. The baton of the marshals of France was placed in the hands only of the very highest n.o.bility. All over Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, armies were often commanded by men born to princely rank.

That this did not necessarily mean that they were ill commanded may be shown by the names of Turenne and Conde, Maurice de Saxe and Eugene of Savoy, Prince Henry of Prussia I and Frederick the Great.

While the higher commands were thus monopolized (or nearly so) by the rich and powerful, the poorer n.o.bility flocked into the army, to occupy the subordinate ranks of commissioned officers. Sometimes they came through the military schools. The most important of these had been founded at Paris in 1750, by the financier Paris-Duverney. Here several hundred young gentlemen, mostly born poor and preferably the sons of officers, received a military education. The boys came to the school from their homes in the country between the ages of nine and eleven, rustic little figures sometimes, in wooden shoes and woolen caps, like the peasant lads who had been their early playmates. They were taught the duties of gentlemen and officers, cleanliness, an upright carriage, the manual and tactics, and something of military science. Other schools, kept by monks, existed in the provinces where the young aspirants for commissions learned engineering and the theory of artillery. But many young a n.o.blemen entered their career by a process more in accordance with youthful tastes. We find boys in camp in time of war, evading the orders which forbade entering the service before the age of sixteen. Children of twelve and thirteen are wounded in battle.

[Footnote: Babeau, _Vie militaire_, ii. 7, 45. Montbarey, i. 18.]

As the only form of active life in which most n.o.bles could take part was found in the army, there was always too large a number of officers, and too great a proportion of the military expenses was devoted to them. In 1787 hardly more than one in three of those holding commissions was in active service. The number of soldiers under Louis XVI. was less than a hundred and fifty thousand actually with the colors. There were thirty-six thousand officers, on paper; thirteen thousand actively employed. The soldiers cost the state 44,100,000 livres a year, the officers 46,400,000 livres.[Footnote: Babeau, Vie militaire, i. 15; ii. 90, 145. Necker, De l'Administration, ii. 415, 418.]

The relation between the officers and the soldiers of the old French army was more intimate and kindly than that existing in any other European army of the time. For both, their regiment was a home, and the military service a lifelong profession. They had entered it young, and they hoped to die in it. Their relation to each other had become a part of the structure of their minds; a condition of coherent thought. A soldier might rise from the ranks and become a lieutenant, or even a captain, but such promotion was infrequent; few common soldiers had the education or the means to aspire to it. On the other hand, the command of a company was sometimes almost hereditary. The captain might be lord of the village in which his soldiers were born. In that case he would care for them in sickness, and perhaps even grant a furlough when the private was much needed by his family at home. His own chance of promotion was small. He expected to do the work of his life in that company, among those soldiers, with perhaps his younger brother, or, in time, his son, as his lieutenant. It would seem that in the years immediately preceding the French Revolution these kindly relations were in some measure dying out. The captain was no longer so closely connected with his company as he had been. Officialism was taking the place of those personal connections which had characterized the feudal system. The gulf between soldiers and officers, if not harder to cross for the ambitious, separated the commonplace members of each group more widely from those of the other.[Footnote: Babeau, Vie militaire, i. 43, 189. Montbarey, ii. 272. Moore's View, i. 365.]

The private soldiers of King Louis XVI., who stood in long white lines on parade at Newport, while their many colored flags floated above and the officers brandished their spontoons in front, or who rushed in night attack on the advanced redoubt at Yorktown, were not, like modern European soldiers, brought together by conscription. They were, nominally at least, volunteers. Unruly lads, mechanics out of work, runaway apprentices, were readily drawn into the service by skillful recruiting officers. Thirty years before, it had been the custom of these landsharks to cheat or bully young men into the service. The raw youth, arriving in Paris from the country, had been offered by a chance acquaintance a place as servant in a gentleman's family, and after signing an engagement had found himself bound for eight years to serve His Majesty, in one of his regiments of foot. The young barber-surgeon had waked from a carouse with the king's silver in his pocket. Such things were still common in Germany. In France some effort had been made to regulate the activity of the recruiting officers. Complaints of force or fraud in enlistment received attention from the authorities. The soldiers of Louis XVI., therefore, were engaged with comparative fairness. The infantry came mostly from the towns, the cavalry and artillery from the country. The soldiers were derived from the lowest part of the population. Whether they improved or deteriorated in the service depended on their officers. In any case they became entirely absorbed in it. The soldier did not keep even the name by which he had been known in common life. He a.s.sumed, or was given, a _nom de guerre_ such as La Tulippe, La Tendresse, Pollux, Pot-de-Vin, Vide-bouteille, or Va-de-bon-coeur. His term of service was seven or eight years, but he was by no means sure of getting a fair discharge at the end of it; and was in any case likely to reenlist. Thus the recruit had, in fact entered upon the profession of his life.[Footnote: Babeau, _Vie militaire_, i. 55, 136, 182. Mercier, x. 273. Segur, i. 222; _Encyc. meth. Art milit._ ii. 177 (_Desertion_)]

The uniforms of the day were ill adapted to campaigning. The French soldier of the line wore white clothes with colored tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, varying according to his regiment. On his head was perched the triangular c.o.c.ked hat of the period, standing well out over his ears, but hardly shading his eyes. Beneath it his hair was powdered, or rather, pasted; for the powder was sifted on to the wet hair, and caked in the process. The condition of the ma.s.s after a rainy night at the camp-fire may be imagined. In some regiments the wearing of a moustache was required, and those soldiers whom nature had not supplied with such an ornament were obliged to put on a false one, fastened with pitch, which was liable to cause abcesses on the lip. Sometimes a fine, uniform color was produced in the moustaches of a whole regiment by means of boot-blacking. Broad white belts were crossed upon the breast. The linen gaiters, white on parade, black for the march, came well above the knee, and a superfluous number of garters impeded the step. It was a tedious matter to put these things on; and if a pebble got in through a b.u.t.ton-hole, the soldier was tempted to leave it in his shoe, until it had made his foot sore.

Uniforms were seldom renewed. The coat was expected to last three years, the hat two, the breeches one.[Footnote: Babeau, _Vie militaire_, i. 93. _Encyc. meth. Art milit._ i. 589 (_Chaussure_) ii. 179.

Susane, ix. (_Plates_). See also a very interesting little book by a great man, Maurice de Saxe, _Les Reveries_.]

All parts of the soldier's uniform were tight and close fitting. I think that this was learned from the Prussians. The ideal of the army as a machine seems to have originated, or at least to have been first worked out in Germany. Such an ideal was a natural consequence of the military system of the age. Of the soldiers of Frederick the Great only one-half were his born subjects. Other German princes enlisted as many foreigners as they could. In the French army were many regiments of foreign mercenaries. Nowhere was the pay high, or the soldier well treated.

Desertion was very common. Under these circ.u.mstances mechanical precision became an invaluable quality. The soldier must be held in very strict bands, for if left free he might turn against the power that employed him.

The connection between a rigid system in which nothing is left to the soldier's intelligence or initiative, and a tight uniform, which confines his movements, is both deep and evident. If a man is never to have his own way, his master will inevitably find means to make him needlessly uncomfortable. As the modern owner of a horse sometimes diminishes the working power of the animal by check-reins and martingales, so the despot of the eighteenth century buckled and b.u.t.toned his military cattle into shape, and made them take unnatural paces. But even under these disadvantages the French soldiers surpa.s.sed all others in grace and ease of bearing. Officers were sometimes accused of sacrificing the efficiency of their commands to appearances. The evolutions of the troops involved steps more appropriate to the dancing-master than to the drill sergeant.

[Footnote: Montbarey, ii. 272.] Such criticisms as these have often been made on the French soldier by his own countrymen and by foreigners. But those who think he can be trifled with on this account, are apt to find themselves terribly mistaken.

The food of the soldiers was coa.r.s.e and barely sufficient. The pay was so absorbed by the requirements of the uniform, many of the smaller parts of which were at the expense of the men, and by the diet, that little was left for the almost necessary comforts of drink and tobacco.

The barracks, handsome outside, were close and crowded within. During this reign orders were given that only two men should sleep in a bed. In some garrisons soldiers were still billeted on the inhabitants. In sickness they were better cared for than civilians, the military hospitals being decidedly better than those open to the general public.

[Footnote: Lafayette told the a.s.sembly of Notables in 1787 that the food of the soldiers was insufficient for their maintenance. _Memoires_, i. 215. Segur, i. 161.]

If we compare the material condition of the French soldier in the latter years of the old monarchy with that of other European soldiers of his day, we shall find him about as well treated as they were. If we compare those times with these, we shall find that he is now better clothed, but not better fed than he was then.[Footnote: Babeau, _Vie militaire_, i. 374]