at Lyons, and they measured on foot the long
leagues thence to their destination, arriving at Valence early in
November.

The growth of absolutism in Europe had been due at the outset to the
employment of standing armies by the kings, and the consequent
alliance between the crown, which was the paymaster, and the people,
who furnished the soldiery. There was constant conflict between the
crown and the nobility concerning privilege, constant friction between
the nobility and the people in the survivals of feudal relation. This
sturdy and wholesome contention among the three estates ended at last
in the victory of the kings. In time, therefore, the army became no
longer a mere support to the monarchy, but a portion of its moral
organism, sharing its virtues and its vices, its weakness and its
strength, reflecting, as in a mirror, the true condition of the state
so far as it was personified in the king. The French army, in the year
1785, was in a sorry plight. With the consolidation of classes in an
old monarchical society, it had come to pass that, under the
prevailing voluntary system, none but men of the lowest social stratum
would enlist. Barracks and camps became schools of vice. "Is there,"
exclaimed one who at a later day was active in the work of army
reform--"is there a father who does not shudder when abandoning his
son, not to the chances of war, but to the associations of a crowd of
scoundrels a thousand times more dangerous?"

We have already had a glimpse of the character of the officers. Their
first thought was social position and pleasure, duty and the practice
of their profession being considerations of almost vanishing
importance. Things were quite as bad in the central administration.
Neither the organization nor the equipment nor the commissariat was in
condition to insure accuracy or promptness in the working of the
machine. The regiment of La Fere was but a sample of the whole.
"Dancing three times a week," says the advertisement for recruits,
"rackets twice, and the rest of the time skittles, prisoners' base,
and drill. Pleasures reign, every man has the highest pay, and all are
well treated." Buonaparte's income, comprising his pay of eight
hundred, his provincial allowance of a hundred and twenty, and the
school pension of two hundred, amounted, all told, to eleven hundred
and twenty livres a year; his necessary expenses for board and lodging
were seven hundred and twenty, leaving less than thirt