cted with this department of the army. It has already been
shown that we have fifty-eight of these guards for the artillery
service, and it really seems somewhat singular that the engineers, with
a much greater amount of public property in their charge, are allowed no
assistants of this kind.

III. _Engineer artificers_ are a class of men employed in the practical
operations of constructing forts and other military defences, and in
making and repairing all the implements used by the engineer troops in
the operations of sapping and mining, in crossing rivers, in
constructing field-defences, and in the attack and defence of
fieldworks.

As very few new fortifications are now required in France, the services
of engineer artificers are less necessary and important than in our
service, where large sums of money are annually expended upon military
defences, There are, however, in the French army a corps of engineer
artificers, consisting of eight officers and a cadre of fifty-four
non-commissioned officers, with a variable number of privates, organized
into two companies. _But in our army we have no regular engineer
artificers!_ In our artillery service we have three hundred and thirty
enlisted artillery artificers. If these are useful and necessary to the
artillery service, which no one doubts, for still stronger reasons would
it be advantageous to the public service to employ at least an equal
number of enlisted engineer artificers on our fortifications; for the
annual expenditure of public money is here much greater than in the
corresponding branch of the artillery service.

IV. _Engineer troops_ are divided into three classes--1st, _sappers and
pioneers_; 2d, _miners_; and 3d, _pontoniers_.

In the French army of 1799, there were four battalions of sappers,
consisting of 120 officers and 7,092 men. In 1804, Napoleon organized
five battalions of these troops, consisting of 165 officers and 8,865
men. Even this number was found insufficient in his campaigns in Germany
and Spain, and he was obliged to organize an additional number of
sappers from the Italian and French auxiliaries. The pioneers were then
partly attached to other branches of the service. There is, at present,
in the French army a considerable number of sappers or pioneers detached
for the service of the infantry regiments, three companies of
_sapeurs-conducteurs_, and forty-two companies of _sapeurs_. In the
French army of 1799, there were six companies o