. (On the peopling of the
lycees and colleges.) "The first nucleus of the boarders was furnished
by the Prytanee.... Tradition has steadily transmitted this spirit to
all the pupils that succeeded each other for the first twelve years."--
Ibid., III., 112 "The institution of lycees tends to creating a race
inimical to repose, eager and ambitious, foreign to the domestic
affections and of a military and adventurous spirit."]
[Footnote 6173: Quicherat, ibid., III., 126.]
[Footnote 6174: Hermann Niemeyer, ibid., II.,350.]
[Footnote 6175: Fabry, ibid., III., 109-112.]
[Footnote 6176: Ambroise Rendu, "Essai sur l'instruction publique,"
(1819), I., 221. (Letter of Napoleon to M. de Fontanes, March 24,
1808.)]
[Footnote 6177: "Memorial," June 17, 1816.]
[Footnote 6178: Pelet de la Lozere, ibid., 154, 157, 159.]
[Footnote 6179: "Memorial," June 17, 1816. "This conception of the
University by Napoleon must be taken with another, of more vast
proportions, which he sets forth in the same conversation and which
clearly shows his complete plan. He desired "the military classing of
the nation," that is to say five successive conscriptions, one above the
other. The first, that of children and boys by means of the University;
the second, that of ordinary conscripts yearly and effected by the
drawing by lot; the third, fourth and fifth provided by three standards
of national guard, the first one comprising young unmarried men and held
to frontier service, the second comprising men of middle age, married
and to serve only in the department, and the third comprising aged men
to be employed only in the defense of towns--in all, through these three
classes, two millions of classified men, enrolled and armed, each
with his post assigned him in case of invasion. "In 1810 or 1811 up to
fifteen or twenty drafts of this" proposal "was read to the council of
State. The Emperor, who laid great stress on it, frequently came back
to it." We see the place of the University in his edifice: from ten to
sixty years, his universal conscription was to take, first, children,
then adults, and, with healthy persons, the semi-invalids, as, for
instance, Cambaceres, the arch-chancellor, gross, impotent, and, of all
men, the least military. "There is Cambaceres," says Napoleon, "who must
be ready to shoulder his gun if danger makes it necessary.... Then you
will have a nation sticking together like lime and sand, able to defy
time and man." There
|