avoid the
temptations to a military career, which on every side surrounded him.
The chief distinctions and emoluments were everywhere reserved for those
who excelled in accomplishments likely to be serviceable in war: and the
_Lyceums_, or schools set expressly apart for military students, were
invested with numberless attractions, scarcely to be resisted by a young
imagination. The army, as it was the sole basis of Napoleon's power,
was also at all times the primary object of his thoughts. Every
institution of the state was subservient and administered to it, and
none more efficaciously than the imperial system of education.

The ranks of the army, however, were filled during the whole reign of
Napoleon by _compulsion_. The conscription law of 1798 acquired under
him the character of a settled and regular part of the national system;
and its oppressive influence was such as never before exhausted, through
a long term of years, the best energies of a great and civilised people.
Every male in France, under the age of twenty-five, was liable to be
called on to serve in the ranks; and the regulations as to the procuring
of substitutes were so narrow, that young men of the best families were
continually forced to comply, in their own persons, with the stern
requisition. The first conscription list for the year included all under
the age of twenty-one; and the result of the ballot within this class
amounted to nearly 80,000 names. These were first called on: but if the
service of the Emperor demanded further supply, the lists of those aged
twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, and twenty-five, were
successively resorted to. There was no exemption for any one who seemed
able to bear arms. The only child of his parents, the young husband and
father, were forced, like any others, to abandon fireside, profession,
all the ties and all the hopes of life, on a moment's notice: and there
is nothing in the history of modern Europe so remarkable, as that the
French people should have submitted, during sixteen years, to the
constant operation of a despotic law, which thus sapped all the
foundations of social happiness, and condemned the rising hopes of the
nation to bleed and die by millions in distant wars, undertaken solely
for the gratification of one man's insatiable ambition. On the other
hand, it is not to be denied that the great majority of the conscripts,
with whatever reluctance they might enter the ranks, were soon
reconci