artment on the desertion of
one-half of the conscripts. In most of the cantons the gendarmes traffic
with the conscription shamefully; certain conscripts pension them to
show them favors."--Ibid., A F.,VI., 1052. (Report by Pelet, Jan. 12,
1812.) "The operation of the conscription has improved (in the Herault);
the contingents of 1811 have been furnished. There remained 1800
refractory, or deserters of the previous classes; 1600 have been
arrested or made to surrender by the flying column; 200 have still to be
pursued." Faber,--"Notice (1807) sur l'interieur de la France," p. 141:
"Desertion, especially on the frontiers, is occasionally frightful; 80
deserters out of 160 have sometimes been arrested."--Ibid., p.149: It
has been stated in the public journals that in 1801 the court in session
at Lille had condemned 135 refractory out of the annual conscription,
and that which holds its sittings at Ghent had condemned 70. Now, 200
conscripts form the maximum of what an arrondissement in a department
could furnish."--Ibid, p.145. "France resembles a vast house of
detention where everybody is suspicious of his neighbor, where each
avoids the other... One often sees a young man with a gendarme at his
heels oftentimes, on looking closely, this young man's hands are found
tied, or he is handcuffed."--Mathieu Dumas, III., 507 (After the battle
of Dresden, in the Dresden hospitals): "I observed, with sorrow, that
many of these men were slightly wounded: most of them, young conscripts
just arrived in the army, had not been wounded by the enemy's fire,
but they had mutilated each other's feet and hands. Antecedents of this
kind, of equally bad augury, had already been remarked in the campaign
of 1809."]

[Footnote 12138: De Segur, III., 474.--Thiers, XIV., 159. (One month
after crossing the Niemen one hundred and fifty thousand men had dropped
out of the ranks.)]

[Footnote 12139: Bulletin 29 (December 3, 1812).]

[Footnote 12140: "De Pradt, Histoire de l'Ambassade de Varsovie," p.219.]

[Footnote 12141: M. de Metternich, I., 147.--Fain, "Manuscript," of
1813, II., 26. (Napoleon's address to his generals.) "What we want is a
complete triumph. To abandon this or that province is not the question;
our political superiority and our existence depend on it. "--II., 41,
42. (Words of Napoleon to Metternich.) "And it is my father-in-law who
favors such a project! And he sends you! In what attitude does he wish
to place me before the F