e who
were ambitious of occupying at once a higher step, were compelled in the
first instance to pass certain examinations, and then to acquire by
close study the particular knowledge necessary to their post. The term
of service, active or in reserve, was long, and made military life in
reality a career. The obligations imposed, the privileges promised, and
the rights recognized for all, were guaranteed by the bill.

Besides these general principles, the bill had an immediate result which
St. Cyr ardently desired. It enrolled again in the new army, under the
head of veterans and reserve, the remains of the old discharged legions,
who had so heroically endured the penalty of the errors committed by
their crowned leader. It effaced also, in their minds, that reminiscence
of a distasteful past, while by a sort of special Charter it secured
their future.

No one can deny that this plan for the military organization of France,
embraced grand ideas and noble sentiments. Such a bill accorded with the
moral nature and political conduct of Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, who
possessed an upright soul, a proud temperament, monarchical opinions,
and republican manners; and who, since 1814, had given equal proofs of
loyalty and independence. When he advocated it in the tribune, when,
with the manly solemnity and disciplined feeling of an experienced
warrior, at once a sincere patriot and a royalist, he recapitulated the
services and sufferings of that nation of old soldiers which he was
anxious for a few years longer to unite with the new army of France, he
deeply moved the public and the Chambers; and his powerful language, no
less than the excellent propositions of his bill, consecrated it on the
instant in the affectionate esteem of the country.

Violently attacked in 1818, Marshal St. Cyr's recruiting bill has been
since that date several times criticised, revised, and modified. Its
leading principles have resisted assault, and have survived alteration.
It has done more than last, through soundness of principle; it has
given, by facts, an astounding denial to its adversaries. It was accused
of striking a blow at the monarchy; on the contrary, it has made the
army more devotedly monarchical than any that France had ever known,--an
army whose fidelity has never been shaken, either in 1830 or 1848, by
the influence of popular opinion, or the seduction of a revolutionary
crisis. Military sentiment, that spirit of obedience and respect,