campaign, and the various qualities of different commanders, were
the daily subjects of dispute in the camp. Upon one topic only were all
agreed; and there, indeed, our unanimity repaid all previous
discordance. We deemed France the only civilized nation of the globe,
and reckoned that people thrice happy who, by any contingency of
fortune, engaged our sympathy, or procured the distinction of our
presence in arms. We were the heaven-born disseminators of freedom
throughout Europe; the sworn enemies of kingly domination; and the
missionaries of a political creed, which was not alone to ennoble
mankind, but to render its condition eminently happy and prosperous.

There could not be an easier lesson to learn than this, and particularly
when dinned into your ears all day, and from every rank and grade around
you. It was the programme of every message from the Directory; it was
the opening of every general order from the general; it was the
table-talk at your mess. The burden of every song, the title of every
military march performed by the regimental band, recalled it, even the
riding-master, as he followed the recruit around the weary circle, whip
in hand, mingled the orders he uttered with apposite axioms upon
republican grandeur. How I think I hear it still, as the grim old
quartermaster-sergeant, with his Alsatian accent and deep-toned voice,
would call out.

"Elbows back! wrist lower and free from the side; free, I say, as every
citizen of a great Republic! head erect, as a Frenchman has a right to
carry it! chest full out, like one who can breathe the air of Heaven,
and ask no leave from king or despot! down with your heel, sir; think
that you crush a tyrant beneath it!"

Such and such like were the running commentaries on equitation, till
often I forgot whether the lesson had more concern with a seat on
horseback or the great cause of monarchy throughout Europe. I suppose,
to use a popular phrase of our own day, "the system worked well;"
certainly the spirit of the army was unquestionable. From the grim old
veteran, with snow-white mustache, to the beardless boy, there was but
one hope and wish--the glory of France. How they understood that glory,
or in what it essentially consisted, is another and a very different
question.

Enrolled as a soldier in the ninth regiment of Hussars, I accompanied
that corps to Nancy, where, at that time, a large cavalry school was
formed, and where the recruits from the different r