WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.

In 1830, the dynasty which foreign bayonets had imposed on France was shaken off, and men trembled at the expected outbreak of French anarchy and the dreaded inroads of French ambition. They "looked forward with harassing anxiety to a period of destruction similar to that which the Roman world experienced about the middle of the third century of our era.

"Louis Philippe cajoled Revolution, and then strove with seeming success to stifle it. But, in spite of Fieschi laws, in spite of the dazzle of Algerian razzias and Pyrenee effacing marriages, in spite of hundreds of armed forts, and hundreds of thousands of coercing troops, Revolution lived, and struggled to get free.

The old Titan spirit heaved restlessly beneath "the monarchy based on republican institutions." At last, three years ago, the whole fabric of kingcraft was at once rent and scattered to the winds by the uprising of the Parisian democracy; and insurrections, barricades and dethronements, the downfalls of coronets and crowns, the armed collisions of parties, systems, and populations, became the commonplaces of recent European history.

France now calls herself a republic. She first assumed that title on the 20th of September 1792, on the very day on which the battle of Valmy was fought and won. To that battle the democratic spirit, which in 1848, as well as in 1792, proclaimed the Republic in Paris, owed its preservation, and it is thence that the imperishable activity of its principles may be dated.

Far different seemed the prospects of democracy in Europe on the eve of that battle and far different would have been the present position and influence of the French nation, if Brunswick's columns had charged with more boldness, or the lines of Dumouriez resisted with less firmness.

When France, in 1792, declared war with the great powers of Europe, she was far from possessing that splendid military organization which the experience of a few revolutionary campaigns taught her to assume, and which she has never abandoned. The army of the old monarchy had, during the latter part of the reign of Louis XV, sunk into gradual decay, both in numerical force, and in efficiency of equipment and spirit. The laurels gained by the auxiliary regiments which Louis XVI, sent to the American war, did but little to restore the general tone of the army.

The insubordination and license which the revolt of the French guards, and the participation of other troops in many of the first excesses of the Revolution, introduced among the soldiery, were soon rapidly disseminated through all the ranks. Under the Legislative Assembly, every complaint of the soldier against his officer, however frivolous or ill founded, was listened to with eagerness, and investigated with partiality, on the principles of liberty and equality.

Discipline accordingly became more and more relaxed; and the dissolution of several of the old corps, under the pretext of their being tainted with an aristocratic feeling, aggravated the confusion and inefficiency of the war department. Many of the most effective regiments during the last period of the monarchy had consisted of foreigners. These had either been slaughtered in defense of the throne against insurrections, like the Swiss, or had been disbanded, and had crossed the frontier to recruit the forces, which were assembling for the invasion of France.

Above all, the emigration of the noblesse had stripped the French army of nearly all its officers of high rank, and of the greatest portion of its subalterns. Above twelve thousand of the high-born youth of France, who had been trained to regard military command as their exclusive patrimony, and to whom the nation had been accustomed to look up as its natural guides and champions in the storm of war, were now marshaled beneath the banner of Conde and the other emigrant princes for the overthrow of the French armies and the reduction of the French capital.

Their successors in the French regiments and brigades had as yet acquired neither skill nor experience; they possessed neither self-reliance, nor the respect of the men who were under them.

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