ARMY REQUIREMENTS SUPPLIED. 47 



sis, furnish enough for all the requirements of our armies 

 and our fleets. The preparation of shoe-leather used to 

 require whole months of labour ; such long delays did 

 not suit the wants of our soldiers, and consequently the 

 tanner's art received unhoped-for improvements ; days 

 will now take the place of months. The manufacture of 

 arms is so minute, that its slowness seems inevitable ; 

 but immediately some mechanical aids are brought into 

 action to strengthen, to direct, to take the place of the 

 workman; the products increase in proportion to the 

 demand for them. Until the year 1794, balloons had 

 been only a mere object of curiosity ; but at the battle of 

 Fleurus, a balloon carries General Morlot into the region 

 of the clouds ; from thence the smallest manreuvres of 

 the enemy are perceived, are signalized instantly, and 

 this invention of purely French origin procures a splen- 

 did triumph for our army. Graphite pencils (black 

 lead) are the pen and ink of an officer on a campaign ; 

 it is with the pencil that he writes a few words on the 

 pummel of his saddle, which send thousands of infantry, 

 of cavalry, of artillery-men into the thickest of the fight ; 

 graphite is one of the substances that Nature seems to 

 have denied to our soil ; the Committee of Public Safety 

 orders it to be created of all sizes, and this order to make 

 a discovery is executed without delay ; thus the country 

 is enriched with a new branch of industry. To be brief, 

 for I must resign myself to not saying every thing, the 

 first ideas of the telegraph are drawn from some folio 

 books, wherein they had lain useless for ages ; they are 

 perfected, they are extended, they are applied, and from 

 that moment the armies receive their orders in a few 

 minutes ; the Committee of Public Safety in Paris is 

 enabled to follow all the events of the war, to the east, 



