FOUNDS PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 49 



requisite to create for it some able chiefs : our colleague 

 knew, with a certain Athenian general, that an army of 

 Deer commanded by a Lton, would be worth more than 

 an army of Lions commanded by a Deer. Carnot duo- 

 without intermission in the fruitful and inexhaustible 

 mine of junior officers ; as I before said, his penetrat- 

 ing eye sought in the most obscure ranks for talent 

 united with courage, with disinterestedness, and elevated 

 it rapidly to the highest grades. It was necessary to 

 coordinate so many various movements ! Carnot, like 

 Atlas in the fable, carried alone, during several years, 

 the weight of all the military events in Europe ; he 

 wrote with his own hand to the generals ; he gave them 

 detailed orders, wherein all the eventualities were mi- 

 nutely foreseen ; his plans, the one that he addressed to 

 Pichegru, for instance, on the 21 Ventose, year II., 

 seemed the result of real divination. Facts occurred 

 so entirely justifying the forethought of our colleague, 

 that to write an account of the memorable campaign of 

 1794, there would be scarcely a few proper names of 

 villages to be altered in the instructions that he addressed 

 to the commander-in-chief. The places where attacks 

 were to be made, those where they were to limit them- 

 selves to demonstrations, to skirmishes ; the strength of 

 each garrison, of each post, all is indicated, all is regu- 

 lated with admirable precision. It was by orders from 

 Carnot that Hoche one day disappeared from before the 

 Prussian army, traversed the Vosges, and, uniting him- 

 self to the army of the Rhine, went to strike a decisive 

 blow on Wurmsur, which occasioned the deliverance of 

 Alsace. 



In 1793, while the enemy was expecting, according to 



the classic principles of strategy, to see our troops ad- 



3 



