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 manceuvres 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, 
