86 CARNOT. 
national independence. In every thing, however, mod- 
eration is requisite. Does not economy when pushed 
to the extreme become hideous avarice? Does not 
pride degenerate into vanity ; politeness into affectation ; 
freedom into rudeness? It is by weighing in exact 
scales the good and the evil resulting from all human 
inventions, that we keep the path of true wisdom. It is 
thus that, despite the sovereignty of example and habit, 
despite the influence, generally so powerful, of uniform, 
the officer of engineers, Carnot, always studied important 
problems of fortification. 
In 1788, some French officers, enthusiastic to delirium 
respecting Frederic the Great’s campaigns, loudly pro- 
claim the entire inutility of fortresses. Government 
seems to accede to this strange opinion; it does not yet 
order the demolition of those ancient and glorious walls ; 
but it allows them to fall of themselves. Carnot with- 
stands the general bias, and sends a memoir to M. de 
Brienne, Minister of War, in which the question is 
examined in all its phases with a boldness of thought, 
an ardour of patriotism so much the more worthy of * 
remark, because such examples had then become very 
rare. It shows that in a defensive war, the only sort 
that he advises, the only one that he thinks legitimate, 
our northern fortresses might be regarded as equal to 
the aid of a hundred thousand men of the regular army; 
that a kingdom surrounded by rival nations is always in 
a precarious state when it has troops only without for- 
tresses. Then, entering on the financial question, Car- 
not affirms (this result I am sure will astonish my audi- 
ence, as it astonished me also), Carnot repeatedly affirms, 
that far from being a gulf into which the treasures of the 
state were continually being lavished, the numerous for- 
