INTRODUCTORY REFLECTIONS. 375 
devouring arena, wherein might and right have alter- 
nately seized the supreme power by a glorious sacrifice 
of combatants and victims ! 
Recall to mind, for example, the immortal National 
Assembly. You will find at its head a modest academi- 
cian, a patern of all the private virtues, the unfortunate 
Bailly, who, in the different phases of his political life, 
knew how to reconcile a passionate affection for his 
country with a moderation which his most cruel enemies 
themselves have been compelled to admire. 
When, at a later period, coalesced Europe launched 
against France a million of soldiers; when it became 
necessary to organize for the crisis fourteen armies, it 
was the gagenious author of the Hssaz sur les Machines 
and of the Géométrie des Positions who directed this 
gigantic operation. It was, again, Carnot, our honoura- 
ble colleague, who presided over the incomparable cam- 
paign of seventeen months, during which French troops, 
novices in the profession of arms, gained eight pitched 
battles, were victorious in one hundred and forty com- 
bats, occupied one hundred and sixteen fortified places 
and two hundred and thirty forts or redoubts, enriched 
our arsenals with four thousand cannon and seventy 
thousand muskets, took a hundred thousand prisoners, 
and adorned the dome of the Invalides with ninety flags. 
During the same time the Chaptals, the Fourcroys, the 
Monges, the Berthollets rushed also to the defence of 
French independence, some of them extracting from our 
soil, by prodigies of industry, the very last atoms of salt- 
petre which it contained; others transforming, by the 
aid of new and rapid methods, the bells of the towns, 
villages, and smallest hamlets into a formidable artillery, 
which our enemies supposed, as indeed they had a right 
