INTRODUCTORY REFLECTIONS. O/O 



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 ingenious author of the Essai sur les Machines 

 and of the Geometric 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 



