171 
THE CENTENARY OF THE ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE, 
CELEBRATED IN PARIS ON THE 11TH MARCH, 1894, UNDER 
THE AUSPICES OF FRANCOIS SADI CARNOT, PRESIDENT 
OF THE REPUBLIC, AND AN OLD CADET OF THE SCHOOL. 
BY 
CAPTAIN S. P. OLIVER, late R.A. 
It lias been thought that a brief sketch of the celebrated French 
School, which has educated so many gallant soldiers and philosophers 
across the channel, will be acceptable to the officers of the Royal Artil¬ 
lery on the occasion of its one hundredth birthday. I have, therefore, 
forwarded the accompanying translation of an article in (( Le Temps,” 
for the publication of which permission has been very courteously ac¬ 
corded by M. Adrien Hebrard, the able Directeur politique of that 
journal.— S.P.O. 
/ 
The Ecole Polytechnique. 
“La nation , la loi.” 
“ The greatness of this school is worthy of the people for whom it 
has been designed; it will be without a parallel in Europe.” Such 
were the terms in which Antoine Francis de Fourcroy, the celebrated 
chemist and Deputy (the successor of the more famous Marat), in the 
name of the Committee of Public Safety, proposed at the sitting of the 
Convention, on the 24tli September, 1794, a grant of money from the 
Paris establishment, for a central school of public works, where the in¬ 
struction should be based upon mathematics and physics, and whose 
purpose it should be to furnish technical experts and engineers for the 
several services of the Republic. 
France, at that period, was labouring amidst great difficulties. 
Foreign war raged without, and within the realm the “Terror” had 
paralysed all commerce and progress, so that the whole country was 
well nigh disorganised. The enemy threatened the frontiers, insurrec¬ 
tion blazed in the towns and country, whilst the nation was without 
arms, without powder, without factories, without arsenals. The Com¬ 
mittee of Public Safety called to its aid a whole “ pleiad ” of savants, 
4. VOL. XXI. 
