THE CENTENARY OF THE ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE. 
179 
au Bonaparte silencieux de Vendemiaire” of whom Lamartine makes 
mention in his well-known “ History of the Revolution of 1848.” On 
the 29th February the Provisional Government publicly presented its 
thanks to the scholars of the Ecole Polytechnic for having, from the 
first day of the Revolution, placed itself at the service of the country. 
Similarly, in 1830, the National Guard had declared that there was not 
a citizen who had not been touched with admiration for the glorious 
uniform of the Polytechnic School. 
Nevertheless, the school was just now threatened with suppression. 
Several notable politicians were much displeased by this consistent 
participation of the school in all the popular manifestations. Odilon- 
Barrot publicly declared that he wished to put an end to such business 
in the future; whilst Le Boeuf, then Commandant of Artillery, took up 
the cudgels in defence of the school and succeeded in averting the 
danger. It was next proposed to divide the establishment into two 
sections, one civilian and the other military. The Prince-President, 
Louis Napoleon, nominated a mixed commission, to study the question 
of its reorganisation, and on the 1st November, 1852, appeared the 
decree which lays down the regulations in force at the present day, 
with certain modifications introduced after the adoption of the military 
laws. The school had little sympathy with Louis Bonaparte, who took 
good care to have it seized and occupied on the occasion of the Coup 
d’Etat, on the 2nd December, 1851, otherwise the cadets would un¬ 
doubtedly have joined the Republicans against Napoleon “ le petit.” 
They were ever afterwards hostile towards the Empire of Napoleon III., 
and twice they narrowly escaped suppression. On one occasion, dur¬ 
ing the march past of the troops on the Champ de Mars, in 1855, when 
the French army had returned from the Crimea, the cadets of the 
Ecole Polytechnique passed before the Emperor without a sound of 
acknowledgment, and when the Prince Imperial visited the school he 
was received there in the midst of a chilling silence. 
The Franco-Prussian War. 
When the war broke out in 1870, several of the senior cadets were 
sent to the front, whilst the others remained at Paris and went through 
all the privations and horrors of the siege, taking their full share of 
duty on the ramparts and at the out-posts. On the 4th January, 1871, 
the Government of the National Defence re-opened the school at 
Bordeaux, at a solemn meeting under the presidency of Cremieux, sup¬ 
ported by Gambetta and de Freyeinet. On the 15th March the school 
returned to Paris, and on the 18th the insurrection broke out. The 
school, as a whole (one or two dissident voices alone excepted), declared 
for the Government of Versailles, and, on the 7th April, it was re-opened 
at Tours. After the suppression of the Commune it returned to its old 
quarters in Paris. It was in the court-yard of the school that Maurice 
Treillard, the Director of Public Assistance during the Commune, was 
shot. In 1874 the present uniform worn by the cadets was first 
adopted. In 1875 Gambetta paid a visit to the school, and, recalling 
to mind the energy and devoted zeal which the cadets had exhibited in 
1871, in the organisation of camps and the manufacture of arms and 
