sion charged to propose some reparation in favour of the
families of Theobald Dillon and of Berthois, who were
massacred by their own troops before Lille, he does not
coquette with his rigorous duty. Any other man, in
such harassing times, might perhaps have thought it
requisite to consider the susceptibility of the army ; but
he seemed to think no words too severe to brand such
an odious act of wrong-headedness : he exclaimed, " I
will not remind you of the circumstances of that atrocity.
Posterity, in reading our history, will deem it rather the
crime of a horde of cannibals, than that of a free people."

In 1792, some National Guards, under the name of
confederates, assembled in great numbers at Soissons,
and already formed there the nucleus of an anny of



40 CARNOT.

reserve. All at once a report was spread at Paris, that
the bread of those volunteers had been poisoned, that
some monsters had mixed pounded glass with all the
flour furnished to them, that two hundred soldiers had
died already, and the hospitals were overflowing with
sick men. The exasperation of the Parisian populace
rose to its highest pitch : the depot at Soissons was
formed against the royal will ; the crime then must be
imputed to the King, to the Queen, to all their adherents.
Before acting, they only awaited the report of the com-
missary who had been sent to the camp. This commis-
sary was Carnot. His truthful examination reduced all
this ^phantasmagoria to nothing : there were no men dead :
there were no men sick : the flour was not poisoned ;
but some panes of glass, broken by the wind, or by the
ball of some recruit, had fallen from the window of an
old church, and happened (not pulverized, but in large
pieces,) to lie on one single bag of flour. The upright
testimony of the honest man calmed the popular tem-
pest.

He was not a party-man (understood of course in its
unfavourable meaning) ; but one who, often charged
with important missions to the armies and to the interior,
fulfilled his duties with such moderation, that he could
safely, when circumstances required it, without fear of
being contradicted, publicly render to himself the testi-
mony of never having caused the arrest of any one. By
searching into the offices of the Committee of Safety,
we should there find equally clear proofs of the benevo-
lent indulgence of Carnot towards persons professing
different political ojiinions from his, provided always
that they were united to honest dealing, and a warm
antipathy to the intervention of foreigners in the internal



A MAN OF THE NATION. 41-

affairs of France. Thus we shall see, under the name of
Michaux, amidst the fellow labourers of our academician,
the celebrated Dar9on, who had emigrated, but returned
to his country. Still, what occasion is there to drag our
audience through individual instances, when a general
reflection will lead to the same result ? The Convention
was the arena where the chiefs of the factions that
divided the country, went to combat ; yet it was in the
Clubs that they created those adherents, and obtained
that bodily strength, whose action, and even whose mere
presence, often sufficed to annul the effects of the most
eloquent discourses. If the Convention saw the thunder-
cloud burst, it was outside its walls that it began to
threaten, that it swelled, that it acquired an irresistible
power. Men could not then acquire political influence
without attending daily either at the Jacobins or at the
Cordeliers, and mixing and taking part in all their de-
bates : well. Gentlemen, Carnot did not belong to any
of those associations ; never did a word of his echo in
those Clubs. In those troublous times, Carnot made
himself exclusively a man of the nation.

The character was high, but not without danger.
Robespierre especially was jealous of him, and ex-
claimed in one of his harangues : " To have taken the
command of all the military operations, is decidedly an
act of egotism ; obstinately refusing to take any part in
the affairs of internal police, is contriving means of ac-
commodation with the enemies of the. country." — He
said to Cambon on another occasion : " I am in despair
at not comprehending anything of the intersection of
lines and tints, that I see on those maps. Ah ! if I had
studied the military art in my youth, I should not now
be obliged, whenever our armies are treated of, to sub-



42 CARNOT.

mit to the supremacy of the odious Carnot." This
animosity began from the epoch when our fellow aca-
demician blamed the coup d'etat (as such) under which
the Gironde fell. About the same time. Saint- Just
accused him of moderatism, and demanded that he should
be tried for having refused, while with the army of the
North, to put his signature to the order for arresting
General O'Moran. Carnot always came out safe and
sound from these terrible crises ; not from a sentiment
of justice or affection, but because every one, friend as
well as foe, felt the impossibility of I'eplacing him effec-
tually in his special military character by any other
conventionalist !

Similar relations between the co-members of a council
would now appear fabulous ! Is it my fault then, if our
weak patriotism cannot conceive all the extent of the
sacrifices that our fathers imposed on themselves to save
our country ?

You will remember. Gentlemen, that I did not hesitate
to place in the first rank of these sacrifices the obligation
which our colleague felt, of blindly signing a quantity of
decrees issued by his colleagues. I have explained how
this necessity had manifested itself; well, it was so
abused, that on one occasion, Carnot was made to sign
the order for arresting his own secretary ; another time
that for arresting the r-estaurateur in whose house he
took his meals. The word infernal seems to me really
too feeble for characterizing such acts ; and yet, to the
honour of our colleague, we must almost congratulate
ourselves that they occurred, since they yield an insur-
niountable and speaking proof of the written arrange-
ment which was agreed to in committee, in the name of
the safety of the country.



INCLINED TO MERCY. 43

I had read, even in royalist works, and I had read
also in some writings published by republicans, that
Carnot had saved, in the Committee of Public Safety,
more men than his colleagues had immolated. Carnot,
then, did not absent himself from the meetings except
when military affairs entirely absorbed his time ; Carnot,
then, sometimes attended the delibei-ations of the Com-
mittee, and on those occasions innocence could depend on
an advocate full of feeling and firmness. Only a few
days ago, chance enabled me to discover that the part of
volunteer defender was not the only one that Carnot took
upon himself.

There is amongst you. Gentlemen, a venerable aca-
demician equally versed in theoretical and in applied
mathematics ; he has gloriously attached his name to
some useful labours, and to some vast projects that the
future, perhaps, will realize. He has gone through a
long career, without making, certainly without deserving,
an enemy ! and yet his head was once menaced, and
some wretches wished to make it fall, at the very time
that he was projecting one of the scientific monuments
that have reflected most honour on the revolutionary
era. An anonymous letter informed our colleague of
his danger. The storm is dissipated, but it may gather
again in an instant ; the friendly hand traces out a line
of conduct ; rules of prudence point out the necessity of
preparing a retreat. Nor will it leave the work un-
finished, but will again take up the pen if the danger
reappears.

The anonymous writer. Gentlemen, was Carnot ; the
geometer whom he thus preserved to science, and to our
affections, was M. de Prony. At that epoch Prony and
Carnot had never seen each othei%



44 CARNOT.

The years 1793 and 179i were characterized by two
sorts of terror : the terror of the interior, I have just
proved, Gentlemen, our colleague was always a stranger
to, as to any thing criminal in it ; but the terror which
the French soldiers inspired in the innumerable enemies
that came from every part of Europe to assail our fron-
tiers, — this sort of terror was indeed the work of Carnot ;
it was glorious ; the recollection of it wiU be immortal ;
I claim it for the memory of our colleague ; I claim it
also for the honour of the Academy. You will not re-
fuse. Gentlemen, again to follow Carnot in this fine and
brilliant phase of his public career. I am assured in
this hope by your devotion to our country.

CARNOT ENTRUSTED WITH THE ORGANIZATION AND
DIRECTION OP OUR ARMIES.

At divers epochs, in France as well as in other coun-
tries, simple administrators have been seen successfully
to occupy the eminent positions of Minister of War, and
Minister of Marine. The Genei'al-in-chief, the Admiral,
was then entrusted with a command, with carte blanche
as to the operations, and the ministers had nothing far-
ther to do than to send regular and opportune provisions
and reinforcements. Would you believe it, Gentlemen ?
it was in this confined circle that bad faith and envy
wished to confine the decisive influence that Cai'not ex-
ercised on our destinies. But it will be easy for us in a
few words to tear to pieces this web of hideous ingrati-
tude.

When our colleague became, in August 1793, member
of the Committee of Public Safety, France was passing
through a frightful crisis. The wreck of Dumouriez's
army was repulsed from one position to another ; Valen-



COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. 45

ciennes, Conde, opened tlieir gates to the enemy ; May-
ence, pressed by famine, and without the hope of relief,
capitulated ; two Spanish armies invaded our territory ;
20,000 Piedraontese were crossing the Alps ; the 40,000
Vendeans of Cathelineau were taking Bressuire, Thouars,
Saumur, Angers ; they menaced Tours, le Mans, and
attacked Nantes on the right bank of the Loire, whilst
Charette manoeuvred on the opposite bank ; Toulon re-
ceived an English fleet into its port ; in a word, our
principal cities, Marseilles, Caen, Lyons, separated them-
selves violently from the central government.

You have now before your eyes, CTcntlemen, a faint
image of the dangers which menaced our country ; and
have some people dared to pretend that the Convention,
that the terrible Convention, hoped to escape from the
imminent catastrophe that almost all Europe thought
inevitable, without even establishing a certain connec-
tion in the operations of its generals ? and can it have
been imagined that, in entrusting one of its members
with the almost sovereign direction of its military affairs,
it expected from him only the methodical measures and
regulations compassed by a purveyor or intendant of an
army ? No, no ! no one could possibly in good faith
adopt such ideas.

Do not, however, believe that I undervalue Carnot's
administrative services. I admire, on the contrary, their
noble simplicity. There was not, assuredly, at that time
in his administration, either that inextricable series of
scribbling which the smallest affair entails on us in the
present day ; nor that artistic network entangling every
one, from the junior clerk of the ofRce up to the head of
the department, in so intricate a manner, that the firmest
and boldest hand could not hope to break a link or sep-



46 CARNOT.

arate the elements. The chief used then to take a
responsible, personal, and direct cognizance of the dis-
patches that were addressed to him ; the conceptions of
the chosen man were not then exposed to perish under
the blows of an envious multitude of poor intellects ; a
mere sergeant of infantry, then, (young Hoche) did not
work only on the dusty papers in the archives, when he
composed A Memoir on the Means of penetrating into
Belgium ; tlien, the perusal of this work drew from Car-
not this prophetic exclamation : " That is a sergeant of
infantry who will make his way." Then this sergeant,
watched by the eye in all his actions, became, in the
space of a few months, captain, colonel, brigadier-general,
general of division, and general in chief ; it was not then
only a small class that was invested with the privilege
of furnishing the chiefs of our armies ; then, both in fact
and by right, each soldier had promotions in his cartridge-
box : splendid actions brought them out ; yet the military
force then, notwithstanding the important services that
it rendered to the country, notwithstanding the disorders
of that epoch, respectfully lowered its fasces before the
civil authority, the proxy of the nation.

Let us cast a glance towards another phase of the
military administration, and Carnot will not appear to us
either less great or less successful.

There was a want of pure copper ; at the cry of the
distressed nation, science discovered in the bells of the
convents, of the churches, of the public clocks, an inex-
haustible mine, whence she might extract, without delay,
all the metal that England, Sweden, and Russia refused
her. There was no saltpetre ; some lands, where for-
merly only enough of this substance would have been
sought to add certainty to some delicate chemical analy-



ARMY REQUIRKMENTS SUPPLIED. 47

sis, furnish enough for all the requirements of our armies
and our fleets. The preparation of shoe-leather used to
require whole months of labour ; such long delays did
not suit the wants of our soldiers, and consequently the
tanner's art received unhoped-for improvements ; days
will now take the place of months. The manufacture of
arms is so minute, that its slowness seems inevitable ;
but immediately some mechanical aids are brought into
action to strengthen, to direct, to take the place of the
workman ; the products increase in proportion to the
demand for them. Until the year 1794, balloons had
been only a mere object of curiosity ; but at the battle of
Fleurus, a balloon carries General Morlot into the region
of the clouds ; from thence the smallest manoeuvres of
the enemy are perceived, are signalized instantly, and
this invention of purely French origin procures a splen-
did triumph for our army. Graphite pencils (black
lead) are the pen and ink of an officer on a campaign ;
it is with the pencil that he Avrites a few words on the
pummel of his saddle, which send thousands of infantry,
of cavalry, of artilleiy-men into the thickest of the fight ;
graphite is one of the substances that Nature seems to
have denied to our soil ; the Committee of Public Safety
orders it to be created of all sizes, and this order to make
a discovery is executed without delay ; thus the country
is enriched with a new branch of industry. To be brief,
for I must resign myself to not saying every thing, the
first ideas of the telegraph are drawn from some folio
books, wherein they had lain useless for ages ; they are
perfected, they are extended, they are applied, and from
that moment the armies receive their orders in a few
minutes ; the Committee of Public Safety in Paris is
enabled to follow all the events of the war, to the east.



48 CARNOT.

the north, the west, as if it were seated in the midst of
the combatants.

These somewhat spontaneous creations, these patriotic
directions given to so many noble intellects, this art, now
lost, of exciting genius, of dragging it from its habitual
indolence, will always occupy a large place in the annals
of the Committee of Public Safety, and in the history of
our colleague's life. Without departing, moreover, from
the subject that now occupies us, we might still register
many other services.

Cai'not was one of that very small number of men
who, in 1793, firmly believed that the Republic would
sooner or later triumph over its innumerable enemies.
Thus, although he gave to the present as large a portion
of attention as circumstances demanded, yet having an
eye to the future in his administration, he enriched France
with many great institutions, the happy effects of which
can only be slowly developed.

If time allowed me, I should have to cite amongst the
great establishments towards the formation of which
Carnot contributed, the first Normal School, the Poly-
technic School, the Museum of Natural History, the
Conservatory of Arts and Trades ; and amongst the
labours that he encouraged by his suffrage, was the
measurement of the earth, the establishment of the new
system of weights and measures, and the great, the
incomparable statistic tables.

These are noble titles, Gentlemen, for an era of de-
struction.

The Convention put into the hands of Carnot the
colossal, but incoherent mass of the requisition. It was
requisite to organize it, to discipline it, to instruct it ;
Carnot produced from it fourteen armies. It was also



FOUNDS PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 49

requisite to create for it some able chiefs : our colleao'ue
knew, with a certain Athenian general, that an army of
Deer commanded by a Lion, would he worth more than
an army of Lions commanded hy a Deer. Carnot duo-
without intermission in the fruitful and inexhaustible
mine of junior officers ; as I before said, his penetrat-
ing eye sought in the most obscure ranks for talent
united with courage, with disinterestedness, and elevated
it rapidly to the highest grades. It was necessary to
coordinate so many various movements ! Carnot, like
Atlas in the fable, carried alone, during several years
the -weight of all the military events in Europe ; he
wrote with his own hand to the generals ; he gave them
detailed orders, wherein all the eventualities were mi-
nutely foreseen ; his plans, the one that he addressed to
Pichegru, for instance, on the 21 Ventose, year II.,
seemed the result of real divination. Facts occurred
so entirely justifying the forethought of our colleao^ue,
that to write an account of the memorable campaign of
1794, there -would be scarcely a few. proper names of
villages to be altered in the instructions that he addressed
to the commander-in-chief The places where attacks
were to be made, those Avhere they M'ere to limit tliera-
selves to demonstrations, to skirmishes ; the strength of
each garrison, of each post, all is indicated, all is regu-
lated with admirable jirecision. It was by orders from
Carnot that Hoche one day disappeared from before the
Prussian army, traversed the Vosges, and, uniting him-
self to the army of the Rhine, went to strike a decisive
blow on Wurmsur, which occasioned the deliverance of
Alsace.

In 1793, while the enemy was expecting, according to
the classic principles of strategy, to see our troops ad-



50 CARNOT.

vanee from the Moselle to the Rhine ; whilst he was
accumulating formidable means of resistance on the lat-
ter river, Carnot, without troubling himself about old
theories, detached unawares 40,000 men from the army
of the Moselle, and sent them to the Meuse by forced
marches. Such was the celebrated manoeuvre which
decided the success of the campaign of 1793, during which
the Austrian and Dutch generals had the double chagrin
of being constantly beaten, and this against all rules. Yes,
Gentlemen, the national tribune was but just, on the day
when it echoed these noble words, which have now
become historical : " Carnot has organized victory"

CARNOT ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE AT "WATTIGNIES.

It might be said of the French armies, as of certain
painters, that they have had various styles. On the day
of battle, it is true, the imperial armies and the repub-
lican armies precipitated themselves on the enemy with
the same intrepidity ; with this exception all else was
different. The imperial soldier saw his country only in
the ARMY ; it was for the honour, for the glory of the
army, that he shed his blood at Wagram, at Sommo-
Sierra, at the Moscowa. The republican soldier fought
for his COUNTRY ; the national independence was the
thought that, above all others, animated him in the com-
bat ; as to recompenses, he did not even dream of them.

Follow those same soldiers into [jrivate life, and you will
see this dissimilitude continue. The imperialist remains
a soldier both in his sentiments and in his manners ; the
republican, confounded in the mass of the population,
becomes soon undistingui.-hable from an artisan, from a
labourer, Avho bad never quitted his workshop or his
plough.



BATTLE OF WATTIGNIES. 51

It is these shades, cleverly seized, artistically repro-
duced, that from the first day struck the public with such
a lively admiration for the productions of David. One
day, an officer of the Empire, known for his brilliant
valour, said to me in the library of the Institute, " I
cannot reconcile myself to seeing General Carnot in a
man dressed in short h~eeches and blue stockhigs." I
took the opposite view ; upon which he added, " Well,
be it so ! blue stockings may suit a general who was
never baptized by fire ! " Yesterday, also, with less
roughness it is true, in word, one of our co-academicians
reproduced in my presence the same thought. I shall
then fulfil a duty by proving that, when occasion required,
the man in blue stockings knew well how to risk his life.

The Prince of Cobourg, at the head of sixty thousand
men, occupied all the outlets of the forest of Mormale,
and blockaded ISIaubeuge. This town once taken, the
Austrians would have met with no more serious obstacles
to their reaching Paris. Carnot perceives the danger ;
he persuades his colleagues in the Committee of Public
Safety that our army, notwithstanding its numerical infe-
riority, can give battle ; that it must attack the enemy in
its apparently impregnable positions. It was one of those
critical moments that decide the fate, the existence of
nations. General Jourdan hesitates under such a terrible
responsibility. Carnot goes to the army ; in a few hours
all is ari-anged, all is agreed upon ; the troops open out,
they fall upon their enemies ; but the latter are so numer-
ous, they occupy so well chosen a position, they have dug
so many entrenchments, they have furnished them so for-
midably with artillery, that success is uncertain. At the
close of the day, our right wing had gained some ground ;
but the lett wing had perhaps lost more. It had more-



52 CARNOT.

over left some guns in possession of the Austrians. Let
us strengthen the left wing, exclaimed the old tacticians.
No, no, replied Carnot ; what signifies by which wing Ave
triumph. It w^as necessary, with good will or ill will, to
yield to the authority of the people's representative ! The
night is employed in breaking up the wing already com-
promised ; its principal troops are marched to the right,
and when the sun rose, it was in some measure a new
army that Cobourg found opposed to him. The battle
recommenced with fresh fury. Shut up in their redoubts,
protected by woods, by palisades, by quickset hedges, the
Austrians resist valiantly ; one of our attacking columns
is repulsed, and begins to disperse ! Oh ! who could de-
scribe the cruel anguish that Carnot experienced. Doubt-
less his imagination already represents to him the enemy
penetrating into the capital, defiling along the boulevards,
and abandoning themselves to those acts of Vandalism,
with which in so many proclamations, in so many insolent
manifestoes, we had been threatened ! These distracting
thoughts, however, do not abate his courage : Carnot
rallies his soldiers, reforms them on a plot of ground ;
solemnly, before the whole army, degrades the general
who, in disobeying positive orders, had allowed himself
to be defeated ; seizes the musket of a grenadier, and
marches at the head of the column, in the civil costume
of the representative of the nation. Nothing could now
withstand the impetuosity of our troops ; the charges of
the Austrian cavalry are repelled with the bayonet ; all
who enter into the excavated roads around Wattignies ai'e
sure to meet with death. Carnot finally penetrated into
the village, the very key of the position of the enemy's
army, over heaps of dead bodies, and from that moment
the sieee of Maubeu";e was at an end.



BATTLE OF WATTIGNIES. 63

It will be asked, no doubt, where Carnot had gained
this firmness, this vigour, the military coup d'oeil, that
knowledge of troops ? Seek not for the source but in his
ardent patriotism. It was at Wattignies that for the first
time he heard the musketiy and cannon of the enemy.
But I am mistaken, Gentlemen ; it is the second, and not
the first time : the first time, Carnot, marching as at Wat-
tignies, musket in hand, at the head of a new levy of sol-
diers, carried the town of Furnez by assault, then occupied
by the English.