and steadiness. As I said before, the
colonel who promotes has full power to disrate
any one of the non-commissioned ranks. I was
shown in this very regiment a young man of
title who had entered the ranks as a private
soldier, who had been promoted to be corporal,
and who was subsequently disrated for riotous
conduct in the town where his regiment was
quartered. Having shown some signs of amendment,
he had been promoted a second time to
the rank of corporal, and was now sergeant-major
of a company, hoping and fully expecting
advancement to the epaulet of sub-lieutenant before
very long.

We have an idea in England—and I
confess that, until I became better acquainted
with the subject, I was under the same
erroneous impression—that in the French army
nearly all the men are taken by conscription,
and that those who volunteer to enter the ranks,
or who, having served their seven years,
re-enter, are very few indeed. This is a great
mistake. My friend, the captain of the regiment
which I became so well acquainted with,
informed me that nearly thirty per cent of
their men were volunteers, and that nearly all
those who rose from the ranks to the grade of
officer, as well as still larger proportions of the
more educated classes who joined them, were men
who have enlisted voluntarily, and not by
conscription. In what we would call "the crack"
regiments, the proportion is still greater. The
Zouaves and Chasseurs à Pied have nearly
fifty per cent of volunteers in their ranks;
consequently a great number of the officers
of all the French army have begun their
military lives in the ranks of these corps.
But the term volunteer is not meant
exclusively to apply to those who enlist at first of
their own free will without waiting for the
conscription. A soldier who has been drawn in
the conscription, and who, after his first seven
years are over, volunteers to enlist again, is also
called a volunteer. The volunteers are
distinguished by worsted stripes worn on the
sleeves of their coats, something like what are
called "good-conduct marks" in our army. A
soldier who has merely been drawn at the
conscription wears no badge of this kind; but if,
after he has served seven years, he volunteer
for a second similar period, he wears two of
these marks; if he remain after a second seven
years, either a private or a non-commissioned
officer, he wears three, and so on. On the other
hand, any man who by voluntary enlistment
enters the service, wears one badge during the
first, and two during the second seven years.
I was told that in the days when Louis Philippe
was king, and when the French army was not
so much looked after as it has been under the
Second Empire, there was no particular care
taken to keep men in the army after their first
seven years, and the consequence was that there
were very few indeed of these men throughout
the service. But, from the first days of his
Presidency until now, Louis Napoleon has
shown great anxiety to preserve all the best
soldiers round the standards, and in every rank
advantages of some sort or other have been offered
them. Thus, when an individual who has been
drawn at the conscription, but does not wish to
serve, wants to procure a substitute, he cannot,
as he formerly could, look out for a man
willing to take his place and make his own
bargain with him; nor are private offices at
which substitutes are provided, allowed to
exist. Whoever has been drawn for the
conscription, and does not wish to serve,
must go to a certain department of the War
Office, and there deposit a thousand francs: a sum
equivalent to forty pounds sterling. For this
money the government undertakes to furnish a
substitute, and does so by offering the money
to the men who have already served seven years,
and have not, generally from want of education,
and often from an inclination to break out in
drinking sprees (faire la noce, as they term it),
obtained promotion to the rank of corporal.
To such men a bounty of forty pounds is a small
fortune, and this, with four sous (twopence) a
day increased pay, the privilege of wearing two
badges on his sleeve, and the conventional
respect shown to a soldier in his second term of
service, generally induces the best of them to
remain another seven years in his corps. This
plan has greatly increased the efficiency of the
French army. As there are every year numbers of
persons drawn in the conscription who do not
want to serve, and as there are always many men
whose term of seven years has expired, the
government get their pick of the latter; it
is now so managed that every time-expired
man, who has not been promoted to the rank of
corporal, and who is willing to remain in the
service, can get the forty pounds bounty if his
colonel's report of his conduct be favourable.
If he be a good soldier, the authorities are glad to
take him at this price; if he be a bad one, they
can at once get rid of him. And thus it is that
the proportion of old soldiers has very much
increased in the French army, as compared with
the men in their first term of service.

From among the captains of a regiment
a French colonel must be chosen for the rank
of major, or commandant. From the latter he
must have been picked out for the grade of
lieutenant-colonel; and it is only if he perform
the duties of the latter position to the perfect
satisfaction of his superiors that he is
promoted to the command of a regiment. How
these selections are made, or rather in what
way the war minister obtains full and true reports
of the qualifications of officers, I shall show after
a while; for the present I have to note how
from the rank of corporal the soldier is
promoted to the rank of sergeant, and through the
non-commissioned ranks.

In the French army the corporals are
responsible for all that takes place in the barrack-
rooms, and for the general conduct of the
men belonging to the squad he commands,
when off duty. The sergeants and sergeant-
majors interfere very little with what takes
place inside the rooms; the officers not at