othes; the boys will work the
roads, be shepherds, ploughmen and work-hands; both will have tasks set
them, either in the school-workshops, or in the fields and factories in
the neighborhood; they will be hired out to surrounding manufacturers
and to the tillers of the soil. Saint-Just is more specific and
rigid.[21107] "Male children from five to sixteen years of age, must
be raised for their country. They must be clad in common cloth at all
seasons, and have mats for beds, and sleep eight hours. They are to have
common food only, fruits, vegetables, preparations of milk, bread and
water. They must not eat meat before sixteen.. Their education, from ten
to sixteen, is to be military and agricultural. They will be formed into
companies of sixty; six companies make a battalion; the children of
a district form a legion; they will assemble annually at the district
town, encamp there and drill in infantry tactics, in arenas specially
provided for the purpose; they will also learn cavalry maneuvers and
every other species of military evolution. In harvest time they are to
be distributed amongst the harvesters." After sixteen, "they enter
the crafts," with some farmer, artisan, merchant or manufacturer, who
becomes their titular "instructor," and with whom they are bound to
remain up to the age of twenty-one, "under the penalty of being deprived
for life of a citizen's rights.[21108]... All children will dress alike
up to sixteen years of age; from twenty-one to twenty-five, they will
dress as soldiers, if they are not in the magistracy."--Already we show
the effects of the theory by one striking example; we founded the "Ecole
de Mars;"[21109] we select out of each district six boys from sixteen to
seventeen and a half years old "among the children of sans-culottes;"
we summon them to Paris, "to receive there, through a revolutionary
education, whatever belongs to the knowledge and habits of a republican
soldier. They are schooled in fraternity, in discipline, in frugality,
in good habits, in love of country and in detestation of kings." three
or four thousand young people are lodged at the Sablons, "in a palisaded
enclosure, the intervals of which are guarded by chevaux de frises
and sentinels."[21110] We puts them into tents; we feed them with bran
bread, rancid pork, water and vinegar; we drill them in the use of arms;
we march them out on national holidays and stimulate them with patriotic
harangues.--Suppose all Frenchmen