o
lavish their blood, and sacrifice their lives, _for the glory of
France_. Other troops go through similar scenes of suffering and danger
with equal fortitude, when under the influence of strong passions, when
fired by revenge, or animated by the hope of plunder, or cheered by the
acclamations of victory; but with the single exception of the British
army, we doubt whether there are any to whom the mere spirit of military
honour is of itself so strong a stimulus.

We have already noticed the state of the French sick and wounded, left
in the hospitals at Wilna during the retreat from Russia; a state so
deplorable, as to have excited the strongest commiseration among their
indignant enemies. This, however, was but a single instance of the
system almost uniformly acted on, we have understood, by the French
medical staff in Russia, Germany, and Spain, of deserting their
hospitals on the approach of the enemy, so as to leave to him, if he did
not chuse to see the whole of the patients perish before his eyes, the
burden of maintaining them. The miseries which this system must have
occasioned, in the campaign of 1813 in particular, require no
illustration.

Another regulation of the French army, during the campaign of that year,
will shew the utter carelessness of its leaders, in regard to the lives
or comforts of the soldiers. When the men who were incapacitated for
service by wounds or disease, were sent back to France, they were
directed, in the first instance, to Mentz, where their uniforms, and any
money they might have about them, were regularly taken from them, and
given to the young conscripts who were passing through to join the
armies; they were then dressed in miserable old rags, which were
collected in the adjacent provinces by Jews employed for that purpose,
and in this state they were sent to _beg_ their way to their homes.
Such, as we were assured by some of our countrymen, who saw many of
these men passing through Verdun, was the reward of thousands of the
"_grande nation_" who had lost their limbs or their health in vainly
endeavouring to maintain the glory and influence of their country in
foreign states. In the campaign of 1814, which was carried on during the
continuance of a frost of almost unprecedented intensity, and in so
rapid and variable a manner, and with so large bodies of troops, as to
prevent the establishment of regular hospitals or of any thing like a
regular Commissariat, the French troops,