iment, and of all the standards borne by it since the date of its
organization. The tendency of modern warfare is to abolish more and more
the picturesque and artistic, but the wars of the Republic and the First
Empire have contributed a series of costumes among the most martial and
the most imposing known to history.

Something of this contrast of costume may be seen in the reproduction of
M. Orange's painting from the Salon of 1891, the "Medallists of Saint
Helena," on page 175,--the annual ceremony of the old soldiers of the
First Empire depositing their memorial wreaths at the base of the
Vendome column; and it is with a very natural impulse that the French
citizen and the French soldier of to-day turn from the bitter memories
of their last war to recall the images of those great days when the
nation was afire as it has never been since. The curious revival of
Napoleonic literature which we have witnessed within the last few years
may doubtless be ascribed in part, at least, to this longing to dispel
somewhat the national depression. There is not wanting in these memoirs
abundant testimony to the strange transformation which the casting off
of the ancient regime wrought in the whole people. In the _Consulat et
l'Empire_, M. Thiers quotes the testimony of an astonished Prussian
officer after the astonishing battle of Auerstadt in which Davout with
twenty-six thousand men overthrew sixty thousand of the soldiers trained
in the school of the great Frederick, repulsed twenty times the charges
of the cavalry considered the best in Europe, and took with his
forty-four cannon one hundred and fifteen of the enemy's. "If we had to
fight the French only with our fists, we would be vanquished. They are
small and weakly; one of our Germans could beat four of them; but under
fire they become supernatural beings. They are carried away by an
inexpressible ardor, of which no trace can be seen in our own soldiers."
In much more recent publications, the _Memoires du sergent Bourgogne_,
the _Souvenirs d'un officier danois_, the Lieutenant Frisenberg, there
is further testimony as to the quality of this _Grande Armee_. The
latter, a young soldier, records the strong impression made upon him by
the French officers when he first met them, their sobriety, their
moderation, wonderful in the conquerors of Europe, their easy acceptance
of orders. "What will not a Frenchman dare!" he exclaims. It is this
apotheosis of military valor and effici