Object of the educational corps and adaptation of youth tothe established order of things.—Sentiments required ofchildren and adults.—Passive acceptance of these rules.—Extent and details of school regulations.—Emulation and thedesire to be at the head.—Constant competition and annualdistribution of prizes.
What is the object of this service?—Previous to the Revolution, when directed by, or under the supervision of, the Church, its great object was the maintenance and strengthening of the faith of the young. Successor of the old kings, the new ruler underlines6150among "the bases of education," "the precepts of the Catholic religion," and this phrase he writes himself with a marked intention; when first drawn up, the Council of State had written the Christian religion; Napoleon himself, in the definitive and public decree, substitutes the narrowest term for the broadest.6151In this particular, he is politic, taking one step more on the road on which he has entered through the Concordat, desiring to conciliate Rome and the French clergy by seeming to give religion the highest place.—But it is only a place for show, similar to that which he assigns to ecclesiastical dignitaries in public ceremonies and on the roll of precedence. He does not concern himself with reanimating or even preserving earnest belief: far from that:
"it should be so arranged," he says,6152"that young people may be neither too bigoted nor too incredulous: they should be adapted to the state of the nation and of society."
All that can be demanded of them is external deference, personal attendance on the ceremonies of worship, a brief prayer in Latin muttered in haste at the beginning and end of each lesson,6153in short, acts like those of raising one's hat or other public marks of respect, such as the official attitudes imposed by a government, author of the Concordat, on its military and civil staff. They likewise, the lyceans and the collegians, are to belong to it and do already, Napoleon thus forming his adult staff out of his juvenile staff.
In fact, it is for himself that he works, for himself alone, and not at all for the Church whose ascendancy would prejudice his own; much better, in private conversation, he declares that he had wished to supplant it: his object in forming the University is first and especially "to take education out of the hands of the priests.6154They consider this world only as a vehicle for transportation to the other," and Napoleon wants "the vehicle filled with good soldiers for his armies," good functionaries for his administrations, and good, zealous subjects for his service.—And, thereupon, in the decree which organizes the University, and following after this phrase written for effect, he states the real and fundamental truth.
"All the schools belonging to the University shall take for the basis of their teaching loyalty to the Emperor, to the imperial monarchy to which the happiness of the people is confided and to the Napoleonic dynasty which preserves the unity of France and of all liberal ideas proclaimed by the Constitutions."
In other terms, the object is to plant civil faith in the breasts of children, boys and young men, to make them believe in the beauty, goodness and excellence of the established order of things, to predispose their minds and hearts in favor of the system, to adapt them to this system,6155to the concentration of authority and to the centralization of services, to uniformity and to "falling into line" (encadrement), to equality in obeying, to competition, to enthusiasm, in short, to the spirit of the reign, to the combinations of the comprehensive and calculating mind which, claiming for itself and appropriating for its own use the entire field of human action, sets up its sign-posts everywhere, its barriers, its rectilinear compartments, lays out and arranges its racecourses, brings together and introduces the runners, urges them on, stimulates them at each stage, reduces their soul to the fixed determination of getting ahead fast and far, leaving to the individual but one motive for living, that of the desire to figure in the foremost rank in the career where, now by choice and now through force, he finds himself enclosed and launched.6156
For this purpose, two sentiments are essential with adults and therefore with children:
The first is the passive acceptance of a prescribed regulation, and nowhere does a rule applied from above bind and direct the whole life by such precise and multiplied injunctions as under the University régime. School life is circumscribed and marked out according to a rigid, unique system, the same for all the colleges and lycées of the Empire, according to an imperative and detailed plan which foresees and prescribes everything even to the minutest point, labor and rest of mind and of body, material and method of instruction, class-books, passages to translate or to recite, a list of fifteen hundred volumes for each library with a prohibition against introducing another volume into it without the Grand-Master's permission, hours, duration, application and sessions of classes, of studies, of recreations and of promenades causing the premeditated stifling of native curiosity, of spontaneous inquiry, of inventive and personal originality, both with the masters and still more, with the scholars. This to such an extent that one day, under the second Empire, a minister, drawing out his watch, could exclaim with satisfaction,
"At this very time, in such a class, all the scholars of the Empire are studying a certain page in Virgil."
Well—informed, judicious, impartial and even kindly-disposed foreigners,6157on seeing this mechanism which everywhere substitutes for the initiative from below the compression and impetus from above, are very much surprised. "The law means that the young shall never for one moment be left to themselves; the children are under their masters' eyes all day" and all night. Every step outside of the regulations is a false one and always arrested by the ever-present authority. And, in cases of infraction, punishments are severe; "according to the gravity of the case,6158the pupils will be punished by confinement from three days to three months in the lycée or college, in some place assigned to that purpose; if fathers, mothers or guardians object to these measures, the pupil must be sent home and can no longer enter any other college or lycée belonging to the university, which, as an effect of university monopoly, thereafter deprives him of instruction, unless his parents are wealthy enough to employ a professor at home. "Everything that can be effected by rigid discipline is thus obtained6159and better, perhaps, in France than in any other country," for if, on leaving the lycée, young people have lost a will of their own, they have acquired "a love of and habits of subordination and punctuality" which are lacking elsewhere.
Meanwhile, on this narrow and strictly defined road, whilst the regulation supports them, emulation pushes them on. In this respect, the new university corps, which, according to Napoleon himself, must be a company of "lay Jesuits," resumes to its advantage the double process which its forerunners, the former Jesuits, had so well employed in education. On the one hand, constant direction and incessant watchfulness; on the other hand, the appeal to amour-propre and to the excitements of parades before the public. If the pupil works hard, it is not for the purpose of learning and knowing, but to be the first in his class; the object is not to develop in him the need of truthfulness and the love of knowledge, but his memory, taste and literary talent; at best, the logical faculty of arrangement and deduction, but especially the desire to surpass his rivals, to distinguish himself, to shine, at first in the little public of his companions, and next, at the end of the year, before the great public of grown-up men. Hence, the weekly compositions, the register of ranks and names, every place being numbered and proclaimed; hence, those annual and solemn awards of prizes in each lycée and at the grand competition of all lycées, along with the pomp, music, decoration, speeches and attendance of distinguished personages. The German observer testifies to the powerful effect of a ceremony of this kind6160:
"One might think one's self at the play, so theatrical was it;"
and he notices the oratorical tone of the speakers, "the fire of their declamation," the communication of emotion, the applause of the public, the prolonged shouts, the ardent expression of the pupils obtaining the prizes, their sparkling eyes, their blushes, the joy and the tears of the parents. Undoubtedly, the system has its defects; very few of the pupils can expect to obtain the first place; others lack the spur and are moreover neglected by the master. But the élite make extraordinary efforts and, with this, there is success. "During the war times," says again another German, "I lodged a good many French officers who knew one half of Virgil and Horace by heart." Similarly, in mathematics, young people of eighteen, pupils of the Polytechnic School, understand very well the differential and integral calculus, and, according to the testimony of an Englishman,6161"they know it better than many of the English professors."
This general preparation is specified and directed by Napoleon as a policy, and, as he specially needs soldiers, the school, in his hands, becomes the vestibule of the barracks. Right away the institution received a military turn and spirit, and this form, which is essential to him, becomes more and more restricted. In 1805, during four months,6162Fourcroy, ordered by the Emperor, visits the new lycées "with an inspector of reviews and a captain or adjutant-major, who everywhere gives instruction in drill and discipline." The young have been already broke in; "almost everywhere," he says on his return, "I saw young people without a murmur or reflection obey even younger and weaker corporals and sergeants who had been raised to a merited rank through their good behavior and progress. He himself, although a liberal, finds reasons which justify to the legislative body this unpopular practice;6163he replies to the objections and alarm of the parents "that it is favorable to order, without which there are no good studies," and moreover "it accustoms the pupils to carrying and using arms, which shortens their work and accelerates their promotion on being summoned by the conscription to the service of the State." The tap of the drum, the attitude in presenting arms, marching at command, uniform, gold lace, and all that, in 1811, becomes obligatory, not only for the lycées and colleges, but again, and under the penalty of being closed, for private institutions.6164At the end of the Empire, there were in the departments which composed old France 76,000 scholars studying under this system of stimulation and constraint. "Our masters," as a former pupil is to say later on, "resembled captain-instructors, our study-rooms mess—rooms, our recreations drills, and our examinations reviews."6165The whole tendency of the school inclines it towards the military and merges therein on the studies being completed—sometimes, even, it flows into it before the term is over. After 1806,6166the anticipated conscriptions take youths from the benches of the philosophy and rhetoric classes. After 1808, ministerial circulars6167demand of the lycées boys (des enfants de bonne volonté), scholars of eighteen and nineteen who "know how to manoeuvre," so that they may at once be made under-officers or second-lieutenants; and these the lycées furnish without any difficulty by hundreds. In this way, the beardless volunteer entering upon the career one or two years sooner, but gaining by this one or two grades in rank.—"Thus," says a principal6168of one of the colleges, "the brain of the French boy is full of the soldier. As far as knowledge goes there is but little hope of it, at least under existing circumstances. In the schools, says another witness of the reign,6169"the young refuse to learn anything but mathematics and a knowledge of arms. I can recall many examples of young lads of ten or twelve years who daily entreated their father and mother to let them go with Napoleon."—In those days, the military profession is evidently the first of all, almost the only one. Every civilian is a pékin, that is to say an inferior, and is treated as such.6170At the door of the theatre, the officer breaks the line of those who are waiting to get their tickets and, as a right, takes one under the nose of those who came before him; they let him pass, go in, and they wait. In the café, where the newspapers are read in common, he lays hold of them as if through a requisition and uses them as he pleases in the face of the patient bourgeois.
The central idea of this glorification of the army, be it understood, is the worship of Napoleon, the supreme, unique, absolute sovereign of the army and all the rest, while the prestige of this name is as great, as carefully maintained, in the school as in the army. At the start, he put his own free scholars (boursiers) into the lycées and colleges, about 3000 boys6171whom he supports and brings up at his own expense, for his own advantage, destined to become his creatures, and who form the uppermost layer of the school population; about one hundred and fifty of these scholarships to each lycée, first occupants of the lycée and still for a long time more numerous than their paying comrades, all of a more or less needy family, sons of soldiers and functionaries who live on the Emperor and rely on him only, all accustomed from infancy to regard the Emperor as the arbiter of their destiny, the special, generous and all-powerful patron who, having taken charge of them now, will also take charge of them in the future. A figure of this kind fills and occupies the entire field of their imagination; whatever grandeur it already possesses it here becomes still more grand, colossal and superhuman. At the beginning their enthusiasm gave the pitch to their co-disciples;6172the institution, through its mechanism, labors to keep this up, and the administrators or professors, by order or through zeal, use all their efforts to make the sonorous and ringing chord vibrate with all the more energy. After 1811, even in a private institution,6173"the victories of the Emperor form almost the only subject on which the imagination of the pupils is allowed to exercise itself." After 1807,6174at Louis le Grand, the prize compositions are those on the recent victory of Jena. "Our masters themselves," says Alfred de Vigny, "unceasingly read to us the bulletins of the Grande Armée, while cries of Vive l'Empereur interrupted Virgil and Plato." In sum, write many witnesses,6175Bonaparte desired to bestow on French youths the organization of the "Mamelukes," and he nearly succeeded. More exactly and in his own words, "His Majesty6176desired to realize in a State of forty millions of inhabitants what had been done in Sparta and in Athens.—" But," he is to say later, "I only half succeeded. That was one of my finest conceptions";6177M. de Fontanes and the other university men did not comprehend this or want to comprehend it. Napoleon himself could give only a moment of attention to his school work, his halting-spells between two campaigns;6178in his absence, "they spoiled for him his best ideas"; "his executants "never perfectly carried out his intentions. "He scolded, and they bowed to the storm, but not the less continued on in the usual way." Fourcroy kept too much of the Revolution in mind, and Fontanes too much of the ancient régime; the former was too much a man of science, and the latter too much a man of letters; with such capacities they laid too great stress on intellectual culture and too little on discipline of the feelings. In education, literature and science are "secondary" matters; the essential thing is training, an early, methodical, prolonged, irresistible training which, through the convergence of every means—lessons, examples and habits—inculcates "principles," and lastingly impresses on young souls "the national doctrine," a sort of social and political catechism, the first article of which commands fanatical docility, passionate devotion, and the total surrender of one's self to the Emperor.6179
6101 (return)[ (and obviously the aim of all other dictatorships. (SR.))]
6102 (return)[ Pelet de la Lozère, 161. (Speech by Napoleon to the Council of State, March 11, 1806.)]
6103 (return)[ Our last son entered the French School system at the age of 5 in 1984 and his school record followed him from school to school until he left 13 years later with his terminal exam, the Baccalaureat. (SR.)]
6104 (return)[ What a wonderful procedure, it was to be copied and used by all the dominant rulers of the 20th century. Taine's book is, however, not to be let into immature hands, so no wonder it was hardly ever referred to by those who had profited by it. (SR.)]
6105 (return)[ A. de Beauchamp, Recueil des lois et réglements sur l'enseignement supérior, 4 vol. ( (Rapport of Fourcroy to the Corps Législatif, May 6, 1806.) "How important it is... that the mode of education admitted to be the best should add to this advantage, that of being uniform for the whole Empire, teaching the same knowledge, inculcating the same principles on individuals who must live together in the same society, forming in some way but one body, possessing but one mind, and all contributing to the public good through unanimity of sentiment and action."]
6106 (return)[ Pelet de la Lozère, 154.]
6107 (return)[ A. de Beauchamp, ibid. (Decree of March 7, 1808.)—Special and collateral schools which teach subjects not taught in the lycées, for example the living languages, which are confined to filling a gap, and do not compete with the lycées, are subject to previous authorization and to university pay.]
6108 (return)[ Pelet de la Lozère, p. 170. (Session of the Council of State, March 20, 1806).]
6109 (return)[ Quicherat, "Histoire de Sainte-Barbe," III., 125.]
6110 (return)[ A. de Beauchamp, ibid. (Decrees of March 17, 1808, arts 103 and 105, of Sep. 17, 1808, arts. 2 and 3 of Novem. 15, 1801, arts. 54, 55 and 56.) "Should any one publicly teach and keep a school without the Grand-Master's consent, he will be officially prosecuted by our imperial judges, who will close the school.... He will be brought before the criminal court and condemned to a fine of from one hundred to two hundred francs, without prejudice to greater penalties, should he be found guilty of having directed instruction in a way contrary to order and to the public interest."—Ibid., art. 57. (On the closing of schools provided with prescribed authority.)]
6111 (return)[ A. de Beauchamp, ibid. (Decree of Sep. 17, 1808, arts. 27, 28, 29, 30, and act passed April 7, 1809.)]
6112 (return)[ Id., ibid. (Decrees of March 17, 1808, art. 134; of Sep. 17, 1808, arts. 25 and 26; of Nov.15, 1811, art. 63).]
6113 (return)[ Ambroise Rendu, "Essai sur l'instruction publique," 4 vols., 1819, I., 221. (Notice to M. de Fontanes, March 24, 1808. "The university undertakes all public institutions, and must strive to have as few private institutions as possible.]
6114 (return)[ Eugène Rendu, "Ambroise Rendu et l'Université de France" (1861), pp.25, 26. (Letter of the Emperor to Fourcroy, Floreal 3, year XIII, ordering him to inspect the lycées and Report of Fourcroy at the end of four months.) "In general, the drum. the drill and military discipline keep the parents in most of the towns from sending their children to the lycée.... Advantage is taken of this measure to make parents believe that the Emperor wants only to make soldiers." Ibid. (Note of M. de Champagny, Minister of the Interior, written a few months later.) "A large half of the heads (of the lycée) or professors is, from a moral point of view, completely indifferent. One quarter, by their talk, their conduct, their reputation, exhibit the most dangerous character in the eyes of the youths... The greatest fault of the principals is their lack of religious spirit, religious zeal.... There are not more than two or three lycees in which this may be seen. Hence the removal of the children by the parents which is attributed to political prejudices; hence the rarity of paying pupils; hence the discredit of the lycées. In this respect opinion is unanimous."]
6115 (return)[ "Histoire du Collége Louis le Grand," by Esmond, emeritus censor, 1845, p.267 "Who were the assistant-teachers? Retired subaltern officers who preserved the coarseness of the camp and knew of no virtue but passive obedience.... The age at which scholarships were given was not fixed, the Emperor's choice often falling on boys of fifteen or sixteen, who presented themselves with habits already formed out of a bad education and so ignorant that one was obliged to assign them to the lowest classes, along with children."—Fabry, "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de l'instruction publique depuis 1789," I., 391. "The kernel of boarding-scholars, (holders of scholarships) was furnished by the Prytanée. Profound corruption, to which the military régime gives an appearance of regularity, a cool impiety which conforms to the outward ceremonies of religion as to the movements of a drill,... steady tradition has transmitted this spirit to all the pupils that have succeeded each other for twelve years."]
6116 (return)[ Fabry, ibid., vol. II.,12, and vol. III., 399.]
6117 (return)[ Decree of Nov.15, 1811, articles 15, 16, 22.]
6118 (return)[ Quicherat, ibid., III.. 93 to 105.—Up to 1809, owing to M. de Fontane's toleration, M. de Lanneau could keep one half of his pupils in his house under the name of pupils in preparatory classes, or for the lectures in French or on commerce; nevertheless, he was obliged to renounce teaching philosophy. In 1810, he is ordered to send all his scholars to the lycée within three months. There were at this date 400 scholars in Sainte-Barbe.]
6119 (return)[ Decree of Nov.15, 1811, articles 1, 4, 5, 9, 17 to 19 and 24 to 32.—"Procès-verbaux des séances du conseil de l'Université impériale." (Manuscripts in the archives of the Ministry of Public Instruction, furnished by M. A. de Beauchamp), session of March 12, 1811, note of the Emperor communicated by the Grand-Master. "His Majesty requires that the following arrangement be added to the decree presented to him: Wherever there is a lycée, the Grand-Master will order private institutions to be closed until the lycée has all the boarders it can contain." The personal intervention of Napoleon is here evident; the decree starts with him; he wished it at once more rigorous, more decidedly arbitrary and prohibitive.]
6120 (return)[ Quicherat, ibid., III.,95-105.—Ibid., 126. After the decree of November 15, 1811, threatening circulars follow each other for fifteen months and always to hold fast or annoy the heads of institutions or private schools. Even in the smallest boarding-schools, the school exercises must be announced by the drum and the uniform worn under penalty of being shut up]
6121 (return)[ Ibid., III., 42.—At Sainte-Barbe, before 1808, there were various sports favoring agility and flexibility of the body, such as running races, etc. All that is suppressed by the imperial University; it does not admit that anything can be done better or otherwise than by itself.]
6122 (return)[ Decree of March 17, 1808, article 38. Among "the bases of teaching," the legislator prescribes "obedience to the statutes the object of which is the uniformity of instruction."]
6123 (return)[ Quicherat, III., 128.]
6124 (return)[ "The Modern Régime," I., 164.]
6125 (return)[ See, for a comprehension of the full effect of this forced education, "Les Mécontens" by Mérimée, the rôle of Lieutenant Marquis Edward de Naugis.]
6126 (return)[ "Recueil," by A. de Beauchamp; Report by Fourcroy, April 20, 1802: "The populations which have become united with France and which, speaking a different language and accustomed to foreign institutions, need to abandon old habits and refashion themselves on those of their new country, cannot find at home the essential means for giving their sons the instruction, the manners and the character which should amalgamate them with Frenchmen. What destiny could be more advantageous for them and, at the same time, what a resource for the government, which desires nothing so much as to attach new citizens to France!"]
6127 (return)[ "Journal d'un déténu de 1807 à 1814" (I vol., 1828, in English), p.167. (An account given by Charles Choderlos de Laclos, who was then at La Flèche.]
6128 (return)[ Pelet de la Lozère, ibid., pp.162, 163.167. (Speeches by Napoleon to the Council of State, sessions of Feb. 10, March 1, 11 and 20, April 7, and May 21 and 29, 1806.)]
6129 (return)[ Napoleon himself said this: "I want a corporation, not of Jesuits whose sovereign is in Rome, but Jesuits who have no other ambition but to be useful and no other interest but the public interest."]
6130 (return)[ This intention is formally expressed in the law. (Decree of March 17, 1808, art. 30.) "Immediately after the formation of the imperial university, the order of rank shall be followed in the appointment of functionaries, and no one can be assigned a place who has not passed through the lowest. The situations will then afford a career which offers to knowledge and good behavior the hope of reaching the highest position in the imperial university."]
6131 (return)[ Pelet de la Lozère, ibid.]
6132 (return)[ "Procès-verbaux des séances du conseil de l'Université." (In manuscript.) Memoir of February 1, 1811, on the means for developing the spirit of the corporation in the University. In this memoir, communicated to the Emperor, the above motive is alleged.]
6133 (return)[ Pelet de la Lozère.]
6134 (return)[ I can imagine the effect this description of Napoleon's genius and inventive spirit must have had on Lenin when he lived and studied in Paris and forged his plans for a communist state, a world revolution, an annihilation of the existing order and the creation of a new (and better) one. (SR.)]
6135 (return)[ Decree of March 17, 1808, arts. 101, 102.]
6136 (return)[ In any pre-revolutionary society, authority must be undermined, women introduced whenever it can lessen the efficiency of the organization. But once the revolution has won, then Lenin's dictum about entrusting men of administrative talent with the full authority of the dictatorship of the proletariat is to be followed. As Taine was translated into German, Hitler is likely, directly or indirectly to have studied Napoleon. Hitler's "führerprincip" a principle which gave the Nazi society its terrible efficiency was probably the result. (SR.)]
6137 (return)[ Decree of March 20, 1808, articles 40-46.]
6138 (return)[ For example, act of March 31, 1812, On leaves of absence.—Cf. the regulations of April 8, 1810, for the "École de la Maternité," titres ix, x and xi). In this strict and special instance we see plainly what Napoleon meant by "the police" of a school.]
6139 (return)[ Pelet de la Lozère, Ibid.]
6140 (return)[ It seems to me probable that an aspiring revolutionary like Hitler, Lenin, Stalin or Trotsky) would attempt to copy Napoleon's once he had successfully taken power inside first the party and later the state. To enhance the dissolution of a democracy the opposite system, that is tenure irrespective of performance, the right to operate militant trade unions and to conduct strikes, would be demanded for all government employees. (SR.)]
6141 (return)[ Decree of March 17, 1808, articles 47 and 48.]
6142 (return)[ Decree of Nov. 15, 1811, articles 66 and 69.]
6143 (return)[ Procès-verbaux et papiers du conseil supérior de l'Université (in manuscript).—(Two memoirs submitted to the Emperor, Feb. 1, 1811, on the means of strengthening the discipline and spirit of the body in the University.)—The memoir requests that the sentences of the university authorities be executable on the simple exequatur of the courts; it is important to diminish the intervention of tribunals and prefects, to cut short appeals and pleadings; the University must have full powers and full jurisdiction on its domain, collect taxes from its taxpayers, and repress all infractions of those amenable to its jurisdiction. (Please not the exequatur is a French ordnance by which the courts gives a decision by a third party or an umpire executory force. SR.)]
6144 (return)[ "Statut sur l'administration, l'ensignement et la police de l'École normale," March 30, 1810, title II, articles 20-23.]
6145 (return)[ Taine entered in L'Ecole Normale in October 1848, first in his year, having written an essay in philosophy (in Latin) with the title: Si animus cum corpore extinguitur, quid sit Deus? Quid homo? Quid societas? Quid philosophia? (If the soul dies with the body what happens to God? Man? Society? Philosophy?) And an essay in French imagining that he was Voltaire writing to his English friend Cedeville pretending to give his impressions on England. When he had arrived on 30 October 1848 Taine wrote to Cornélis de Witt: "Here I am in the convent and prisoner for three years." (SR.)]
6146 (return)[ I note, however, that the École Normale Superior produced Taine, and it seemed to have had the same effect upon him as by boarding school and its similar regime upon me, namely of making me informed and rebellious. I have also noted that the most uninteresting and smug young people I have met have followed school systems like that of the United States where no great effort is demanded but the peer pressure helps to produce ignorant, self-satisfied students. (SR.)]
6147 (return)[ Villemain, "Souvenirs contemporaines," vol. I., 137-156. ("Une visite à l'École normale en 1812," Napoleon's own words to M. de Narbonne.) "Tacitus is a dissatisfied senator, an Auteuil grumbler, who revenges himself, pen in hand, in his cabinet. His is the spite of the aristocrat and philosopher both at once.... Marcus Aurelius is a sort of Joseph II., and, in much larger proportions, a philanthropist and sectarian in commerce with the sophists and ideologues of his time, flattering them and imitating them.... I like Diocletian better."—"... Public education lies in the future and in the duration of my work after I am gone."]
6148 (return)[ Decree of March 17, 1808, art. 110 and the following.]
6149 (return)[ Circular of Nov. 13, 1813.]
6150 (return)[ Decree of March 17, 1808, article 38.]
6151 (return)[ Pelet de la Lozere, ibid., 158.]
6152 (return)[ Id., ibid., 168. (Session of March 20, 1806.)]
6153 (return)[ Hermann Niemeyer, "Beobactungen auf einer Deportation-Reise nach Frankreich im J. 1807" (Halle, 1824), II.,353.—Fabry, "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de l'instruction publique," III., 120. (Documents and testimony of pupils showing that religion in the lycées is only ceremonial practice.)—Id., Riancey, "Histoire de l'instruction publique," II.,378. (Reports of nine chaplains in the royal colleges in 1830 proving that the same spirit prevailed throughout the Restoration: "A boy sent to one of these establishments containing 400 pupils for the term of eight years has only eight or ten chances favoring the preservation of his faith; all the others are against him, that is to say, out of four hundred chances, three hundred and ninety risk his being a man with no religion."]
6154 (return)[ Fabry, ibid., III., 175. (Napoleon's own words to a member of his council.)—Pelet de la Lozère, ibid., 161: "I do not want priests meddling with public education."—167: "The establishment of a teaching corps will be a guarantee against the re-establishment of monks. Without that they would some day come back."]
6155 (return)[ Fabry, ibid, III., 120. (Abstract of the system of lycées by a pupil who passed many years in two lycées.) Terms for board 900 francs, insufficiency of food and clothing, crowded lectures and dormitories, too many pupils in each class, profits of the principal who lives well, gives one grand dinner a week to thirty persons, deprives the dormitory, already too narrow, of space for a billiard-table, and takes for his own use a terrace planted with fine trees. The censor, the steward, the chaplain, the sub-director do the same, although to a less degree. The masters are likewise as poorly fed as the scholars. The punishments are severe, no paternal remonstrance or guidance, the under-masters maltreated on applying the rules, despised by their superiors and without any influence on their pupils.—"Libertinage, idleness self-interest animated all breasts, there being no tie of friendship uniting either the masters to the scholars nor the pupils amongst themselves."]
6156 (return)[ Finding myself in charge of a numerous staff of technicians, artisans, operators and workers hired by the United Nations to serve a military mission in Lebanon I was faced with motivating everyone, not only when they would become eligible for promotion, but also during the daily humdrum existence. I one day coined the phrase that "everyone wants to be important" and tried to make them feel so by insisting that all tasks, even the most humble had to be done well. I gave preference to seniority by giving the most senior man the chance to prove himself once a higher post fell vacant. (SR.)]
6157 (return)[ Hermann Niemeyer, "Beobachtungen," etc., II.,350. "A very worthy man, professor in one of the royal colleges, said to me: 'What backward steps we have been obliged to take! How all the pleasure of teaching, all the love for our art, has been taken away from us by this constraint!'"]
6158 (return)[ Id., ibid., II.,339.—"Decree of November 15, 1811 art. 17."]
6159 (return)[ Id., ibid., II.,353.]
6160 (return)[ Hermann Niemeyer, ibid., 366, and following pages. On the character, advantages and defects of the system, this testimony of an eye-witness is very instructive and forms an almost complete picture. The subjects taught are reduced to Latin and mathematics; there is scarcely any Greek, and none of the modern languages, hardly a tinge of history and the natural sciences, while philology is null; that which a pupil must know of the classics is their "contents and their spirit" (Geist und Inhalt).—Cf. Guizot, "Essai sur l'histoire et l'état actuel de l'instruction publique," 1816, p.103.]
6161 (return)[ "Travels in France during the Years 1814 and 1815" (Edinburgh, 1816), vol. I., p. 152.]
6162 (return)[ "Ambroise Rendu et l'Université de France," by E. Rendu (1861), pp. 25 and 26. (Letter of the Emperor, Floréal 3, year XIII, and report by Fourcroy.)]
6163 (return)[ "Recueil," etc., by de Beauchamp, I., 151. (Report to the Corps Législatif by Fourcroy, May 6, 1806.)]
6164 (return)[ "Procès-verbaux et papiers" (manuscripts) of the superior council of the University, session of March 12, 1811, note by the Emperor communicated by the Grand-Master: "The Grand-Master will direct that in all boarding-schools and institutions which may come into existence, the pupils shall wear a uniform, and that everything shall go on as in the lycées according to military discipline." In the decree in conformity with this, of Nov. 15, 1811, the word military was omitted, probably because it seemed too crude; but it shows the thought behind it, the veritable desire of Napoleon.—Quicherat," Histoire de Sainte-Barbe," III., 126. The decree was enforced "even in the smallest boarding-schools."]
6165 (return)[ Testimony of Alfred de Vigny in "Grandeur et Servitude militaires." Same impression of Alfred de Musset in his "Confession d'un enfant du siècle."]
6166 (return)[ Quicherat, ibid., p.126.]
6167 (return)[ "The Modern Régime," I. (Laff. I. p. 550.)]
6168 (return)[ Hermann Niemeyer, ibid., I., 153.]
6169 (return)[ "Travels in France," etc., II.,123. (Testimony of a French gentleman.) "The rapid destruction of population in France caused constant promotions, and the army became the career which offered the most chances. It was a profession for which no education was necessary and to which all had access. There, Bonaparte never allowed merit to go unrecognized."]
6170 (return)[ Véron, "Mémoires d'un bourgeois de Paris," I., 127 (year 1806).]
6171 (return)[ Guizot, ibid., pp.59 and 61.—Fabry, "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de l'instruction publique," III., 102. (On the families of these favorites and on the means made use of to obtain these scholarships.)—Jourdain, "le Budget de l'instruction publique (1857)", p. 144.—In 1809, in the 36 lycées, there are 9,068 pupils, boarding and day scholars, of whom 4,199 are boursiers. In 1811, there are 10,926 pupils, of whom 4,008 are boursiers. In 1813, there are 14,992 pupils, of whom 3,500 are boursiers. At the same epoch, in private establishments, there are 30,000 pupils.]
6172 (return)[ Fabry, ibid., II.,391 (1819). (On the peopling of the lycées and colleges.) "The first nucleus of the boarders was furnished by the Prytanée.... Tradition has steadily transmitted this spirit to all the pupils that succeeded each other for the first twelve years."— Ibid., III., 112 "The institution of lycees tends to creating a race inimical to repose, eager and ambitious, foreign to the domestic affections and of a military and adventurous spirit."]
6173 (return)[ Quicherat, ibid., III., 126.]
6174 (return)[ Hermann Niemeyer, ibid., II.,350.]
6175 (return)[ Fabry, ibid., III., 109-112.]
6176 (return)[ Ambroise Rendu, "Essai sur l'instruction publique," (1819), I., 221. (Letter of Napoleon to M. de Fontanes, March 24, 1808.)]
6177 (return)[ "Mémorial," June 17, 1816.]
6178 (return)[ Pelet de la Lozère, ibid., 154, 157, 159.]
6179 (return)[ "Mémorial," June 17, 1816. "This conception of the University by Napoleon must be taken with another, of more vast proportions, which he sets forth in the same conversation and which clearly shows his complete plan. He desired "the military classing of the nation," that is to say five successive conscriptions, one above the other. The first, that of children and boys by means of the University; the second, that of ordinary conscripts yearly and effected by the drawing by lot; the third, fourth and fifth provided by three standards of national guard, the first one comprising young unmarried men and held to frontier service, the second comprising men of middle age, married and to serve only in the department, and the third comprising aged men to be employed only in the defense of towns—in all, through these three classes, two millions of classified men, enrolled and armed, each with his post assigned him in case of invasion. "In 1810 or 1811 up to fifteen or twenty drafts of this" proposal "was read to the council of State. The Emperor, who laid great stress on it, frequently came back to it." We see the place of the University in his edifice: from ten to sixty years, his universal conscription was to take, first, children, then adults, and, with healthy persons, the semi-invalids, as, for instance, Cambacérès, the arch-chancellor, gross, impotent, and, of all men, the least military. "There is Cambacérès," says Napoleon, "who must be ready to shoulder his gun if danger makes it necessary.... Then you will have a nation sticking together like lime and sand, able to defy time and man." There is constant repugnance to this by the whole Council of State, "marked disfavor, mute and inert opposition.... Each member trembled at seeing himself classed, transported abroad," and, under pretext of internal defense, used for foreign wars. "The Emperor, absorbed with other projects, saw this plan vanish."]