L. been required. Those who, when drawn, failed to join CHAP. the army within the prescribed time, were deprived of their civil rights, and denounced to all the gendarmerie in the empire as deserters. 1807. 76. punish nounced against the Eleven depots were appointed for the punishment of the refractory, where they wore the uniform of convicts, Terrible received their fare, and were employed to labour on for- ments detifications or public works without any pay. The terrors of this treatment, however, being at length found to be refractory. insufficient to bring the conscripts to their colours, it was decreed that a deserter or person who failed to attend should be fined fifteen hundred francs, and sentenced to three years' hard labour in the interior, with his head shaved but his beard long; if he deserted from the army, his punishment was to be undergone in a frontier place, where he was sentenced to hard labour for ten years, on bread and water, with a bullet of eight pounds' weight chained to his leg, and with a shaved head and unshaved beard a penalty in comparison of which death itself was an act of mercy. Such were the punishments which awaited, without distinction, all the youth of France, if they tried to evade a conscription which was cutting them off at the rate of two hundred and twenty thousand a-year. The practical result of this excessive severity, joined to the known impossibility of earning a subsistence in a country where landed property was already subdivided among eight millions of hands, and commercial enterprise annihilated, by any other means than the favour or employment of government, was, that the whole youth Art. Conof the nation, of the requisite age and capable of under- Southey's going its fatigues, were voluntarily or involuntarily enrolled i. 23, 28. in the profession of arms.1 1 Code Nap. scription. Pen. War, system of The system of public instruction established in France 77. under the empire was eminently calculated to further the Imperial same tendency. The schools were of two kinds, the eccle-education. siastical schools and the lyceums. The ecclesiastical schools cal schools. were established by the bishops and clergy, chiefly for the Ecclesiasti L. 1807. As CHAP. education of the young persons destined for their own profession, and in them the elements of grammar were taught along with a system of religious education. they were supported, however, by voluntary contributions alone, they were few in comparison with the numbers of the people, and totally inadequate for the purposes of national instruction. Such as they were, nevertheless, they excited the jealousy of the Emperor, who was unwilling that any considerable establishment in the empire, especially in relation to so important a matter as public education, should exist independent of the patronage and authority of government. It was decreed, therefore, that there should be no more than one ecclesiastical school allowed in each department; and that one should be in a large town, where a lyceum Thib. Hist. Or government academy was established. All others de Nap. vi. were to be shut up in a fortnight, under heavy penalties, and their property of every description applied to the use of the great imperial establishment called the University.1 Sept. 7. 539, 555. Southey's Pen. War, i. 47, 48. 78. Constitu tion of the Imperial The Imperial University was the chief instrument which the Emperor had set on foot for obtaining the entire direction of public education in all its branches. University. This body was totally different from a university in our sense of the term: it was rather a vast system of instructing police diffused over the country, in connection with and dependent on the central government. At its head was placed a grand-master, one of the chief dignitaries of the state, with a salary of 150,000 francs (£6000) a-year. Under him was an ample staff, all of whom were nominated by himself, and extending over the whole empire, viz. a treasurer and chancellor, ten counsellors for life, twenty in ordinary, and thirty inspectorsgeneral, all endowed with ample salaries. Under them were the rectors of academies, as they were called, who in no respect corresponded to the English functionaries of the same name, but were elevated officers, analogous L. 1807. to and ranking with the bishop of the diocese, as numerous CHAP. in the empire as there were courts of appeal, and each possessing an inferior jurisdiction and staff of officers similar to the grand-master. Under each rector were placed the faculties or schools of theology, jurisprudence, medicine, physical sciences, the lyceums, colleges, institutions, and pensions, and even the schools of primary instruction. The teachers in all these various schools were either nominated directly by the grand-master, or by the inspectors, counsellors, or rectors, who owed their appointments to him; so that, directly or indirectly, they were all brought under the control of the central government. Voluntary schools, or communal colleges as they were called, established by the communities or rural divisions of the empire, were not prohibited, and about four hundred of them were set on foot in the early years of the empire. But it was required that every person who taught in them should take out a graduation at the university, and pay for his license to teach from two hundred to six hundred francs every ten years; and besides, that the whole sums which they drew should be thrown into a common fund, to be apportioned out by the central government-not according to the number of the scholars which each could produce, or the expenditure which it might require, but the pleasure of the minister to whom the distribution was confided. Under such restrictions it may easily be believed that the communal or voluntary schools rapidly de Nap. vi. died away, and nearly the whole education of the empire Southey's was brought effectually under the direction and appoint- i. 44, 47. ment of government.1 1 Thib. Hist. 540, 558. Pen. War, or military Their regu The imperial places of education, which thus, under 79. the successive gradation of schools of primary instruc-Lyceums tion, colleges, and lyceums, pervaded the whole empire, academies. were the great instrument to which Napoleon trusted, lations and both for the moulding of the national temper into a great imdocile and submissive character, and for the direction of its whole moral energies to the purposes of military portance. 1807. CHAP. aggrandisement. All the boys who, in the primary L. schools, evinced talent, spirit, or aptitude for military exploit, were transferred to the colleges, and from thence to the lyceums. In the latter academies everything bore a military character; the pupils were distributed into companies, having each its sergeant and corporal; their studies, their meals, their rising and going to bed, were all performed by beat of drum-from the age of twelve they were taught military exercises; their amusements, their games, were all of a warlike character. Nor were other encouragements of a more substantial description wanting. To each lyceum one hundred and fifty bursaries were annexed, paid by government, and bestowed on the most deserving and clever of the young pupils, in order to defray their expenses at the higher military academies, or Polytechnic School at Paris. From the many thousand salaried scholars thus chosen, two hundred and fifty were annually transferred to the special military academies, where they were exclusively maintained at the expense of the state, and, when they arrived at the proper age, provided with commissions in the army, or offices in the civil departments of government. Nor was this all-two thousand four hundred youths of the greatest promise were every year selected from the conquered or dependent territories, and educated at the military schools at the public expense; and in like manner apportioned out, according to their disposition and talents, among the military or civil services of the empire.1 1 Thib. vi. 540, 547. 80. At all these schools religion was hardly mentioned: And entire political studies were altogether prohibited; moral disto the Em- quisitions little regarded; but geography, mathematics, peror's will. mechanics, the physical sciences, fortifications, gunnery, subjection engineering, and whatever was connected directly or indirectly with the art of war, sedulously taught and encouraged. The professors in the lyceums and colleges were bound to celibacy; the primary teachers might L. 1807. marry, but in that case they were compelled to lodge with- CHAP. out the precincts; a regulation which, to persons of their limited income, seldom exceeding twenty pounds a-year, amounted to a prohibition. All the teachers, of whatever grade, were liable to instant dismissal on the report of the rectors or inspectors, if any of the rules were infringed. Their emoluments were all derived from government, and their promotion depended entirely on the same authority. The scholars were debarred from all correspondence, except with their parents; and letters even from them could only be received in presence of the master. Thus, not only were the whole schools of the empire directed to the purposes of war or abject submission, and directly placed under the control of government, but a spiritual militia was established in them all, to enforce everywhere the mandates and doctrines which it promulgated. Napoleon did not discourage education; on the contrary, he laboured assiduously to promote it : but he rendered it wholly and exclusively subservient to his purposes. He did not destroy the battery, but seized its guns, and skilfully turned them on the enemy. Combining into one government all the known modes of degrading mankind, he aimed at, and all but established, a system of depotism unparalleled in its tendency to crush and enslave the human mind. By the conscription he forced, like Timour or Gengis Khan, the whole physical energies of his subjects into the ranks of war, and the prosecution of military aggrandisement; by the police, the state prisons, and the censorship of the press, he enforced everywhere, like the Byzantine emperors, implicit obedience to his civil administration, and directed at pleasure the thoughts of his subjects; while, by means of a vast system of centralised education, skilfully directed to the purposes of conquest or despotism, and maintained by an order of educational Jesuits abjectly devoted to his will, he aimed, like Loyola or Hildebrand, at throwing still more indestructible chains over the minds of |