The bulletin of the Convention is periodically furnished with splendid feats of heroism performed by individuals of their armies, and I have no doubt but some of them are true.  There are, however, many which have been very peaceably culled from old memoirs, and that so unskilfully, that the hero of the present year loses a leg or an arm in the same exploit, and uttering the self-same sentences, as one who lived two centuries ago.  There is likewise a sort of jobbing in the edifying scenes which occasionally occur in the Convention—­if a soldier happen to be wounded who has relationship, acquaintance, or connexion, with a Deputy, a tale of extraordinary valour and extraordinary devotion to the cause is invented or adopted; the invalid is presented in form at the bar of the Assembly, receives the fraternal embrace and the promise of a pension, and the feats of the hero, along with the munificence of the Convention, are ordered to circulate in the next bulletin.  Yet many of the deeds recorded very deservedly in these annals of glory, have been performed by men who abhor republican principles, and lament the disasters their partizans have occasioned.  I have known even notorious aristocrats introduced to the Convention as martyrs to liberty, and who have, in fact, behaved as gallantly as though they had been so.—­These are paradoxes which a military man may easily reconcile.

Independently of the various secondary causes that contribute to the success of the French armies, there is one which those persons who wish to exalt every thing they denominate republican seem to exclude—­I mean, the immense advantage they possess in point of numbers.  There has scarcely been an engagement of importance, in which the French have not profited by this in a very extraordinary degree.*

     * This has been confessed to me by many republicans themselves; and
     a disproportion of two or three to one must add considerably to
     republican enthusiasm.

—­Whenever a point is to be gained, the sacrifice of men is not a matter of hesitation.  One body is dispatched after another; and fresh troops thus succeeding to oppose those of the enemy already harassed, we must not wonder that the event has so often proved favourable to them.

A republican, who passes for highly informed, once defended this mode of warfare by observing, that in the course of several campaigns more troops perished by sickness than the sword.  If then an object could be attained by such means, so much time was saved, and the loss eventually the same:  but the Generals of other countries dare not risk such philosophical calculations, and would be accountable to the laws of humanity for their destructive conquests.