infantry of Europe, substituting for them the firelock and bayonet, all the infantry has been lightly armed......  There has been since that time, properly speaking, only one kind of infantry:  if there was a company of chasseurs in every battalion, it was by way of counterpoise to the company of grenadiers; the battalion being composed of nine companies, one picked company did not appear sufficient.  If the Emperor Napoleon created companies of voltigeurs armed like dragoons, it was to substitute them for those companies of chasseurs.  He composed them of men under five feet in height, in order to bring into use that class of the conscription which measured from four feet ten inches to five feet; and having been until that time exempt, made the burden of conscription fall more heavily on the other classes.  This arrangement served to reward a great number of old soldiers, who, being under five feet in height, could not enter into the companies of grenadiers, who on account of their bravery, deserved to enter into a picked company:  it was a powerful incentive to emulation to bring the giants and pigmies into competition.  Had there been men of different colors in the armies of the emperor, he would have composed companies of blacks and companies of whites:  in a country where there were cyclops or hunchbacks, a good use might be made of companies of cyclops, and others of hunchbacks.”

“In 1789, the French army as composed of regiments of the line and battalions of chasseurs; the chasseurs of the Cevennes, the Vivarais, the Alps, of Corsica, and the Pyrenees, who at the Revolution formed half brigades of light infantry; but the object was not to have two different sorts of infantry, for they were raised alike, instructed alike, drilled alike; only the battalions of chasseurs were recruited by the men of the mountainous districts, or by the sons of the garde-chasse; whence they were more fit to be employed on the frontiers of the Alps and Pyrenees; and when they were in the armies of the North, they were always detached, in preference, for climbing heights or scouring a forest; when these men were placed in line, in a battle, they served very well as a battalion of the line, because they had received the same instructions, and were armed and disciplined in the same manner.  Every power occasionally raises, in war-time, irregular corps, under the title of free or legionary battalions, consisting of foreign deserters, or formed of individuals of a particular party or faction; but that does not constitute two sorts of infantry.  There is and can be but one.  If the apes of antiquity must needs imitate the Romans, it is not light-armed troops that they ought to introduce, but heavy-armed soldiers, or battalions armed with swords; for all the infantry of Europe serve at times as light troops.”