Morbecque, was a French officer banished from Artois?

Self-reliance on the field of battle is the first requisite for
obtaining success; now, would not our self-reliance be shaken, if the
men most likely to know the facts, and to appreciate them wisely,
appeared to think that the Frank race were nationally inferior to other
races who had peopled this or that region, either neighbouring or
distant? This, let it be well remarked, is not a puerile susceptibility.
Great events may, on a given day, depend on the opinion that the nation
has formed of itself. Our neighbours on the other side of the Channel,
afford examples on this subject that it would be well to imitate.

In 1767, the Academy of Berlin proposed a prize for an éloge of
Leibnitz. The public was somewhat surprised at it. It was generally
supposed that Leibnitz had been admirably praised by Fontenelle, and
that the subject was exhausted. But from the moment that Bailly's essay,
crowned in Prussia, was published, former impressions were quite
changed. Every one was anxiously asserting that Bailly's appreciation of
his subject might be read with pleasure and benefit, even after
Fontenelle's. The éloge composed by the historian of Astronomy will not,
certainly, make us forget that written by the first Secretary of the
Academy of Sciences. The style is, perhaps, too stiff; perhaps it is
also rather declamatory; but the biography, and the analysis of his
works, are more complete, especially if we consider the notes; the
_universal_ Leibnitz is exhibited under more varied points of view.

In 1768, Bailly obtained the award of the prize of eloquence proposed
by the Academy of Rouen. The subject was the éloge of Peter Corneille.
In reading this work of our fellow-academician, we may be somewhat
surprised at the immense distance that the modest, the timid, the