more in accordance with youthful tastes. We find boys in camp in time of
war, evading the orders which forbade entering the service before the
age of sixteen. Children of twelve and thirteen are wounded in battle.
[Footnote: Babeau, _Vie militaire_, ii. 7, 45. Montbarey, i. 18.]

As the only form of active life in which most nobles could take part
was found in the army, there was always too large a number of
officers, and too great a proportion of the military expenses was
devoted to them. In 1787 hardly more than one in three of those
holding commissions was in active service. The number of soldiers
under Louis XVI. was less than a hundred and fifty thousand actually
with the colors. There were thirty-six thousand officers, on paper;
thirteen thousand actively employed. The soldiers cost the state
44,100,000 livres a year, the officers 46,400,000 livres.[Footnote:
Babeau, Vie militaire, i. 15; ii. 90, 145. Necker, De l'Administration,
ii. 415, 418.]

The relation between the officers and the soldiers of the old French
army was more intimate and kindly than that existing in any other
European army of the time. For both, their regiment was a home, and the
military service a lifelong profession. They had entered it young, and
they hoped to die in it. Their relation to each other had become a part
of the structure of their minds; a condition of coherent thought. A
soldier might rise from the ranks and become a lieutenant, or even a
captain, but such promotion was infrequent; few common soldiers had the
education or the means to aspire to it. On the other hand, the command
of a company was sometimes almost hereditary. The captain might be lord
of the village in which his soldiers were born. In that case he would
care for them in sickness, and perhaps even grant a furlough when the
private was much needed by his family at home. His own chance of