Much more might be given and said upon this most important subject; but being apprehensive that I have already exhausted the patience of many readers, I shall only farther observe, that in the French armies they act in a very summary manner with respect to carriages and animals kept contrary to the rules of the service. All such carriages and animals, and the persons along with them, are laid hold of by the police, and taken to head-quarters, to be delivered up to the provost, who reports the circumstances to the major-general, and who commonly orders the transgressors to be punished by the provost-corporals, and the carriages and animals to be sold for the benefit of the captors. It now becomes necessary to consider other subjects connected with the higher branches of the military profession, and which require to be so well weighed, that I may, if possible, give offence to no one; at least it shall be my study to endeavour to avoid doing so. CHAP. V. There are many schools in which officers should study in order to gain a perfect knowledge of the military profession, but certainly none can be selected superior to that of experience, in which previously acquired science or theory can be usefully exemplified. But the best of all teachers is decidedly Cæsar, who still speaks to soldiers in a language which they can understand; and of this Napoleon was so well aware, that he always expected his officers to have carefully studied that great general's Commentaries, and which are so well translated into French by General Toulongeon. As an instance--selected out of many to be found in that finely written narrative--what can possibly be a more admirable piece of military policy, than when Cæsar, as he tells us, having found that his army had become alarmed at the accounts received of the warlike appearance, and desperate valour of the Germans under Ariovistus, he decides at once, to allow all who had no stomach for fighting to depart, if they thought fit to do so; and which instantly produced the effects he so wisely anticipated. And let me ask, if a British army were again to get into a scrape, like that in which the 3rd division, and part of our troops, found themselves on the Garonne, just before the battle of Toulouse, and had at least four to one pitted against them; and if our General announced, that those who did not like the appearance of matters might go home; how many would go? Cæsar perfectly understood the feelings of a Roman army, and knew how to act upon them; but let us see what were those of even a commander of a British regiment.