When Louis XVI. began his unhappy reign, the French army was still constituted upon a feudal principle which had been well adapted to the circumstances of later times. The corps were divided into proprietary companies, the captains of which, receiving pay proportionate to the required expenditure, provided every thing for the men, and raised them among their own vassals. The system was liable to abuse, but it had great advantages: for if the captain should act upon no worthier motive than mere selfishness, it was his interest to be careful of his men, lest he should incur the expense of recruiting them; and it might reasonably be expected that he would treat them kindly to prevent desertion, and that he would spare no means for keeping them in health or restoring them in sickness. But there were better principles brought into action: the character both of the captain and of the men, in their native place, depended upon what each should report of the other; the men also knew that their fidelity would not be forgotten when their services were over, and that, if they fell, their good conduct would be remembered to the benefit of their family. Both parties were always in the presence of that little world, to the opinion of which they were more immediately amenable, and from which applause or condemnation would most sensibly affect them; and local and hereditary attachments, with all their strength and endurance, were thus brought into the service of the state. ♦CHANGE INTRODUCED BY M. DE ST. GERMAINE.♦ The system was abolished when M. de St. Germaine was minister at war, for the sake of some sordid speculations upon clothing and victualling the troops. Subalterns, who were learning their profession, and acquiring the love and confidence of the soldiers, were disbanded as a sacrifice to the prevailing fashion of economical reform: at the same time the penal discipline of the Germans was introduced, ... a poor substitution for the old bonds of feeling which had been thus rudely broken; and while all that was useful in the feudal constitution of the army was discarded, the worst part was retained by an order that no person should hold a commission unless he could prove the nobility of his family for four generations. ♦LEVELLING PRINCIPLE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY SERVICE.♦