Before the French Revolution there were but two foundries for making pieces of bronze ordnance and four for making iron gunnery; these six foundries turned out 900 cannon annually. Fifteen foundries were built to turn out bronze cannon, and thirty for iron ones. The former produced 7000 cannon per annum, and the latter 13,000. An enormous firearms factory had even been improvised at Paris, which made 140,000 muskets per annum, that is to say, more than all the other factories together were capable of turning out previous to the Revolution. There was only one manufactory for side arms before the war. Twenty factories were now opened and directed their attention to fresh processes. A manufactory of rifles was founded and set to work; these arms were unknown in France; air-balloons and the telegraph became organs of war. And, thanks to a new process, hides, which ordinarily took several years to be cured, were made fit for use in a week. Thus, whilst the Convention was evolving its fourteen armies, science was providing the material for their use; and the members of the Committee of Public Safety boasted loudly. "These fresh triumphs, and all those which signalised the immortal campaign of 1794, belong to us. They are the outcomes of measures for which we have been reproached as though they were crimes, it is with these successes we pay back to you all the blood we have shed." These terrible words, so profoundly true, were not uttered by an Attila nor a Genseric, but were pronounced by Carnot. Yes, you terrible heroes of the Convention, you have wielded the hammer of God and made the sword which was to deliver the world! What a dark and melancholy creed you formidable Titans reared; you who from 1793 to 1795 piled up June upon August, September on January, Prairial on Thermidor, and who, from the height of the ruins of the monarchical Olympus which you scaled, have confounded all Europe! CHAPTER VII My father at Villers-Cotterets--He is called to Paris to carry out the 13th Vendémiaire--Bonaparte takes his place--He arrives the next day--_Buonaparte's_ attestation--My father is sent into the district of Bouillon--He goes to the Army of Sambre-et-Meuse and to the Army of the Rhine, and is appointed Commandant at Landau--He returns as Divisional General in the Army of the Alps, of which he had been Commander-in-Chief--English blood and honour--Bonaparte's plan--Bonaparte appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy--The campaign of 1796. Such are the events which took place in the period which elapsed between my father's marriage and his return to Villers-Cotterets, after his resignation as commander-in-chief of the Army of the coast near Brest. He was very happy, very comfortable, and hoped to be left in peaceful oblivion by the side of his young wife, when, on the morning of the 14th Vendémiaire, he received this letter:-- "PARIS, _13 Vendémiaire of the Year IV of the French Republic, one and indivisible._