When the French Revolution suddenly brought again upon the war stage a national army, the means which governments could command were found insufficient, and the whole system of war, which had its origin in the limited extent of these means, and found again its security in this limitation, fell to pieces, and of course in the downfall of the whole was included that of the branch of which we are now speaking, the system of subsistence. Without troubling themselves about magazines, and still less about such an organisation as the artificial clockwork of which we have spoken, by which the different divisions of the transport service went round like a wheel, the leading spirits of the revolution sent their soldiers into the field, forced their generals to fight, subsisted, reinforced their armies, and kept alive the war by a system of exaction, and of helping themselves to all they required by robbery and plunder. Between these two extremes the war under Buonaparte, and against him, preserved a sort of medium, that is to say, it just made use of such means as suited it best amongst all that were available; and so it will be also in future. The modern method of subsisting troops, that is, seizing every thing which is to be found in the country without regard to _meum et tuum_ may be carried out in four different ways: that is, subsisting on the inhabitant, contributions which the troops themselves look after, general contributions and magazines. All four are generally applied together, one generally prevailing more than the others: still it sometimes happens that only one is applied entirely by itself. 1.—Living on the inhabitants, or on the community, which is the same thing.