"You will hear chanted the _Boîteuse_, which was hummed, some two hundred and odd years ago, by the troops of Louis XIV, and the couplets of which swarm with allusions to the infirmity of Mlle. de la Vallière; _Auprès de ma blonde_ ... song addressed to Mme. de Montespan, and a multitude of others bearing witness to the passage of noble sovereigns, or of illustrious chiefs now long since disappeared." You will also, if you are a foreigner, see many other interesting traits of national character, and, not improbably, some such curiously unmilitary proceeding as that represented on our page, engraved from the record of an unsympathetic photograph. This particular incident took place at the manœuvres at Châteaudun in 1894; the President of the Republic, M. Casimir-Perier, is distributing the cross of the Legion of Honor to a number of specially deserving officers and sous-officiers. That very modern instrument of warfare, the bicycle, appeared in the manœuvres of this present year of grace with more importance than ever. One correspondent, writing from Dompierre-sur-Besbre, on the 11th of September, says: "The _compagnie cycliste_, covering the advance of the march of the thirteenth corps, threw itself into Thiel at the moment when the advance guard of the division was attacked by superior forces. Taking advantage of the shelter of the woods, of the hedges, of the houses, it held the enemy at bay long enough to permit the division to come up, and the company bivouacked with the division." Another writes: "I rejoined the column by a cross-road at the end of which the dragoons were defiling past at a hard trot, followed by the _compagnie cycliste_, whose support at this moment was most valuable. It protected the retreat by delivering at certain distances volleys which momentarily arrested the pursuit. It was wonderful to see with what rapidity the men of Captain Gérard's command threw themselves into their saddles, covered a distance of five or six hundred mètres, faced about and opened fire. If they had been more numerous, what service would they not have rendered! The cavalry officers who see them every day at work are the first to recognize their usefulness." The employment of these instruments has even been extended to the _gendarmerie_ by an order of the Minister of War, at the close of the manœuvres,--two legions of this force having been furnished with them. In 1897, some machines constructed by the artillery were distributed to a legion near Paris, as an experiment, with very satisfactory results,--the transmission of orders, maintenance of communication, etc., being thus assured in a satisfactory manner. There is, of course, some opposition manifested to this innovation, and the employment of mounted gendarmes is not yet discontinued. As may be seen from the illustrations on page 139, the French military bicycle, the invention of Captain Gérard, is constructed in such a manner as to fold up and be transported on the soldier's back.