It was the more likely that this would happen because the army did not owe its strength to its organisation alone. As far as it is possible to judge, it fairly represented, for the time, the popular sentiment of the nation. At the outset of the revolution, zeal for improvement and change had seized upon every variety of mind and upon every class of the community. The higher minds looked forward to liberty of speech and thought, and through them to the raising of mankind in the scale of human progress. The masses looked forward to material equality, to the removal of the load of outrage and oppression under which they groaned. For some time it seemed as if these objects could be achieved together. It was not long before the attempt to grasp too much at a time brought failure with it. Liberty was trodden down in practice, whilst it was adored in word. Fraternity became but an excuse for fratricide. Equality remained as the one aim to be pursued at all hazards, and the equality which was most in favour was the lower and more material equality which appealed to the masses of unlettered peasants. For one man who cared about moral and spiritual advancement there were at least a hundred who cared only to have a guarantee for their purchases of confiscated property, and an assurance that they should be under no disadvantages because they were not of noble birth. Such feelings, strong in the nation, were strong in the army. The soldier has never much sympathy for the machinery of a free government. It is his duty in life to obey orders, not to impose them on his superiors. But the soldier of revolutionary France was the champion of material equality. He had offered it to the peoples which he had invaded. It had given to him that which he prized most, the right of promotion to the superior ranks of the service, irrespective of birth. A body which is thoroughly organised, and which represents the dominant ideas of a people, is, in reality, irresistible. For the perfect organisation of the army one thing was wanting--a general who could inspire it with confidence. That general would be found in the young chief who had fought the battle of the Convention against the insurgents of Vendémiaire. Because the nation itself was as yet unprepared to appear upon the scene, the revolutionary epoch was followed not by the Constitutional but by the Napoleonic age.