No dangers, however, could make the majority of the Assembly understand that, if an army and navy were to be maintained at all, soldiers and sailors must be subjected to stringent discipline and governed by exceptional laws, without regard to the abstract Rights of Man. They set to work, it is true, to re-organise both services. They abolished the hated militia. They refused to sanction conscription in the army, although they permitted it within certain limits for the navy. They raised the pay of the men. They threw open promotion in both services to all ranks and conditions alike. They abolished the superfluity of highly paid offices, and laid down some other reasonable regulations for both departments. They abstained, in spite of their proclivities, from making all military and naval offices elective. But they jealously restricted the King's power of appointing officers. They could not be brought to see the necessity of enforcing discipline at any cost, and endeavoured to limit, by such provisions as they could invent, the authority of the officers over their men. They gave the soldiers the right of appealing to the nearest civil magistrate against their own commander. They placed the control of the military chest in the hands of a board elected by the regiment. They permitted the men to form clubs and associations, and to petition the Assembly for the protection of their rights. They insisted on regarding the soldier as a citizen still; and although for purely military offences they left him subject to the jurisdiction of the military courts, they took special steps even in those courts to assert the rights of the accused, and to diminish the influence of the military authorities. The result of all these regulations was that the Government could no longer rely upon its forces, and that discipline in both services remained thoroughly relaxed, until the approach of national disaster taught Frenchmen the necessity which no theories could avert, and until the rigid discipline of danger drilled these disorderly and mutinous battalions into the most magnificent army which the world had seen.