The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
Has more wisdom been displayed in the constitution of your army than
what is discoverable in your plan of judicature? The able arrangement of
this part is the more difficult, and requires the greater skill and
attention, not only as a great concern in itself, but as it is the third
cementing principle in the new body of republics which you call the
French nation. Truly, it is not easy to divine what that army may become
at last. You have voted a very large one, and on good appointments, at
least fully equal to your apparent means of payment. But what is the
principle of its discipline? or whom is it to obey? You have got the
wolf by the ears, and I wish you joy of the happy position in which you
have chosen to place yourselves, and in which you are well circumstanced
for a free deliberation relatively to that army, or to anything else.
The minister and secretary of state for the War Department is M. de La
Tour du Pin. This gentleman, like his colleagues in administration, is a
most zealous assertor of the Revolution, and a sanguine admirer of the
new Constitution which originated in that event. His statement of facts
relative to the military of France is important, not only from his
official and personal authority, but because it displays very clearly
the actual condition of the army in France, and because it throws light
on the principles upon which the Assembly proceeds in the administration
of this critical object. It may enable us to form some judgment how far
it may be expedient in this country to imitate the martial policy of
France.
M. de La Tour du Pin, on the fourth of last June, comes to give an
account of the state of his department, as it exists under the auspices
of the National Assembly. No man knows it so well; no man can express it
better. Addressing himself to the National Assembly, he says,--
"His Majesty has _this day_ sent me to apprise you of the multiplied
disorders of which _every day_ he receives the most distressing
intelligence. The army [_le corps militaire_] threatens to fall into the
most turbulent anarchy. Entire regiments have dared to violate at once
the respect due to the laws, to the king, to the order established by
your decrees, and to the oaths which they have taken with the most awful
solemnity. Compelled by my duty to give you information of these
excesses, my heart bleeds, when I consider who they are that have
committed them. Those against whom it is not in my power to withhold the
most grievous complaints are a part of that very soldiery which to this
day have been so full of honor and loyalty, and with whom for fifty
years I have lived the comrade and the friend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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