I see in more than one corps the bonds of discipline
relaxed or broken,--the most unheard-of pretensions avowed directly and
without any disguise,--the ordinances without force,--the chiefs without
authority,--the military chest and the colors carried off,--the
authority of the king himself [_risum teneatis_] proudly defied,--the
officers despised, degraded, threatened, driven away, and some of them
prisoners in the midst of their corps, dragging on a precarious life in
the bosom of disgust and humiliation. To fill up the measure of all
these horrors, the commandants of places have had their throats out
under the eyes and almost in the arms of their own soldiers.
"These evils are great; but they are not the worst consequences which
may be produced by such military insurrections. Sooner or later they may
menace the nation itself. _The nature of things requires_ that the army
should never act but as _an instrument_. The moment that, erecting
itself into a deliberate body, it shall act according to its own
resolutions, _the government, be it what it may, will immediately
degenerate into a military democracy_: a species of political monster
which has always ended by devouring those who have produced it.
"After all this, who must not be alarmed at the irregular consultations
and turbulent committees formed in some regiments by the common soldiers
and non-commissioned officers, without the knowledge, or even in
contempt of the authority, of their superiors?--although the presence
and concurrence of those superiors could give no authority to such
monstrous democratic assemblies [_comices_].
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