were shot down.[1] It is no discredit to the Americans to say that, with equally good strategy, and an equally strong position, almost any troops in the world could have repelled the attack which Pakenham ought never to have made.
The second supposed instance of a defeat of regular soldiers by insurrectionary levies is when France was invaded by the Duke of Brunswick in 1793, and by the Prussians, Austrians, and British in 1794. The popular assumption is that the old French army had been disbanded or allowed to disappear, and that under the influence of revolutionary excitement hundreds of thousands of citizen soldiers sprung to arms under the command of citizen officers, drove the invaders back, and overflowed Italy, Spain, and the Low Countries. "O youth, O hope, O infinite strength of the consciousness and the feeling of right—who could resist them?" says M. Michelet poetically, while he develops this view;[2] and General Foy, a much higher authority on military matters, says that from " the year 1794 inclusive, our young army, commanded by new men who had escaped from studies and counting-houses, was seen to demolish the reputation of old armies and old generals."[3] General Foy probably refers to Moreau, who had been a lawyer, and to Jourdan, who, after serving as a private in the American War, had settled down as a draper. Taking now the facts of history, we shall find that the poetical view requires to be largely discounted. The army of the monarchy was never disbanded, though it lost a great many of its officers and men by emigration, or otherwise, and was more or
