Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/288

2-1 G ORIGIN OF THE WAK OF 1853 CHAP. XIV. Its indig- nation at M. Baze's proposal. Selection of regiments and of offi- cers for the Army of Paris. Magnan. was a. scheme which shocked the mind of the army. In France, of late years, the Minister of War had always been a soldier, and an order from him (though it was in reality the order of a member of the civil Government) was habitually regarded by military men as the order of a gen- eral having supreme com maud. A proposal to change this system by giving to the Assembly a direct control over a portion of the land-forces could be easily represented to the soldiery as a plan for withdrawing the French army from the control of its generals and placing it under the command of men whom the soldiers called 'lawyers.' Seen in this light, the project so exasperated the feelings of the troops, that if it had been carried, they would probably have been stirred up at once to effect by force a violent change of the Constitution. The measure was rejected ; but anger is not always appeased by the removal of the kindling motive ; and the soreness created by the mere agitation of the question had been so well kept up by the means employed for the purpose, that the garrison of Paris now came to look upon the people with a well-defined feel- ing of spite. Care had been taken to bring into Paris and its neighbourhood the regiments most likely to serve the purpose of the Elysee, and to give the com- mand to generals who might be expected to act without scruples. The forces in Paris and its neighbourhood were under the orders of General Magnan. At the time of Louis Napoleon's descent