Fortifications have been planned or erected on the most important and exposed positions; military materials and munitions have been collected in the public arsenals; a military school has been organized to instruct in the military sciences; there are regularly kept up small bodies of infantry and cavalry, weak in numbers, but capable of soon making good soldiers of a population so well versed as ours is in the use of the musket and the horse; an artillery force, proportionally much larger, is also regularly maintained, with a sufficient number of men and officers to organize and make good artillery-men of citizens already partially acquainted with the use of the cannon.

But an acquaintance with infantry, cavalry, and artillery duties is not the only practical knowledge requisite in war.

In the practical operations of an army in the field, rivers are to be crossed, bridges suddenly erected and suddenly destroyed, fieldworks constructed and defended, batteries captured and destroyed; fortifications are to be put in order and defended, or to be besieged and recaptured; trenches must be opened, mines sprung, batteries established, breaches made and stormed; trous-de-loup, abattis, palisades, gabions, fascines, and numerous other military implements and machinery are to be constructed.

Have our citizens a knowledge of these things, or have we provided in our military establishment for a body of men instructed and practised in this branch of the military art, and capable of imparting to an army the necessary efficiency for this service?
Unfortunately this question must be answered in the negative; and it is greatly to be feared that the future historian will have to say of us, as Napier has said of the English:--"_The best officers and soldiers were obliged to sacrifice themselves in a lamentable manner, to compensate for the negligence and incapacity of a government always ready to plunge the nation into a war, without the slightest care of what was necessary to obtain success.
Their sieges were a succession of butcheries; because the commonest materials, and the means necessary to their art, were denied the engineers_."[43] [Footnote 43: The subjects discussed in this chapter are also treated by most authors on Military Organization and Military History, and by the several writers on Military Engineering.

Allent, Vauban, Cormontaigne, Rocquancourt, Pasley, Douglas, Jones, Belmas, Napier, Gay de Vernon, may be referred to with advantage.