The French troops before Sebastopol were regularly, cheaply, and abundantly supplied with every requisite of provisions, clothing, munitions, medical stores, military utensils, and hospital and camp equipages; while the English army, notwithstanding an immense expenditure of money, was often paralyzed in its operations by the want of proper military material, and not unfrequently was destitute of even the necessaries of life.
Instead of profiting by this lesson, the recent tendency of our own government has been (especially in supplying the army in Utah) to imitate the sad example of the English, and to convert the supplying of our armies into a system of political patronage to be used for party purposes.

If fully carried out, it must necessarily result in the ruin of the army, the robbery of the treasury, and the utter corruption of the government.
NOTE TO CHAPTER V .-- TACTICS.
The war in Mexico, from the small number of troops engaged, and the peculiar character of the ground in most cases, afforded but few opportunities for the display of that skill in the tactics of battle which has so often determined the victory upon the great fields of Europe.

Nevertheless, the history of that war is not without useful lessons in the use which may be made of the several arms in the attack and defence of positions.

The limit assigned to these Notes will admit of only a few brief remarks upon these battles.
The affairs of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma properly constitute only a single battle.

In the first, which was virtually a cannonade, the lines were nearly parallel, and Arista's change of front to an oblique position during the engagement, was followed by a corresponding movement on the part of General Taylor.