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Title: Dissolution of Discipline in the French Army (1855)
Description: Untitled paragraph of the leader page of the New-York Daily Tribune on the breakdown of discipline in the French army of the Lower Empire, led by adventurers like Lespinasse, St. Arnaud and Magnan.
Author: Friedrich Engels
Date: 1855-04-17
URL: https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/originales/1855%20Dissolution%20of%20Discipline%20in%20the%20French%20Army
---


*Published unsigned as an untitled paragraph on the leader page of the* New-York Daily Tribune*, No. 4366, April 17, 1855, p. 4, immediately after the leading article “Progress of the War”; MEGA² (I/14) prints it among the works of doubtful attribution (Dubiosa), as possibly a detached part of that article by Friedrich Engels. The title is MEGA²’s. Text from the original newspaper (Library of Congress, Chronicling America). [Traducción al español](https://marxismo.school/archivo/marx-engels/1855%20La%20disoluci%C3%B3n%20de%20la%20disciplina%20en%20el%20ej%C3%A9rcito%20franc%C3%A9s).*

That discipline in the French army is rapidly dissolving, is confirmed by fresh evidence every day. Reports have reached the Ministry of War at Paris, both from the East, and from the inland garrisons, that in this respect the army is becoming a mere band of Prætorians and Janissaries. Respect for the commanders, especially the generals, is completely gone. Those officers and old soldiers, whose military habits make them regret this state of things, sigh for the return of the good old times, when Bugeaud, Changarnier, Lamoriciere, Bedeau—men whose feats even now form the staple of conversation in the French army—by a single word, by a mere gesture, could hold in check whole regiments. But these are bygone times, and the military policy of the Lower Empire is reaping its own fruits. Indeed, what but disorganization can the man expect who flatters the soldiers in every possible manner, calls them the *élite* of the nation, the true nation itself, the only real nobility of the country, and then places at their head a set of adventurers and ragamuffins, who earned their places, not by victories, but by acts of treason contrary to all military honor, like Lespinasse, or by a career of indescribable meanness, by complicity in the wholesale robberies of their chief, like St. Arnaud and Magnan?